Mauritania “produces 18,000 barrels per day of crude,” but “a transnational (oil company) takes it and it has to import gasoline,” Chavez said in a statement released by the Information Ministry.
“We have made a proposal to the Government of Mauritania … to build a refinery” in that country “to process not 18,000 barrels, but 30 or 40,000, to refine everything they produce, and if they cannot find more oil over there, to ship petroleum from Venezuela,” he said.
