Venezuelans reported paying above $2 per liter ($7.57 per gallon) for gasoline last week amid fuel shortages, one of the world’s highest rates and a dramatic reversal for an OPEC nation that long boasted of having the world’s cheapest fuel. Thanks to subsidies under socialist former President Hugo Chavez and his succesor and protege, Nicolas Maduro, gasoline sold by state oil company PDVSA – which has a legal monopoly on fuel sales – is essentially free in Venezuela. Octavio Salom, 53, said he and fellow kidney patients in the eastern city of Puerto Ordaz bought 20 liters of gasoline at $2 per liter for the nurses that provide their dialysis treatment to take a taxi to the clinic.
