Venezuela Seeks Oil Talks with Mexico

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro wants to meet with his Mexican counterpart Enrique Pena Nieto to discuss a slump in crude oil prices when they attend a summit in Costa Rica at the end of January, a diplomatic source said on Friday.

Maduro is wrapping up a tour that took him to China, Russia Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Algeria, in what OPEC delegates described as a diplomatic push by Venezuela and Iran for an OPEC oil output cut.

The diplomatic source said Maduro has proposed a meeting with Pena Nieto at a summit of Latin American and Caribbean leaders in Costa Rica on Jan. 28-29.

A Mexican government spokesman said Pena Nieto planned to attend the summit, but had no details on whether the pair would meet.

"I am asking for a meeting with the president of Mexico," Maduro said on Thursday after meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, without specifying a date or place for the meeting.

Earlier in the tour, Maduro said in Qatar that he was working to build a "new consensus for this new situation in the oil market, for the stabilization of the market and prices."

Mexican government officials have said privately that Mexico, the world's tenth-biggest crude oil producer, is not in a position to cut its own output.

Major oil producers including Russia and Venezuela have been pushing for output cuts to boost prices, but OPEC has shown no signs of reversing its November decision to maintain production levels and instead allow the market to balance itself.

Oil prices have dropped by nearly 60 percent since June as production around the world has soared, outstripping demand at a time of lackluster global economic growth.

(Reporting by Ana Isabel Martinez; editing by Matthew Lewis)