That article is old, Ramirez is not a minister now, in fact, now he is in investigations, due to an internal quarrel within Chavism, he and Maduro are facing each other. Both accuse each other of corruption.

You can read this post I did:

Socialism in Venezuela: Why is gasoline so cheap? 9510 gallons of gasoline for $ 1 !!!

Although currently the government changed the system, but we are still in the testing stage, it has not been implemented and generalized throughout the country. According to the new system, people will only be able to buy gasoline at a subsidized price through the use of the "Carnet de la Patria", a kind of special identification that will adjust to an automated system, in such a way as to allow the government to know how much each person consumes, with the objective of rationing the amount of gasoline sold at a subsidized price, and avoiding contraband to the Colombian border.

With Chavez there was no shortage of gasoline, but during the previous governments there was no such problem, and the price was the same. The issue is that between 1999 and 2014, the Venezuelan government received US $ 960,589 million for oil export concepts. An average of US $ 56,500 million annually for 17 years, which allowed the government to import a lot of gasoline easily. This is known as the Dutch disease. Previous governments maintained more or less the autonomy of the company, so production, although never reached the level of production when they were different private companies, remained high enough. But during the Chavez government, the workers of the company opposed him, and he dismissed them, which caused a significant flight of labor capital and highly qualified professionals, PDVSA was the 2nd most efficient company in the oil sector, later, after the dismissals that Chavez made, the company became a very corrupt and incompetent company, which is why it produces high costs. In 1998 the company had 30,000 employees and produced 3 million barrels of oil a day, today it has almost 200,000 and produces 1 million a day.

I hope I have helped you, anything I can answer your doubts.