It was good progress this month on OC and SA. I do think there is a general "push" on for Venezuelan selectees.
The people of Venezuela are suffering under a president who is an unwise, unprepared con man (similar to the USA at the moment, but without the controls we have in place), and life must be very hard for people there.
If we look at quotas for DV2017, and look at results, it is clear that unused quota from other regions was moved to SA region - and within that region Venezuela got a HUGE bump in approved cases. If we translate that into human terms, I suspect that COs are rubber stamping applications through without being too picky about the details. It's the humane thing to do.
If that assumption is right, and they want to have a chance to do that again in DV2018, they will want to get SA to the higher numbers as soon as possible. However, it is less likely that there will be much unused visas, unless it comes from AS region.
Xarthisius pinged me about noticing a relatively high rate of refusal for Iranians (perhaps for the travel ban). If that were the case, AS region would need to be moved through the VB progress faster in order to "reveal" unused visas.