The oil issue has been a sensitive matter for Venezuelans from the very first moment that it meant a turnaround from the rural Venezuela that we were, to the modern country that this industry turned us into. The intense debates about how much and how taxes should be imposed on the international oil companies operating in the country were historical, establishing hydrocarbons laws that were modified over time, and defining what should be the counterpart of the State's organization that should deal with this wealth that we always considered to be the patrimony of all Venezuelans. Until we reached the paradigm of nationalization, with the creation of a State corporation called Petróleos de Venezuela, PDVSA, to develop all the phases of the oil business. And the paradigm was so successful that this company became the first in the world in the business.
But that paradigm worked until Hugo Chávez Frías destroyed it with a whistle in a national chain of television broadcasts. From that moment on, the dismantling of the Venezuelan oil industry has been one of the most notorious examples worldwide of how a country's wealth is destroyed.
But this is not the story I wish to highlight in this short note, because it would be endless. When a paradigm is destroyed, it is always replaced by another one. And one of the most important questions for Venezuelans should be how the oil paradigm will be replaced after this tragedy we are living through. And certainly the proposal that has been put forward by the opposition leader María Corina Machado (MCM), supported by the President Elect, Edmundo González Urrutia (EGU), is based on the total privatization (100%) of the country's oil and gas industry, according to the presentation made in the framework of a world conference of promoters of global energy development (CeraWeek 2025) (see in Spanish, Venezuela will become the Energy Center of the Americas, said María Corina Machado at the CeraWeek2025, in https://www.costadelsolfm.org/2025/03/13/venezuela-se-convertira-en-el-centro-energetico-de-las-americas-dijo-maria-corina-machado-en-la-ceraweek2025/).
The proposal confirms what we all already knew: Venezuela, after 25 years of massive destruction, has gone back more than 110 years, to the point that it seems that we must return to the decisions made by the ruler of Venezuela at the time, Juan Vicente Gómez, to hand over the exploration, exploitation and sale of oil and gas to the oil companies that managed the business, because “they were the ones who knew” and had the resources to look for it, extract it and sell it for us. And that was reasonable in 1914 with the Zumaque 1 well, the well that started the era of commercial oil production in Venezuela. We knew absolutely nothing about that business then.
However, I had a very bitter taste for that MCM presentation, unlike many who jumped for joy. But not because of his proposal, but because to me it looked like going out to sell your mother's clothes to make a living, after the head of the house had bankrupted the family. And even more, that it looked like a commercial transaction of “selling” what is left of your patrimony in exchange for freedom, so that those capitals gathered there would take care of convincing the Trump administration to get the regime out in exchange for our wealth. Is it that we have already reached that point of desperation? I don't know, each one can draw his own conclusions. I couldn't stop saying it.
No one objects that we will be in a very bad shape after the departure of these criminals, and that Venezuela may even be the object of an exchange between the nuclear powers that are disputing the world. But that will not depend on us or on the offers we make of our wealth. I think there are ways to approach the same goal, but keeping your mom's jewels. And that proposal was made 2 years ago by Humberto Calderón Berti, who needs no introduction in the oil world.
In an interview conducted by former Ambassador Orlando Viera Blanco on March 26, 2023, Calderón Berti answered the key question of a new paradigm:
Q: Petróleos de Venezuela, should it be privatized?
A: No. I don't think we can do it at the beginning. What happens? Let's suppose that tomorrow we have a new government in Venezuela. What do we Venezuelans have? We have Petróleos de Venezuela battered, very battered, semi dismantled, and the joint ventures that are now very few because the big joint ventures left because they were expelled from Venezuela. So, that is what we have, we have to start with that, Orlando. So, that is what we have to resize it, restructure it, accommodate it, as far as possible. If you go out to sell it, to privatize it, they will give you 4 lochas because it is destroyed. Because you cannot register in the books of the companies that would buy, you cannot register the reserves because they belong to the nation. So what we have is that. We have to start with that. But the most important part of the recovery, Orlando, is going to be a full-fledged oil opening. With a Hydrocarbons Law that is already written, by the way, and is already in the hands of the people and that was worked on by the National Assembly of 2015, but with the contribution of many oilmen who worked on the issue. They held a great number of forums, I participated in some of them, this was not my work but the work of others, but a stupendously good Law. And with that Hydrocarbons Law, to produce an oil opening, like the one that took place during the government at the end of Pérez, Velázquez and President Caldera, which produced the great oil opening of the 90s. That is what has to be done. Legal certainty must be given to the people, and the conditions of the Law must be competitive with other countries. And that is where the possibility of growth lies. And that oil can drag other sectors of the national life, for example the metal-mechanic industry, because oil consumes many metal-mechanic goods, the service companies, the oil areas are a dynamizing engine of the economy, and the resources produced by oil can be directed to what I said before, to attend the needs of the people.... “(see in Spanish, Interview by Orlando Viera Blanco, Enfoque Global Program dated 03-26-2023 to Humberto Calderón Berti, former Minister of Mines and Hydrocarbons, former President of PDVSA and former President of OPEC, at https://youtu.be/jIT1lyPyj_c?t=1702).
Calderón Berti's proposal would guarantee the recovery of an oil industry on the ground and with it the whole country, not a return to 1914 of Zumaque I. It seems the same but it is not, because the oil locomotive would drag other sectors of the national life for the development of a national industry completely integrated to our main resource, achieving at the same time the recovery of the trampled rights of the oil workers who were harmed in all this tragedy. These new contracts must take into consideration the situation of the years of scorched earth of the oil industry, as well as the sectors to be integrated, over and above the interests of the oil companies. This does not mean that we do not know that we will be negotiating in not very advantageous conditions, but that a new responsible government will have to consider first to safeguard the interests of Venezuelans.
Of course, after the disaster, a new oil paradigm must be generated. The discussion is not whether we have oil to offer, but whether there will be -and how- an oil producing country that respects the agreements it reaches, within a Rule of Law. That is why this paradigm cannot be the product of decisions within the framework of another government program that comes after this tragedy. It must be the result of a consensual agreement among the qualified representation of all sectors of the country so that this guarantee is considered safe, because you know what? Unlike in 1914, now there are thousands of Venezuelans with 110 years of accumulated experience in the oil business. And that representation cannot come from any other source than a Constituent process for the reconstruction and re-foundation of the country, which redefines the role of oil in our society.
In a context where the government of President Trump has considered Venezuela as an enemy of war in accordance with the “Invocation of the Alien Enemies Act Regarding the Invasion of The United States by Tren De Aragua”, it is not surprising that from one moment to the next the U.S. will decide what to do, on its own and without intervention from anyone else, with those who are considered in that proclamation, the leaders of these criminal gangs (see Proclamation of President Donald J. Trump, in https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/invocation-of-the-alien-enemies-act-regarding-the-invasion-of-the-united-states-by-tren-de-aragua/).
From now on, we should prepare ourselves for this eventuality, giving the highest political and legal ground to the opposition position, swearing in EGU as President in office and proposing a new transition scenario where Venezuelans will return as soon as possible to a political and economic tranquility. An incumbent Venezuelan president would enter directly and without discussion, to take office, after the fall of the regime, not to discuss with anyone whether another election should be held, once the “war” between the regime and the US has been resolved favorably for Venezuelans. And not even the very government of that country could object to that situation, nor its Secretary of State to propose new elections when that happens. At that moment, paradigms such as the oil paradigm will be redefined, as so many others in Venezuela, at the appropriate place and time. That should be, in the opinion of many, what is yet to happen if we do our part.
Caracas, March 19, 2025
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TIC’s & Derechos Humanos, https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/
Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
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