The situation is dire: Venezuela, holder of the world's first reserves of black gold, received, Monday, May 25, a cargo of fuel and refining equipment from Iran. The Islamic Republic is flying to the aid of a Bolivarian regime plagued – among other plagues – by a gasoline shortage which now affects the capital, Caracas. In the face of American President Donald Trump, who has imposed sanctions against the two countries "Dictatorial". The Fortune will be followed by four other tankers. "We are two revolutionary nations that will never kneel before American imperialism", warned the Venezuelan president.
Nicolas Maduro's ranting does nothing, it is the oil policy of his predecessor and mentor, Hugo Chavez, which is today in question. At the end of 2002, Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), which then pumped 3 million barrels a day, was shaken by a strike: the president dismissed thousands of qualified employees. And since "Oil belongs to the Venezuelans", he broke in 2007 with the majors (Total, BP, ExxonMobil…) exploiting the extra heavy crude of the Orinoco. Production fell to 1.5 million barrels in 2018. Until Washington prohibited PDVSA from using the dollar and forced its wealthy American subsidiary Citgo to pay its revenues into a blocked account in the United States. Taken by the throat, the company can not maintain a well or refinery, and production collapsed to 620,000 barrels.
Finishing blow
Trump's fault? He only gave the coup de grace, without having mobilized his fleet to date to block these deliveries. Supported by the Americans, the leader of the opposition, Juan Guaido, sees in it the result of past drifts: a clientelist redistribution of the oil windfall during the Chavez years, also marked by its use as a means of carrying the Bolivarian socialist revolution in America from the South and the Caribbean; a lack of investment linked to this expensive policy; lack of economic diversification; and inevitable corruption.
For a long time almost free, gasoline is traded at almost three dollars a liter on the black market. Fifteen days of the Venezuelan minimum wage. Like the Algerians, the Libyans, the Angolans or the Nigerians, they have the painful experience of the "law" which requires that if "Power tends to corrupt, oil power corrupts absolutely", to paraphrase the British historian, Lord Acton (1834-1902). And, more broadly, the "oil curse", which means that black gold is rarely synonymous with prosperity.
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