The Venezuelan oil industry seems to have entered a death spiral
Dec 19, 2017 10:19 am
By Humberto Márquez for Inter Press Service
Corruption in the Venezuelan state oil industry, denounced by the government itself and with former ministers and senior managers behind bars, is the latest evidence that in the country with the largest oil reserves on the planet, the industry on which the economy depends It is falling apart.
There was a drop "in the production of crude oil, one million barrels per day," economist Luis Oliveros, a professor at the Metropolitan University, told IPS. In December 2013, production stood at 2,894,000 barrels per day, compared to 1,837,000 in November 2017, according to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
In 2018, production could drop another 250,000 barrels per day at the current rate, and Venezuela, co-founder of OPEC in 1960 when it was the world's largest crude oil exporter, is becoming an almost irrelevant player in the global market, said Oliveros.
This despite having the largest known reserves of liquid fossil fuels, the Orinoco Oil Belt, of 55,000 square kilometers, with an estimated 1.4 trillion barrels of crude, mainly extra-heavy, including proven reserves of 270 trillion barrels, according to Venezuelan estimates.
Oil is practically the only export product of Venezuela, the source of 95% of its income in foreign currency, and by the middle of this decade it represented more than 20% of GDP. Most of the business is in the hands of the state-owned company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), which has some partnerships with transnational companies.
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https://www.lapatilla.com/site/2017/12/19/la-industria-petrolera-venezolana-parece-haber-entrado-en-una-espiral-de-muerte/
I suppose if you dismiss 18,000 highly skilled, living wage workers and replace them with Chavista lackeys (in an effort to turn PdVSA "redder than red!" ) it will result in this sort of economic chaos.
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