If
Guaidó comes to power and privatizes PDVSA, U.S. oil companies —
with Chevron and Halliburton leading the pack — stand to make
record profits in the world’s most oil-rich nation, as they did in
Iraq following the privatization of its national oil industry after
U.S. intervention.
by
Whitney Webb
Part
3 - Betting on regime change
As oil
production has lagged and profits have continued to slide, tensions
between Chevron and the Maduro government have grown dramatically
since 2017, when the Maduro-led government began arresting employees
of Petropiar — the joint venture between Chevron and PDVSA —
during a controversial corruption probe. For Chevron, the issue
exploded after the Venezuelan government last April arrested two
Chevron employees working at Petropiar, who were detained for seven
weeks for their alleged role in fraud. Those tensions — in
combination with worries that Chevron’s Venezuela operations could
become unprofitable in less than five years — resulted in a report
published by the Wall Street Journal claiming that Chevron was
considering leaving Venezuela entirely.
However,
despite media speculation in the U.S., Chevron denied that it was
planning to leave Venezuela anytime soon, with Clay Neff, Chevron’s
president for Africa and Latin America, telling Bloomberg,
“we’re committed to Venezuela and we plan to be there for many
years to come,” and adding that reports that Chevron would soon
leave the country were “not accurate.” “We’ve been
in the country for almost 100 years, we know how to operate, we’re
a very experienced operator and we’re committed to our partner
PDVSA,” Neff declared.
Halliburton’s
activities in Venezuela have also taken a hard hit in recent years,
with the company losing over $1 billion in investments since 2017. In
2017, Halliburton was forced to write off $647 million in Venezuelan
investments and then was forced to sell $312 million more last year —
its last remaining investments. Halliburton’s chief financial
officer, Christopher Weber, told the New York Times last year
that “the collapse of the Venezuelan currency and the worsening
political climate,” as well as U.S. sanctions, were responsible
for the decision. Halliburton later said in a statement that it
planned on “maintaining its presence in Venezuela and is
carefully managing its go-forward exposure.”
Since
both Halliburton and Chevron announced their plans to “weather
the storm” despite growing tensions, it has become more and
more evident that both companies have found the U.S. government’s
promise of increased control over Venezuela’s oil sector through
privatization much more appealing than facing the prospect of
maneuvering around recently imposed U.S. sanctions on PDVSA — which
have been in the works for months — as well as the prospect of
dwindling profits stemming from the continued decline of the
Venezuelan economy and the degradation of its oil-sector
infrastructure.
This
raises the possibility that Chevron and Halliburton had decided to
ride out the Venezuelan economic crisis and growing tensions with
Maduro because it was betting on an aggressive regime-change policy
toward the country. Indeed, some analysts have stated that planning
on the current iteration of regime-change policy in Venezuela only
began this past November, around the same time that Chevron decided
to stick it out despite falling profits.
The fact
that Chevron’s operations in Venezuela are expected to collapse in
less than five years, as a result of the country’s oil sector and
larger economic woes, lends further support to the possibility that
Chevron sought to back a Washington-based effort to dramatically
alter the Venezuelan government.
In
Halliburton’s case, the fact that the company has already lost over
a billion dollars in its Venezuelan investments since 2017 offers a
different motive, one that involves not only recouping those losses
but also gaining increased contracts in a post-coup Venezuela.
Halliburton executives surely remember the $39.5 billion in profits
they made following the U.S. invasion of Iraq. It is worth pointing
out that, in media reports, Halliburton has stated its commitment “to
the market in Venezuela,” signaling that it is interested in
retaining a role in the country’s oil sector regardless of who
governs it.
It
should then come as no surprise that recent U.S. government sanctions
on Venezuela’s oil sectors included exemptions for both Halliburton
and Chevron. Equally unsurprising is the fact that the U.S.-backed
“president” of Venezuela — Juan Guaidó — has already
signaled his plans to open up Venezuela’s state oil assets to
foreign corporations if he succeeds in ousting Maduro.
According
to oil rating agency S&P Global Platts, Guaidó has already made
“plans to introduce a new national hydrocarbons law that
establishes flexible fiscal and contractual terms for projects
adapted to oil prices and the oil investment cycle.” This plan
would also create a “new hydrocarbons agency” that will
“offer bidding rounds for projects in natural gas and
conventional, heavy and extra-heavy crude” to international oil
corporations.
The
clear message here is that the U.S.-backed “president” of
Venezuela is already signaling to his Washington backers that he will
quickly privatize Venezuela’s state oil company if he succeeds in
taking power, a move that has long been a key component of the
platform of Venezuela’s U.S.-funded opposition, of which Guaidó is
part.
Bolton’s
recent statements have made it clear that Chevron and Halliburton are
set to be the main benefactors of this privatization effort, as both
are heavily invested in Venezuela and Chevron the only U.S. oil
company still active in the country. The historically close
relationship of both companies to the U.S. government, and covert
coordination with the U.S. government in undermining or overthrowing
governments in the recent past, also hint at their likely role in the
current U.S. “meddling” in Venezuela.
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