Rodríguez didn’t root out the organization’s dysfunctions, but, in her dealings with Americans, she succeeded in casting herself as a more reliable interlocutor than those who came before her. Chevron, which has been operating in Venezuela for decades, worked directly with Rodríguez as it increased its production in the country during the Biden Administration. “When P.D.V.S.A. elements tried to run their skimming operations, Chevron would go to Delcy, and she would shut that shit down,” the U.S. official said. “There’s a lot of belief among people in the oil sector that they can do deals with Delcy Rodríguez, and she will deliver on what she says.”
Trump has said that he expects to see at least a hundred billion dollars in investments flow into the country. In the months since his Administration rolled back long-standing sanctions, Venezuela’s ten-year sovereign bond has soared, and investors have flocked to Caracas with the zeal of bargain hunters at a flea market. The U.S. has imported roughly a hundred million barrels of oil, worth an estimated eight billion dollars, from the country. “When you lose eighty-five per cent of your G.D.P., there’s a big opportunity,” James Story, a former American Ambassador to Venezuela, said. “That means that there’s nowhere to go but up.”
Still, experts have cast doubt on the long-term viability of the Administration’s efforts in Venezuela. “A lot of people are saying that perhaps we did everyone a favor by getting rid of Maduro, because there was a level of pragmatism outside of him, but an inability to act because he made all the decisions,” Story said. “That doesn’t necessarily mean that Delcy is a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist who was just waiting for her moment.” Story noted that Rodríguez’s political ascendancy happened under Maduro. “For thirteen years, she was part of the beggaring of the nation,” he said. “Is she not somehow responsible for the outcome?”
Like many observers, Story believes that Venezuela’s oil industry will not recover unless there is a change in leadership. Rodríguez remains deeply unpopular in Venezuela; the opposition figure María Corina Machado still maintains support among huge swaths of the population. “The same institutions—and many of the same individuals—that presided over the country’s economic and institutional collapse remain in power today,” Luis Pacheco, a Venezuelan engineer who spent sixteen years at P.D.V.S.A., said.
The Trump Administration’s plan for Venezuela has three phases: stabilization, recovery, and transition. Pacheco insisted that recovery could not take place without transition. Although Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that the phases might overlap, Trump has shown little interest in promoting an election in Venezuela. “It strains belief to think that those who dismantled the country’s institutional framework will now be the ones to rebuild it,” Pacheco said.
When Ricardo Rausseo, a Venezuelan businessman who has been living in Texas for almost eight years, heard that Maduro was gone, he was exultant. An engineer by training, Rausseo had co-founded a contracting business when the Venezuelan oil industry was booming. For years, he oversaw maintenance at the nation’s largest refineries and worked for some of the biggest names in the industry. “Oil runs through my veins,” he told me. “A refinery does for me what a Victoria’s Secret model does for everyone else.”
Venezuela mainly produces the type of heavy oil that refineries across the U.S. Gulf Coast are designed to process. In the early twentieth century, when vast deposits of oil were found in the country’s northwest, Dutch, British, and American companies seized on the opportunity to develop and profit from the country’s nascent industry. Before long, Venezuela became one of the world’s leading producers of oil. In 1975, government authorities moved to nationalize the country’s oil industry; P.D.V.S.A. came to oversee every step of the process.
Stephania Taladrid
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