Opportunity for Recovery of Venezuelan Oil Production?

Hugo Chavez’s death earlier this week was notable from several perspectives, not the least of which is from that of global crude oil production. His time in office, beginning in 1999, saw the implementation of a series of provocative policies. Viewing Venezuela’s main geopolitical leverage to be its status as one of the world’s larger oil exporters, several of these policies were aimed at centralizing control of Venezuela’s crude oil. Unfortunately, the execution of this ambition – and the associated lack of foreign investment – resulted in increasingly inefficient production as the country largely fell behind from technological and institutional knowledge standpoints. Download here