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Venezuela: Producing Oil Amid Political Unrest
Editor's Note: The following is the first installment of a three-part series assessing the endemic risks of Venezuela's energy sector. Part 2 will examine the country's infrastructure vulnerabilities. Part 3 will examine its prospects for a turnaround.
Concerns abound as to whether Venezuela's recent political unrest will eventually disrupt the flow of oil exports. Certainly the concerns are justified; interruptions affect U.S. Gulf coast refineries as well as Caribbean, European, Indian and Chinese consumers, and they deny the Venezuelan economy a source of much needed revenue. Such was the case in 2002, when oil workers went on strike amid even fiercer unrest.
But a lot has changed in the past 12 years. State oil company Petroleos de Venezuela, or PDVSA, is much more firmly under government control. And Venezuela's energy infrastructure is sequestered from the cities in which the protests have taken place. The biggest threat to Venezuelan oil production is not the protest movement but the continued degradation of the energy sector.
Analysis
The current political situation differs greatly from the situation in 2002. Twelve years ago, PDVSA leaders joined a general nationwide strike by locking out workers for more than 50 days. During that time, oil production fell from 3 million barrels per day to 150,000 per day. U.S. monthly imports of Venezuelan crude fell from nearly 50 million barrels in November 2002 to 13 million in January 2003, and Venezuela was forced to import millions of barrels of refined products to offset the damage of oil shortages. The strike devastated the country's oil industry and national economy, but ultimately it raised the global price of oil only slightly -- producers and refiners were able to compensate for the deficit. U.S. refineries, for example, were able to draw from oil stockpiles, and several months after exports resumed, the markets stabilized.
After the strike, the government of former President Hugo Chavez fired nearly 18,000 workers, or about 40 percent of PDVSA's workforce, many of whom were trained engineers, accountants and managers, for their actual or alleged involvement in planning the strike. PDVSA has never fully recovered from losing so many experienced personnel. But it has since been made responsible for financing several social causes, which have drained its resources and reduced investment in exploration, production and maintenance. Combined with subsequent energy nationalizations, these factors have prevented PDVSA from producing at pre-2002 levels.
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