US Energy Secretary to Arrive in Venezuela With Herculean Task of Oil Recovery
This week, the U.S. Department of Energy Chris Wright will visit Venezuela. It is the highest-level U.S. The OPEC country has not had a visit to discuss energy policy in almost three decades. Washington is conducting its first assessment on the ground of the oil industry that it plans to rebuild.
Wright will arrive in Caracas Wednesday, one day after the U.S. granted a general license to explore and produce oil and gas in Venezuela. Sources familiar with preparations say that Wright's agenda will include meetings with Delcy Rodriguez (interim president and oil minister), government officials, and executives of companies such as Chevron and Spain’s Repsol.
Wright will be in Venezuela until Friday, where he is scheduled to meet with local companies and consumers goods producers before visiting Petropiar - the biggest oil project Chevron, and the state energy company PDVSA, operate - located in Venezuela's Orinoco Belt, Venezuela's primary?oil region.
The visit follows the capture by U.S. troops of President Nicolas Maduro in early January and a landmark $2 billion oil deal signed by the United States. The trip follows the capture of President Nicolas Maduro by U.S. forces in early January, a $2 billion oil supply deal agreed upon by the?U.S.
Wright has the Herculean task of reviving Venezuela's oil sector from the ashes, after decades of mismanagement, underinvestment and harsh U.S. sanction, while placing U.S. Investors in the front line. Wright will have to deal with a volatile political environment after an opposition leader who was recently released from prison, only to be arrested again hours later.
Thomas O'Donnell is an energy geopolitical analyst. He says that the visit reflects Washington's longer-term geostrategic interests in Venezuelan oil. Washington wants to "reshape" global energy markets and put pressure on Russia.
He said that the Trump administration is now pursuing a doctrine of American energy dominance, which he describes as a way to give the U.S. the ability to take Russian oil off-line if geopolitically necessary.
He added: "This is a geostrategic and geo-economic plan that uses American oil abundance, cooperation with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as well as other Gulf States, Venezuela and Guyana in order to reshape global oil markets."
Venezuela's National Assembly approved last month a reform of the primary oil law that grants foreign producers operational and financial autonomy as a step to encourage investment.
After receiving a classified briefing from Wright, Senator John Hickenlooper (a Democrat from the energy-producing state of Colorado) told reporters that "the entire thing... was like performing an impossible high dive or an impossible freestyle skiing maneuver flip." We can only hope it works."
(source: Reuters)
