Venezuela’s Delcy Rodríguez pitches newly opened oil sector to investors at Miami summit

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela's acting President Delcy Rodríguez preached of lucrative long-term opportunities in her resource-rich country at a Saudi-backed investment summit on Wednesday, offering a window into how Venezuela’s government is trying to lure investors to its oil sector.

Addressing the Miami summit from Venezuela, Rodríguez presented a reformed industry — one that has opened up to private capital, international arbitration and scrutiny in the less than three months since the U.S. military captured her predecessor, Nicolás Maduro, and the White House began implementing a phased plan to turn the troubled country around. She didn't mentioned Maduro, and instead focused on reassuring potential investors that Venezuela represents a safe investment in part thanks to the recent overhaul of its oil industry.

She projected the country will see double-digit economic growth this year and the following two years, creating conditions “where investors know that, regardless of political changes or restrictive circumstances, there is security, that Venezuela has laws that allow for the safe return of their investments.”

“We are in a process of stabilization, implementing the reforms needed for a productive environment and to attract investments that will diversify the engines of the Venezuelan economy,” she said during a presentation delivered entirely in Spanish.

Venezuela sits atop the world’s largest oil reserves and used them to power what was once Latin America’s strongest economy. But corruption, mismanagement and U.S. economic sanctions saw production steadily decline from the 3.5 million barrels per day pumped in 1999, when Maduro’s mentor, Hugo Chávez, took power, to less than 400,000 barrels per day in 2020.

In 2019, the U.S. Treasury Department under the first Trump administration locked Venezuela out of world oil markets when it sanctioned the state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela S.A., or PDVSA, as part of a policy punishing Maduro’s government for corruption. That forced the government to sell its remaining oil output at a discount — about 40% below market prices — to buyers such as China. Venezuela even started accepting payments in Russian rubles, bartered goods or cryptocurrency.

The country currently produces about a million barrels a day.

On Wednesday, Rodríguez touted Venezuela’s low production costs and willingness to negotiate.

“When we consider a barrel of oil, its production cost, 64% of that barrel has room for negotiation with the investor regarding royalty reductions, income tax reductions, and most importantly, the dividends the investor receives,” she said. “If there is a large investment, obviously the return will be higher on that 64%.”

Rodríguez was sworn in after Maduro and his wife were captured on Jan. 3 in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, and taken to New York to face drug trafficking charges. Both have pleaded not guilty and are expected to appear in court Thursday.

After taking office, Rodríguez, under pressure from the Trump administration, moved quickly to overhaul oil industry regulations. A new law now grants private companies control over oil production and sales, ending PDVSA’s monopoly over those activities as well as pricing. It also allows for independent arbitration of disputes, removing a mandate for disagreements to be settled only in Venezuelan courts, which are controlled by the ruling party.

The U.S. Treasury Department, in return, has eased sanctions. Last week, it issued a broad authorization allowing PDVSA to directly sell Venezuelan oil to U.S. companies and on global markets, a massive shift after largely blocking dealings with Venezuela’s government and its oil sector for years.

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