Via Visual Capitalist, a look at the world’s largest state-owned oil companies: Oil is one of the world’s most important natural resources, playing a critical role in everything from transportation fuels to cosmetics. For this reason, many governments choose to nationalize their supply of oil. This gives them a greater degree of control over their oil […]
Read more »Via Forbes, an article on the destruction of PDVSA, Venezuela’s national oil company: How could Venezuela, the country with the largest oil resources in the planet — which received the largest commodity windfall in Latin America’s history and had the highest income per-capita in the region — end up with the worst economic depression, hyperinflation, […]
Read more »Courtesy of Foreign Policy, a sobering look at the tragic — and totally avoidable — self-destruction of one of the world’s richest oil economies: In the spring of 1959, at a secretive meeting at a yacht club in Cairo, Venezuela’s then-minister of mines and hydrocarbons, Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso, hatched a plan to give big […]
Read more »Via The Financial Tribune, an article on the dire condition of Venezuela’s PDVSA: The man who ran Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA for a decade after 2004 says the country’s oil firm is on the cusp of total collapse and expects oil production to drop by 600,000 barrels per day each year amid lack of […]
Read more »Courtesy of the New York Times, a detailed report on the demise of Venezuela’s PDVSA: A general with no energy experience has been installed as the head of the state oil company. Arrests, firings and desperate emigration have gutted top talent. Oil facilities are crumbling, while production is plummeting. As the rest of the oil-producing world recovers on the […]
Read more »Courtesy of the New York Times, an interesting look at Venezuela’s crisis: One oil rig was idle for weeks because a single piece of equipment was missing. Another was attacked by armed gangs who made off with all they could carry. Many oil workers say they are paid so little that they barely eat and have to keep watch […]
Read more »