A few years ago, touring Venezuela’s oil belt, I saw ruins. Outside El Tigre, once Venezuela’s booming oil center, a group of storage tanks stood in a sea of crude because no one had bothered to stop up the leaks. Thieves would break into oil field installations and strip the copper wire from electrical components or the engines that drove the oil pumps, in order to sell it for scrap. Hyperinflation and devaluation had made the currency and once substantial oil worker salaries worthless. Company vehicles were broken down and employees had to hire taxis to get to far-flung worksites.
For Venezuela’s oil fields, 2018 and the years just after were rock-bottom, and not helped by Nicolás Maduro’s putting a know-nothing general in charge of PDVSA, the state oil company. Last week I spoke by phone with oil workers in the area, and they told me that conditions have improved—albeit from a very low level, and they remain far from optimal. PDVSA has resumed investing in the area since the pandemic, as China has provided an outlet for sanctions-evading oil shipments.
Workers told me that they drive into the field in new Toyota Hilux pickup trucks. National Guard patrols make rounds of the oil fields to keep out thieves and offer protection to the workers. Salaries, now tied to the dollar, have recuperated some of their value, although many, if not most, workers do odd jobs or have outside employment to make ends meet. Production in some parts of the zone had increased to double or triple what it was in 2018, according to the workers I spoke with, though the total Venezuela is shipping is still less than a third of its 1990s high.
