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CARACAS, Venezuela – In a bid to attract foreign investment, Venezuela’s acting President, Delcy Rodríguez, highlighted the promising long-term prospects in the nation’s resource-abundant oil sector at an investment summit supported by Saudi Arabia on Wednesday. This move signals the government’s strategic efforts to rejuvenate interest in its oil industry.
While speaking remotely at the Miami summit from Venezuela, Rodríguez introduced a revamped oil industry, emphasizing its recent openness to private capital, international arbitration, and increased transparency. These changes have been instituted in the few months since the U.S. military apprehended her predecessor, Nicolás Maduro, and the U.S. began implementing a comprehensive plan aimed at revitalizing Venezuela. Without mentioning Maduro, she focused on assuring potential investors of the nation’s newfound stability and safety as an investment destination, primarily due to the recent industry reforms.
Rodríguez expressed optimism about the country’s economic trajectory, predicting double-digit growth for this year and the subsequent two years. She emphasized that these developments would create a stable environment where investors can be confident that their investments are secure, regardless of political shifts or challenging circumstances, thanks to Venezuela’s robust legal protections.
“We are in the midst of stabilization, enacting necessary reforms to foster a productive atmosphere and attract investments that will diversify the driving forces of the Venezuelan economy,” Rodríguez stated in her speech, which was delivered entirely in Spanish.
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Venezuela, home to the world’s largest oil reserves, once boasted Latin America’s strongest economy, powered by its vast oil resources. However, a combination of corruption, poor management, and U.S. economic sanctions led to a dramatic decline in production, from 3.5 million barrels a day in 1999 under Maduro’s mentor, Hugo Chávez, to under 400,000 barrels per day by 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.