00:00Before we get started on your take on how things shake out, I just want to understand from you,
00:05what is your understanding from your context on the ground on the state of the country right now?
00:10What kind of stability is there in terms of national security, all of that?
00:15Well, thank you for having me on. Well, it's a bit of a mixed view, right? Because
00:20Del Ciro Rodriguez has to sort of play ball with Trump and everybody is aligned with that mission.
00:24The whole thing, and this was something that was discussed way back in 2017, and now we're seeing a version of it play out.
00:31But basically, you know, Del Ciro has to play ball with Trump.
00:36Everybody wants, the Americans and the Venezuelan and the regime, and your common Venezuelan wants to see economic prosperity.
00:43They want to see the oil business come back up.
00:46You know, when I grew up in Caracas, we had like pictures of oil wells at sunset.
00:50It's considered, it's like in the national DNA. But the concern is that in Venezuelans is that seeing Maduro gone is fantastic.
01:00Everybody's celebrating that. It's like the fall of the capture of a god that everybody feared.
01:05But the question is that, you know, Diostado Cabello hates Del Ciro Rodriguez, and he's the head of the military, and he remained there.
01:13He's also wanted, he also has a price on his head from the U.S., and he's remained there in order to maintain order.
01:18However, he has not done that. He's been capturing people, and they have been, along with Alexander Granco, and they're torturing some people.
01:27Now some have been liberated, but that's a revolving door.
01:30So what the oil executives will need to see is that Diostado Cabello plays ball and keeps security tight.
01:37Otherwise, we're going to see him exfiltrated as well.
01:40Thank you for answering that, because this is one of the top-of-line concerns for oil executives, right?
01:45The safety of their staff in the country, the safety of the country overall as they consider whether to move in and make these massive investments.
01:54What does Venezuela, the country, get out of U.S. oil companies investing and rebuilding the oil infrastructure if they move forward with that?
02:02Well, if they move forward with that, as it looks like they are, is that the Venezuelan oil industry was originally built by foreigners, right?
02:13It was the first oil, well, was drilled by the Brits, and then it was developed heavily by the Rockefeller family.
02:19And a lot of the upper classes that you saw before the Chavistas came in are actually related by blood or marriage to the Rockefeller family.
02:28So there's a heavy American influence in the development of the oil industry.
02:32And that remained in place through the 80s, when now it got taken over by nationalized in 1976.
02:40And then it got politicized by the various political parties in the 80s.
02:45That's when you started to see some mismanagement, more corruption.
02:49And the corruption crept in because Citibank and other banks were so keen to lend money to PDVSA that they would write loans on the back of napkins while drinking two bottles of whiskey and a steak lunch.
03:00So literally.
03:02So nobody knew where the money was.
03:04So then in 2002, when the oil company tried to oust Chavez by stopping production,
03:12the Chavistas replaced all the foreign-trained oil executives and replaced it with military.
03:18And from then, you started to see more corruption, more incompetence, and the oil production sharply declined.
03:25Obviously, they have a commodity boom.
03:27But basically, the Venezuelans want to see it come up.
03:31Now, it's very important that this money and the prosperity is spread among people because 80 percent of Venezuelans only get one meal a day.
03:38They need electricity.
03:39They need water.
03:41They need roads so that they can go visit their family and security on the road.
03:44So this has to maintain stability and the security for the staff in the country.
03:49Yeah.
03:49The President Trump needs to make sure that that is also the case so that they don't get angry Venezuelans going after foreign assets.
03:59Vanessa, what is the opposition's role in the new oil deals for Venezuela, given that it's still recognized by the U.S. as a country's legitimate government?
04:06Well, it's a question whether it's recognized as the legitimate government, because Trump would have had to acknowledge that the winner was Edmundo Gonzalez and Maria Corina Machado to the 2024 election.
04:23And his recent statements that there will have new elections imply that he does not recognize that.
04:31And if he's making a deal with Desi and they're going to reopen the U.S. embassy for these oil deals to go through and to be operational, you need an embassy.
04:39You may withhold having a full and plenty potentiary ambassador, but you will have a big embassy and a staff in order to manage the security, the intelligence and the relationships on the ground.
04:50What it means for the opposition is that they're in a difficult situation.
04:54They need to kind of play ball with Trump.
04:56I think both Maria Corina Machado and El Ciro Rodriguez have requested meetings with Trump.
05:00So you're going to have the two women vying for his favors in the White House vis-Ă -vis the presidential palace in Caracas.
05:12And that's going to get complicated quite fast.
05:15One of the things that U.S. oil executives will look at is that if they remove the sanctions, they will not be reversed.
05:21For instance, if Estal Cabello behaves badly, that they won't reimpose the sanctions.
05:26And it does take about $60 billion of investment to get the Venezuelan oil industry back up.
05:33It's very cheap to get it out, but there's a lot of infrastructure development.
05:37They need pipelines fast.
05:38And thank you very much for today.
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