With Venezuela’s once powerful oil industry now badly fractured largely on account of United States sanctions imposed on the administration of President Nicolas Maduro, Caracas would appear to be looking to China to help restore the industry to global prominence in the shortest possible time.
The South American nation depends almost exclusively on its oil exports to keep its economy afloat and the US sanctions have all but brought the country to its knees, disfiguring its economy, unleashing an avalanche of poverty and provoking the hasty migration of Venezuelans now numbered at least in their hundreds of thousands to mostly neighbouring countries.
Reports from the international oil & gas sector indicate that China, which ranks behind the United States as the world’s second largest oil producer, is believed to have purchased a total of 324 million barrels of oil from Iran and Venezuela in 2021 alone. Energy news site, Oilprice.com, also reports that with the support of China and to a lesser extent, Indonesia, Guyana’s South American neighbour is “once again profiting from its long-embattled oil industry.”