To fully appreciate the evolving circumstances that attend efforts to re-attach the United States’ oil major, Chevron, to the oil industry in Venezuela, it is necessary not just to follow events closely but to seek as far as possible, to secure information on not just events as they occur, but also to understand the context in which all of this is happening.
Nothing even remotely resembling a mending of fences between Washington and Caracas has occurred up to this time so that the decision by US President, Joe Biden, to return to Caracas to work alongside the state-run Venezuelan oil company PDVSA can be seen both as hedging Washington’s bets in terms of keeping the door open to Venezuelan oil if (as we say in the Caribbean) ‘push comes to shove’. Chevron’s return to Caracas also marks the initial halting steps in the hoped-for restart of talks between the administration of Venezuela’s President, Nicolas Maduro, and the Opposition-in-Exile as well as Washington having believed that the country’s last general elections held in 2013 were stolen by the Maduro administration. If all is by no means forgiven between Washington and Caracas, the extant circumstances dictate that a generous measure of pragmatism is being applied in addressing the situation.