Venezuela’s opposition leader Maria Corina Machado broke several days of silence on Thursday with a video statement in which she rejected the oil deal signed on Wednesday in Caracas between the U.S. government and Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodriguez.
“I understand what you are feeling,” she told her compatriots, “sadness, anger and that painful feeling so familiar throughout our history of someone else making decisions about what belongs to us, in our name, without asking us.”
Machado’s statement came a day after both Trump and Rodriguez refused to offer any schedule for a return to democracy in Venezuela, and Trump again praised the Rodriguez government.
“We are very happy with the president-elect that we have right now, the people that are running it,” Trump said on Tuesday. (Rodriguez has not, in fact, been elected to the post.)
U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday his administration has entered a sweeping agreement with Venezuela that, if realized, could give the U.S. access to vast amounts of the South American country’s untapped oil reserves, at cost.
While she had always believed Venezuela’s oil industry needed U.S. investment to recover, Machado said, Rodriguez’s government had no legitimacy to make such a deal, which needed to wait for the return of democracy and rule of law.
She also said there was confusion about the real terms of the deal. Many Venezuelans share that confusion, but already know they don’t like it.
Neither U.S. President Donald Trump and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s social media posts, nor a White House statement, nor Rodriguez’s speech clarified exactly how or when 17 Venezuelan oilfields would be rejuvenated and start producing the 65 billion barrels covered by Trump’s “biggest oil deal ever.”
Extracting oil over releasing prisoners
Many Venezuelan Canadians, including some with deep knowledge of the country’s oil industry, have reacted negatively to the announcement.
“It’s frustration, disappointment and rage,” said Rebecca Sarfatti of Toronto, co-founder of the Canada Venezuela Democracy Forum. “We were used as a country, as an oil power, to get whatever Trump wanted. And Miss Delcy is playing the game so she can stay in power.”
Sarfatti says Venezuelans are exasperated by the eagerness to get at Venezuela’s resources and the relative lack of interest in liberating political prisoners.
Lino Carrillo, former general manager of operations for Nexen Energy in Fort McMurray, Alta., and a veteran of both Venezuela’s and Canada’s oil industries, is a member of Machado’s advisory group on oil and energy.
“Anybody that signs with Delcy will be exposed to transparency in the end,” he told CBC News. “When a new government comes in, they’re going to review everything that has been signed by Delcy, by Trump or any U.S. government, or any European government for that matter.”
“What they’re doing is against the constitution of Venezuela.”
Venezuelans have grown increasingly skeptical of U.S. motivations in their country since the Jan. 3 capture of Nicolas Maduro, he said: “There is an old saying that you judge people for what they do and not for what they say.”
The announcement by Trump only sharpened Venezuelans’ frustration at the fact that eight months after the U.S. seized Maduro in the raid on Caracas, the dictatorship he led has been allowed to remain in power, while Trump describes its unelected leader as “highly respected.”
Among Republican politicians in Florida, there were growing signs of unease with the closeness of the Trump administration to the rump chavista dictatorship that has become its partner in Venezuela. Florida Republicans complained about the lack of movement toward democracy and expressed support for Machado, repeatedly scorned by the Trump administration.
The deal also appeared to split Delcy Rodriguez’s own party. Prominent chavista congresswoman Iris Varela put out a video statement saying the deal was signed “under duress” and vowing to repudiate it as soon as Trump leaves office.
Even some of the most enthusiastic “MAGAzuelans,” the Venezuelans who most put their trust in Trump and criticized anyone who disagreed, appeared to be rethinking their assessments.
Controversial figure at the centre of the deal
Venezuelan criticisms of the deal focus on the fact that it was negotiated secretly with an illegitimate government, through a Venezuelan intermediary seen in the country as a classic example of the bolichico class — a businessman who has profited through his connections to the chavista regime.
A fact sheet published by the White House on Monday night described an unusual joint venture between the Pentagon and a private company called North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP).
The U.S. State Department would have a right to 20 per cent of production “at cost,” and right of first refusal on the remaining 80 per cent. Venezuela would be guaranteed $19 US per barrel in royalties, regardless of the price of oil.
NABEP was formed out of Blue Energy, a company run by Florida oil and asphalt magnate Harry Sargeant III, a Trump golf partner and major GOP donor who did a lot of business with the Maduro regime (Maduro once called him “the only gringo I trust.”)
But Sargeant sold his stake to Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt, who has been investigated for allegedly laundering embezzled Venezuelan money in several countries, but never charged.
Rubio defended Betancourt’s involvement by saying he is not suspected of wrongdoing on U.S. territory, as U.S. media reported Trump administration pressure campaigns to drop European investigations.
A ‘highly irregular’ deal
Venezuelan Canadians in the oil industry have no illusions about the state of the industry they were forced to leave behind.
Jorge Robles, who spent his career in Venezuelan and Albertan oilfields, says people understand that Venezuela needs foreign investment and that it has to give something in return.
“I was prepared to have negotiations that were very uncomfortable and disadvantageous to Venezuela,” he told CBC News.
But he said there was something “highly irregular” about the way this deal was negotiated.
“The U.S. is there negotiating on behalf of the Venezuelan reserve, but to offer that to companies that belong to the United States. So it’s an obvious conflict of interest,” he said.
Robles said it was “really upsetting and concerning” that the administration is focusing on oil, rather than political prisoners.
He said he fears that any money Venezuela receives will merely be used by the chavista regime to further entrench itself.
Midterm voters may be true target
But the two oilmen also say that given the deal’s cold reception in Venezuela, oil companies are unlikely to want to bet on its long-term survival, or on a country where the situation remains so uncertain.
“If we don’t get to a situation where there is due process in Venezuela, freedom and people can walk on the street without fear, then don’t expect any company to send people to Venezuela,” said Robles.
They both said the announced deal appeared to be partly about convincing American voters in the run-up to the midterms that high gas prices will soon start dropping.
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“It’s just a lot of noise to try to influence votes in the States,” said Carrillo, adding that the price of oil will respond far more to any reopening in the Strait of Hormuz than far-off plans for oil investment in the Orinoco Basin.
“The markets are not dumb,” he said. “The markets are watching that.”
Carrillo said he intends to return to Venezuela to offer his expertise to put the devastated oil industry back on its feet, but won’t do so unless there is a deal ratified by a democratic Venezuelan government.
Fears of creeping colonization
Many Venezuelans have expressed fears of a creeping colonization of their country, in which the chavista dictatorship is maintained in power by the Trump administration as a subcontractor of its control.
“I do feel it’s kind of happening in a very kind of smooth way,” said Sarfatti. “And probably the earthquake is helping that to happen more just because we do need help, but not necessarily from a colonizing country.”
The guardianship the White House has claimed over Venezuela, she said, “is definitely a level of taking over. You can see that when Venezuelan leaders who’ve been working for 20-something years to recover our country are just set aside.”
The fear now for the Venezuelan opposition is that the Americans’ lucrative deal with Rodriguez only gives Washington additional motives to keep her dictatorship in place.
Likewise the U.S. has little motive to demand the release of political prisoners who might challenge the legitimacy of the deal or the government that signed it.
“They were talking about releasing political prisoners, about freedom of press,” Sarfatti said. “but then time passed by and Trump’s true colours came out.
“We never expected from a country like the U.S., who has been the lead of democracy for so long, to behave the way it’s behaving.”
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