La política petrolera venezolana

In discussions of modern Venezuelan history, it is often stated (or assumed) that oil is everything. Petroleum, according to this interpretation, has fundamentally driven the nation's economic, political, social, and cultural evolution for almost a century. Even scholars who hesitate to embrace such a strong view of oil's historical primacy find it difficult to deny the role of petroleum in shaping Venezuela's most recent era. As observers across the political spectrum have noted, the rise, zenith, and crisis of Hugo Chávez's Bolivarian Revolution have followed swings in the global oil market.The publication of this book by Brian McBeth, an established expert on Venezuelan economic and political history, is thus quite timely. La política petrolera venezolana provides a clear and concise, if somewhat data-dense, introduction to the evolution of the nation's oil policy since the 1920s. With a heavy emphasis on the period since the 1976 nationalization of the industry, McBeth discusses the policies advocated by Venezuelan political leaders and the heads of Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA), the state-owned enterprise formed in the aftermath of nationalization. The longest section of the book, almost 90 pages, is dedicated to oil policy during the first half of Chávez's presidency.McBeth finds both continuity and change in Venezuela's management of the petroleum industry. Regardless of their ideological orientation, Venezuelan governments since the 1930s (with the possible exception of the dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez in the 1950s) have sought to increase the state's share of the wealth derived from petroleum through increased taxation and regulation. The 1976 nationalization was supported by both of the major political parties of that time, and politicians ever since have been tempted to bend PDVSA to their political agendas, McBeth reminds us, even if Chávez's politicization of it went well beyond any action taken by his predecessors.McBeth argues that PDVSA has been most successful when it enjoyed the most autonomy from political leaders. Before Chávez, PDVSA used this freedom to diversify its activities, products, markets, and partners, largely in pursuit of vertical integration within both Venezuela and the countries where it sold its products. By the same token, he argues that political interference with PDVSA has harmed it and the national economy. This perspective leads McBeth to criticize President Chávez for his drive to assert control over PDVSA and harness its financial resources to his populist political agenda. Nevertheless, McBeth's apparent sympathy for PDVSA's pre-Chávez technocratic managers and his antipathy toward the Chavista project do not blind him to occasional evidence that runs counter to these predilections. For example, he finds that some of the oil giant's Chávez-era problems, such as its declining production and restricted cash flow, were rooted partly in developments that originated before Chávez, such as underinvestment in new oil fields and infrastructure, even if Chávez's policies dramatically exacerbated these problems.McBeth's analysis maintains a steady focus on the financial and technical aspects of the oil industry and makes the case that these considerations are crucial for understanding the formulation and outcomes of policy. He shows that the special refining requirements for Venezuela's heavy crude, for example, have guided many of PDVSA's strategic partnerships, which he recounts in detail. McBeth explains at length how questions surrounding the costs, marketability, and environmental impact of Orimulsion, the fuel produced from the extraheavy deposits in the Orinoco petroleum belt, have complicated the development of these resources; thus Chávez's highly publicized drive to renationalize operations in the Orinoco, following previous administrations' opening to foreign investment, is only part of the story of Venezuela's search for a viable strategy to exploit these huge reserves.McBeth chose not to structure this book around some of the larger scholarly debates that often dominate scholarly writing on this topic. Has Venezuela's economy suffered from the supposed resource curse of easy oil wealth? Did PDVSA ignore the public welfare and become a state within a state before Chávez? While McBeth does not dissect these issues explicitly, his implicit positions are evident. Economic outcomes, in his view, flow primarily from policy and management decisions rather than from inescapable structural factors, and PDVSA's actions (when its managers enjoyed autonomy) generally constituted a rational business strategy in a complex global marketplace rather than a self-serving corporate agenda.This consistent emphasis on the technical and financial dimensions of PDVSA's performance means that some historians reading the book will find themselves outside their normal comfort zones. This is not necessarily a bad thing. If oil is everything in modern Venezuelan history, and if comprehending the petroleum industry requires an understanding of the technical issues covered by McBeth, then scholars of the country's recent past will benefit from this book

Democracy · Dictatorship · Economic history · Economics · Economy · Ideology · Petroleum industry · Political science · Politics · Presidency · State (computer science) · History · History and Politics in Latin America · Law

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