Upcoming elections put US-Venezuela oil deal at risk
Semafor · Eugenia Perozo ·
“We don’t know if this contract is going to survive a change in government in the US,” Michael McCarthy, CEO of political risk firm Caracas Wire, told Semafor.
The first million barrels of oil to emerge from this year’s US-Venezuela deal arrived in Texas this week — cargo that Trump described as a “gift” delivered for free — but elections in both countries could put the deal’s future at risk.
For North American Blue Energy Partners, an oil company partly owned by the US government and led by the controversial Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt, production is ramping up. The firm is deploying a sixth oil rig and it announced its fields in Western Venezuela were yielding 115,000 barrels per day. But the challenges of working in a country where over a quarter of the population fled are starting to show: there is a shortage of skilled oil workers, and luring them back from abroad is proving difficult.
Meanwhile, “we don’t know if this contract is going to survive a change in government in the US,” Michael McCarthy, CEO of political risk firm Caracas Wire, told Semafor. US Democrats are skeptical of the legality of the deal, and would likely investigate it if they win the midterms. Venezuela’s ongoing democratization process could also call it into question. María Corina Machado, the country’s most popular political leader who recently returned after 10-month exile, has said Betancourt would not be a viable economic partner if she were in government.