Experts in the News

2020 was the worst year in the history of Venezuela's oil industry, with the country “producing the same [amount of oil] as it did in the 1930s,” said fellow Francisco J. Monaldi. 

Venezuela’s state-run oil company, PDVSA, “is in survival mode,” said Francisco Monaldi, who heads the institute's Latin America Energy Program. “Due to sanctions they have no alternatives, so anyone willing to assume the legal and reputational risk can easily take advantage of them.”

“You have a government that got almost $100 billion from oil, and now only gets $1 billion,” said Latin American Energy fellow Francisco Monaldi of the steep discounts Venezuela has had to accept when selling or bartering its remaining crude production. “I expect production to continue to fall, but it could go up when enforcement of sanctions isn’t as tough.”

“One of the worst circumstances you can have is a country polarized politically and ethnically that is about to be awash in a huge amount of money,” said fellow Francisco Monaldi of Guyana, site of the Western Hemisphere’s biggest new oil find in decades.

Though endowed with the world's largest oil reserves, Venezuela is now facing ruin. Latin America energy fellow Francisco Monaldi talked about what went wrong.