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By Antoine Halff, Francisco Monaldi, Luisa Palacios and Miguel Angel Santos
The economic and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela took a turn for the worse in the second half of 2017. Unofficial GDP and inflation measures—the country has long ceased to provide economic indicators—show a sharp deterioration. Declines in oil production and exports are accelerating. The government has fallen behind in debt payments, past the grace period in several cases. Despite these alarming developments, the regime shows surprising resilience. While hard to gauge, popular support for the government and the ruling party, which President Nicolas Maduro has been purging of potential rivals, has yet to evaporate. Military support for Maduro, meanwhile, seems as strong as ever. The challenges ahead are thus daunting for both the leadership and the fractured opposition, with no clear path out of the crisis. The impact of new US sanctions imposed in August 2017, while a matter of debate, seems limited, at least for the short term.
Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP) convened its first expert workshop on Venezuela last June. The alarming developments that have been unfolding in the interim called for a follow-up and reappraisal. On December 4, 2017, CGEP hosted a second roundtable that brought together a diverse group of about 45 experts from the oil and financial industries, academia, think tanks, consultancies, and multilateral organizations. This note is an attempt to sum up some key takeaways from that rich discussion. It does not claim to capture all the insights shared by participants—nor does it come near to giving the reader a sense of the vividness and passion that animated
the conversation.
