Luisa Palacios on Rebuilding Venezuela's Oil Industry After the Quakes

It started last year as a pressure campaign at sea, with the United States seizing  tankers as part of what President Trump called a "total and complete blockade" of vessels carrying Venezuelan crude subject to US sanctions. It crescendoed on January 3, when US forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, bringing him and his wife to New York on narcoterrorism charges.

Since Maduro's removal, confusion remains over whether—and to what extent—the US is controlling the country's oil sector. But one thing is clear: despite holding the world's largest oil reserves, Venezuela is producing at a fraction of its former levels, and its path to recovery is anything but certain.

A national tragedy has only added to the instability. In June, twin earthquakes claimed more than 5,000 lives. While the country's energy infrastructure did not sustain significant damage, the quakes exposed deep fault lines in the country's political leadership and served as a stark reminder of an already long-standing humanitarian crisis in the region.  

So what's the state of the energy sector and energy investments in Venezuela? How has the global energy crisis changed the calculus for prospective energy developers? What role is the Trump administration playing in the sale of Venezuelan oil? And where is oil production headed? 

Today on the show, Jason Bordoff speaks with Luisa Palacios about the state of the Venezuelan energy sector, efforts around creating new policies to boost oil production, and the impact of the June earthquakes.

Luisa is an adjunct senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP) at Columbia University, where she previously served as head of research. Before joining CGEP, Luisa was chairwoman of Citgo Petroleum Corporation, the US refining arm of Venezuela's state oil company, PDVSA.

Credits: Hosted by Jason Bordoff and Bill Loveless. Produced by Mary Catherine O'Connor, Caroline Pitman, and Kyu Lee. Engineering by Gregory Vilfranc.