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the vast majority of their reserves are "heavy" crude. Which is much more expensive to refine. The oil slump certainly didn't help, but Chavez nationalizing the oil company and replacing competent engineers with cronies is what really fucked them. That and the general socialization of most of private industry.

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"competent engineers with cronies is what really fucked them"

That' cannot be emphasized enough. This isn't the type of oil coming out of Texas or ND. It requires more money, infrastructure, and expertise to refine properly. Canada has this problem with the oil sands, but they have all three to deal with it.

Also if they would've sold the development rights to private companies those contracts would usually have a flat fee that is independent of production viability that the companies have to pay to maintain the rights, this alone would've been enough to keep them afloat.

They also have all of the professionals that left Venezuela.

When I consulted up there, most of the reliability engineering organizations were Venezuelans. Canada should send Venezuela a big thank you card for the amazing people they got due to Chavez driving out professionals.

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