BAKU, Azerbaijan, September 1. Venezuela’s Acting President Delcy Rodríguez stated that the oil deal with the U.S. will have a significant impact on Venezuela’s future.
This was stated in her remarks on the oil agreement with the U.S.:
“Yesterday we announced a historic agreement with the U.S. government that will have a significant impact on the lives of all Venezuelans in the medium and long term.
We are committed to a prosperous Venezuela so that we, the Venezuelan people, can look to the future in one year, five years, ten years, fifty years; we are thinking about the Venezuela of the future.”
As everyone knows, our country possesses the world’s largest oil reserves, but having underground reserves is not enough. We need investment, technology, infrastructure, and production capacity to turn this wealth into prosperity for our people. There is no point in keeping our oil reserves underground so that they appear only in statistics or accounting records; even if we cannot transform them into Venezuela’s development, we will still be able to say, “We are the country with the world’s largest reserves.” Our reserves must be transformed into well-being, prosperity, and happiness for this country, which will allow us to restore our production capacity and strengthen our position as an energy and manufacturing powerhouse.
Rodríguez emphasized that the use of Venezuela’s oil reserves must serve the country’s development and the strengthening of its energy potential:
“It makes no sense for our underground oil reserves to appear only in statistics or accounting records, just so we can say that we are the country with the world’s largest oil reserves, when we cannot transform and use them for Venezuela’s development. Our resources must bring prosperity, well-being, and happiness to this country, as well as enable us to restore our productive capacity in order to strengthen our position as an energy and industrial power.”
“In this way, we are not only providing our people with better incomes, public services, healthcare, education, and transportation infrastructure, but we are also contributing to the hemisphere’s energy security and helping to create a more balanced and stable international energy market.”
Delcy Rodríguez noted that the agreement reached by her country with the United States is based on combining the parties’ strengths:
“This agreement is based on a very simple principle: each party contributes what it does best. Venezuela offers its oil, its industry, and the more than a century of experience of its workers. The United States provides the capital and technology needed to restore and develop these assets. In return, Venezuela gains production, jobs, infrastructure investments, higher government revenues, and supply chains for local businesses.”
The benefits go beyond mere numbers. This bilateral project, signed for a term of 25 years, calls for the development of 17 strategic oil fields with a target daily production of more than 1.5 million barrels. This was made possible solely by the bilateral agreement between Venezuela and the US. But our goal is even higher: we want to become an energy powerhouse, a major oil producer, a key gas exporter, and develop a world-class domestic petrochemical industry by entering into major agreements with other large companies, including Chevron, Repsol, Eni, Shell, bp, and others.”
Rodríguez also addressed the issue of the revenue the agreement will generate for Venezuela and disclosed specific figures:
“And here a legitimate question arises, one that every Venezuelan citizen has every right to ask: How much does Venezuela earn? If we take a price of $65 per barrel (this price may go up or down), our country’s revenues will total $209 billion 335 million for the Venezuelan state.” Specifically, this means that approximately $19 from every barrel of oil produced and sold goes directly to our country.
In conclusion, I would like to remind you that thirty years ago, as part of the privatization of the oil industry, a major project was implemented to develop four new fields in the Orinoco Oil Belt based on a strategic partnership with a 1% royalty (mineral extraction tax) and a 34% income tax. This bilateral project provides for the development of eight new fields in the Faja area with a minimum royalty of 16% and a 34% income tax.
