Venezuelan Assembly Fast-Tracks Oil Liberalization After U.S. Seizes Maduro

Resource policy in Caracas has swung like a pendulum before: Mexico’s 1938 expropriation or Iran’s 1951-53 nationalization (reversed by the CIA’s 1953 Operation Ajax) echo today’s unwind of Chávez’s 2007 takeover. The structural pattern is clear: whenever a petrostates’ leadership weakens, outside powers leverage debt, sanctions, or security pretexts to reopen fields to foreign capital, privileging legal assurances—today international arbitration—over mere access. This episode also exposes a century-old tension between U.S. hemispheric dominance doctrines and emerging multipolar buyers such as China: Washington now dictates both destination and price, effectively reviving a de-facto concession system last seen in the 1920s. On a 100-year horizon, however, the moment may prove pyrrhic; with a rapid global shift toward decarbonization and Venezuela’s heavy, methane-intensive crude among the world’s dirtier barrels, the political struggle for control could outlast the commercial value of the resource itself.