A majority in Venezuela's National Assembly voted on Thursday to remove the country's restrictions on private investment in the oil sector. The bill is the first reading of a bill that allows private companies in Venezuela to explore for and extract oil on their own, AFP news agency reports.
The bill, which could fundamentally change Venezuela's oil sector, must go through another reading in the National Assembly before it can be adopted. For the past two decades, private companies have only been able to extract oil in Venezuela in cooperation with the state-owned energy company PDVSA.
Venezuela's oil reserves are the world's largest, and the country holds about a fifth of the world's total reserves. However, the country only extracts just under one percent of the oil extracted globally. This problem was pointed out by the president of the National Assembly, Jorge Rodriguez, during the first reading of the bill.
- Oil underground is useless, he said during the debate as an argument in support of the proposal to open up the oil industry.
American goal to give American companies access to Venezuelan oil
Earlier in January, the United States attacked Venezuela and arrested then-President Nicola Maduro and flew him to New York to stand trial.
Vice President Delcy Rodriguez was subsequently installed as acting president. Rodriguez presented the bill last week, which was first discussed in the National Assembly on Thursday, and which is intended to reform the oil sector.
US President Donald Trump has made no secret of the fact that with the ouster of Maduro, he will give American companies access to Venezuelan oil. Venezuela's oil industry was nationalized in 1976, but in 1996 the country reopened to international investment.
A decade later - in 2007 - the then socialist president, Hugo Chávez, carried out a new nationalization of the oil industry. This required that all oil extraction be done in conjunction with Venezuela's state oil company.
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