Since the news broke that Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores are in U.S. custody, and President Trump announced the U.S. would temporarily oversee Venezuela’s oil industry as a way to “reimburse” the costs of the intervention, my inbox has been flooded.
Many of my non-Venezuelan friends are saying the same thing in different words: this looks like a classic resource grab. A superpower intervenes, talks about “transition,” and then points straight to the oil.
I understand why those instincts kick in. I’ve lived in the United States long enough to know the history, and I’m not here to romanticize intervention or pretend motives are ever pure.
El Palito refinery, owned by Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA). Jesus Vargas/Picture-Alliance/DPA/AP
But today I’m writing as a Venezuelan, because for us the “sovereignty” of our oil has been a painful myth for over twenty years. What you’re calling a potential theft is what Venezuelans have been living as a reality, just with different thieves.
When a country’s wealth funds repression while ordinary people can’t reliably get the basics, “sovereignty” becomes a word used against the very people it’s supposed to protect.
So yes, if running our oil industry is part of the invoice for dismantling a regime that turned the state into a criminal machine, millions of us are willing to live with that discomfort. Not because we don’t see the danger, but because we’ve been paying a worse bill for decades.
The Massive, Ruined Pride of PDVSA
To understand why Venezuelans are reacting this way, you have to understand what was stolen. Venezuela holds the largest proven oil reserves in the world, roughly 300 billion barrels.
Most of it is heavy crude, which requires specialized infrastructure, real expertise, and massive long-term investment to produce and refine. In other words, it’s a fortune, but not a simple one.
Source: OPEC, Graphic: Jhasua Razo, CNN
When I was growing up, PDVSA was spoken about with pride. It wasn’t just a company; it was proof that Venezuela could be modern, competent, and respected.
Then Hugo Chávez came into power, and PDVSA stopped being treated like an institution. It became a political tool and a piggy bank. In 2003, the government purged technical experts and replaced them with loyalists. Investment dried up. Maintenance was neglected. The industry didn’t collapse overnight, but it began to rot from the inside, and the rot had a purpose: control.
Today, a country that should be an energy titan produces a fraction of what it once did. The point isn’t the exact number; the point is that the engine that could have powered a thriving nation was turned into a broken machine that mostly powered the regime.
Source: OPEC, Graphic: Jhasua Razo and Gonzalo Zegarra, CNN
Who Was Really Running Our Oil?
When people worry the U.S. is “taking” Venezuela’s oil, my question is simple: who do you think has been running it?
It certainly wasn’t the Venezuelan people.
For years, our oil has funded a criminal state, widely accused of turning national wealth into a tool of repression. We sent significant portions of our exports to Cuba, effectively subsidizing a regime that helped Maduro tighten repression, while Venezuela sank deeper into debt with China and Russia, whose interest was never our people.
As a recent viral joke goes: China and Russia weren’t exactly in Venezuela for our arepas recipe.
Our oil has been “taken” for years. The difference is that it was never taken for us.
That’s why the “resource grab” framing hits Venezuelans differently. Because our resources have already been grabbed, siphoned, and weaponized. Just not for us.
And here’s the proof that turns this from theory into lived reality.
At different points during the regime’s 26 years in power, there were moments when people waited in line for gasoline for hours, sometimes from dawn to night, even in a country sitting on vast oil reserves.
People slept in their cars at the pump. Some brought food and blankets like they were preparing for a storm.
And it wasn’t only gasoline.
We waited for toilet paper and milk, and we learned to read empty shelves like weather. We waited for basics that should never be a question in a functioning country, and we watched daily life become a series of humiliations you had to plan around.
Residents of Barquisimeto wait in a food line, June 2016. Getty Images for TIME.
The regime “owned” the oil. The people lived in the dark.
So when outsiders say, “This violates Venezuela’s sovereignty,” many Venezuelans hear something else: What sovereignty are you talking about, if our wealth was used to keep us trapped?
The “Invoice” Everyone Keeps Pointing To
Let’s not pretend this is subtle. The loudest commentary right now is about the invoice.
When Trump says the U.S. will be “reimbursed” through oil, I hear the alarm bells too. I know why it sounds ominous to anyone with a memory of Iraq or Afghanistan.
But I also know what Venezuela’s oil sector looks like right now. Bringing it back will take years of repairs, investment, staffing, and institutional rebuilding that should have happened long ago.
Venezuela’s state-run oil company, PDVSA, has fallen into disrepair. Bloomberg/Getty Images
So when people talk as if Venezuela is about to become an instant payout, they’re imagining a functioning industry. That’s not what we have.
What we have is a devastated infrastructure and a country full of displaced talent.
Which brings me to the part that is personal.
A Dream Reclaimed
My younger brother is brilliant. He studied business, then focused his graduate work on oil and gas because he believed in what Venezuela could be.
But because PDVSA was gutted, he never got the chance to work in the industry he trained for at home. Like so many Venezuelans, he had to build his life abroad, first in Colombia and now at an energy company in Canada.
He is exactly the kind of talent Venezuela lost. Not because we didn’t have smart people, but because the system didn’t allow a future.
For the first time in my life, I can imagine a Venezuela where people like my brother can return to rebuild what was stolen. Not just the industry. The country.
That’s the invoice Venezuela has already been paying: exporting its talent because it couldn’t offer a future at home.
The 24-Hour Country
My mom always says, “Venezuela is a 24-hour country,” because you never know what the next day will bring.
For two decades, those 24 hours usually brought more decay, more waiting, more losses that piled up quietly until they didn’t feel quiet anymore.
Today, we are witnessing another 24-hour shift, but this time the direction has changed. We don’t know how clean or messy it will be. We don’t know what new risks will emerge.
But we do know what the last twenty years were.
And that’s why many of us aren’t afraid of the invoice the way outsiders expect us to be. Because we’ve already paid in lost years, in exile, and in families split across continents.
If this helped you understand why Venezuelans are reacting the way we are, share it with the friend who keeps saying “oil grab” like it ends the conversation.
Thank you for staying focused on helping non-Venezuelans understand our reality. I want to show my daughter where I grew up. I want to show them the beautiful & rich country I remember and miss.
Gracias Mariana. Este artículo explica claramente nuestro punto de vista como ciudadanos venezolanos y para la matriz de opinión socialista. Podrán usar cualquier otra razón para criticar la intervención pero aquí, definitivamente están "meando fuera del perol"... 😉 Dios te bendiga!