Managers of foreign oil companies have been visiting Caracas recently to negotiate a possible return of international firms to Venezuela’s embattled oil industry after Nicolas Maduro began promising earlier this year he would end the monopoly of state oil firm PDVSA, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing sources familiar with the talks. Venezuela is opening up to foreign investment in its oil industry, Maduro said in January, in a bid to reverse a catastrophic drop in its output under the weight of U.S. sanctions. PDVSA already has overseas partners, but foreign investments in Venezuela’s oil industry are capped at 49 percent of any given project to protect state control of the sector. Now, with the industry—and Venezuela’s whole economy—in tatters, this may have to change. Venezuela’s crude oil and refined product exports plummeted in 2020 to their lowest level in 77 years , as the U.S. continued to step up […]