Category: Venezuela

Italian energy company Eni said it signed an agreement to help develop the Perla gas field in Venezeula, one of the largest offshore finds in recent history. Eni CEO Claudio Descalzi met in Caracas with Venezuelan Energy Minister Rafael Ramiriz and Antonio Brufau , the head of Spanish energy company Repsol, to discuss exploiting the Perla field. Billed as one of the largest gas discoveries in the world, Eni said the Perla field off the coast of Venezuela holds an estimated 17 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. It’s situated about 30 miles offshore in the Cardon IV reserve area, which is operated in part through a joint venture between Eni and Repsol. "These agreements will grant Eni access to Perla’s liquids reserves," the Italian company said in a statement Wednesday. The trilateral agreement envisions a new mixed enterprise controlled by Venezuelan state-owned energy company Petroleos […]

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At a time when Venezuela ’s record $25 billion in arrears to importers has its citizens waiting hours in line to buy drinking water and crossing borders in search of medicine, President Nicolas Maduro is using the nation’s dwindling supply of dollars to enrich bondholders. Venezuela, which imports just about everything, and its state oil producer have paid $2.8 billion in interest to overseas creditors this year, according to Barclays Plc. Including debt principal, bondholder outlays will balloon to almost $10 billion by year-end, the London-based firm estimates. By putting off the local companies responsible for supplying everything from diapers to cancer medications, Maduro can preserve access to debt markets and protect oil shipments that would be vulnerable to bondholder seizure, said Alejandro Arreaza, an analyst at Barclays. Even if that means fanning the world’s fastest inflation and inflaming protests over shortages that have left at least 42 people […]

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U.S. House lawmakers voted to require sanctions against Venezuelan officials involved in a crackdown against protesters and opposition leaders in that country. The measure passed by voice vote yesterday in Washington . The legislation is intended to “hold these human rights violators accountable,” said bill sponsor Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican. “The first step in doing so is hitting them in their pocketbooks and denying them entry into the United States .” Venezuela has cracked down on protests that started in February over the world’s fastest inflation, crime and shortages of staples such as food and toilet paper. At least 42 people have been killed in the demonstrations. Amnesty International said April 1 it had received dozens of accounts of torture allegedly carried out by security forces since the protests began. The U.S. State Department has so far resisted calls from Congress for sanctions against Venezuelan President Nicolas […]

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Security forces arrested 243 people in Caracas on Thursday as they dismantled four protest camps set up in the Venezuelan capital by demonstrators opposed to the government of President Nicolás Maduro, and a policeman was fatally shot in clashes that followed, officials said. In Washington, senators condemned the mass arrests during a hearing of the Foreign Relations Committee on human rights violations in Venezuela . The raids broke a period of relative calm in Caracas, where the intensity of the protests had cooled significantly. After the camps were overtaken, groups of people formed barricades and burned trash in the streets. Soldiers and police fired tear gas and plastic buckshot. Officials later said that an officer had been shot and killed.. According to the interior and justice minister, Miguel Rodríguez Torres, National Guard troops and the National Police staged the 3 a.m. raids on the camps, which were located in […]

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The late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez used to berate the old management of state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) for sending oil to Europe. Chávez, who died in March 2013, said PDVSA’s sales to Germany, the U.K., and Sweden made no commercial sense because of the distance involved and the proximity of Middle East suppliers to European customers. Fast-forward 15 years, and PDVSA is firmly in the hands of the late president’s adherents. Last year, PDVSA sent more oil to Asia than to North America, the first time in the company’s history, even though it takes a month for Venezuelan crude to reach China and India. Sales to Asia rose 11 percent to about 1.03 million barrels a day, while sales to North America, chiefly the U.S., fell 12 percent to 879,000 bbl. per day. Today, Chávez’s old criticisms about the wisdom of having far-flung markets are forgotten, as his successors […]

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Clipso Martínez was shot at such close range by a soldier at a protest that his surgeon said he had to remove pieces of the plastic shotgun shell buried in his leg, along with the shards of keys Mr. Martínez had in his pocket, shattered by the blast. Jorchual Gregory was detained with 10 others who said that over three days they were kicked, pistol whipped, doused with pepper spray and battered with helmets and shotgun butts. “They wanted to make people afraid so we wouldn’t stay in the streets,” said Mr. Gregory, 19. “But what happened was more protests and more deaths.” Venezuela has been shaken by more than two months of often violent protests that President Nicolás Maduro says are designed to overthrow him. He has held the opposition responsible for violence that the government says has claimed more than 40 lives, including those […]

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The enormous influence that Cuba has gained in Venezuela is one of the most underreported geopolitical developments of recent times. It is also one of the most improbable . Venezuela is nine times bigger than Cuba, three times more populous, and its economy four times larger. The country boasts the world’s largest oil reserves. Yet critical functions of the Venezuelan state are either overseen or directly controlled by Cuban officials. The FT’s A-List The A-List provides timely, insightful comment on the topics that matter, from globally renowned leaders, policy makers and commentators Venezuela receives Cuban health workers, sports trainers, bureaucrats, security personnel, militias and paramilitary groups. “We have over 30,000 members of Cuba’s Committees for the Defence of the Revolution in Venezuela,” boasted Juan José Rabilero, then head of the CDR, in 2007. The number is likely to have increased further since then. A growing proportion of Venezuela’s imports […]

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President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela and leaders of a coalition of opposition political parties held a dramatic televised meeting on Thursday in a first step aimed at defusing tensions that have escalated during more than two months of antigovernment protests. The meeting was brokered by a group of South American foreign ministers who exerted pressure on both sides to come to the table in the hopes of averting further violence in the protests, which have cost 40 lives, according to a government count. Underscoring the urgency of the situation, local news media reported that a police officer in Barquisimeto, a city in western Venezuela, died after being shot on Wednesday night in a confrontation that appeared to be linked to a protest. The ministers were trying to get Venezuelans to do what they had not been able to do on their own: bridge the country’s bitter political rift. Although […]

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Venezuela’s Supreme Court late Monday backed the government’s move to strip a top opposition congresswoman of her title, a move that sparked accusations the court lacks independence in a country roiled by two months of protests. Government allies of President Nicolás Maduro said last week that María Corina Machado would be kicked out of the National Assembly for speaking on Venezuela’s political crisis in front of the Organization of American States in Washington last month as an invited guest of the government of Panama. They say Ms. Machado, among Mr. Maduro’s most vocal critics, violated the constitution, which prohibits parliamentarians from accepting public posts from other countries without the approval of Venezuela’s congress. Ms. Machado didn’t seek such approval before her appearance in Washington. The country’s highest court on Monday backed that view in a statement posted on its website. It said Ms. Machado’s move was "not only detrimental […]

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Enraged as they are by their nation’s leaders, many of the protesters who have spilled onto Venezuela’s streets have their eyes fixed on another government altogether, one they resent perhaps just as bitterly as their own: Cuba’s. The Cuban government and its president, Raúl Castro, they contend, have leeched off Venezuela’s oil wealth, grafted Cuba’s rigid brand of socialism onto their country and helped choreograph a broad crackdown on dissent. Their rancor is echoed by the Cuban opposition, which has thrown itself behind the Venezuelan protesters’ cause with gusto, sharing photos and videos of protests and police abuse on Twitter, urging Venezuelans to resist and even rapping an apology for what they call Cuba’s meddling. The fixation with the influence of Cuba in Venezuela’s affairs reflects how meshed the two countries’ economic and political realities remain a year after the death of Venezuela’s longtime president, Hugo […]

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