Venezuela's acting president signs oil industry overhaul, easing state control to lure investors

CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela's acting President Delcy Rodríguez on Thursday signed a law that will open the nation's oil sector to privatization, reversing a tenet of the self-proclaimed socialist movement that has ruled the country for more than two decades.

Lawmakers in the country's National Assembly approved the overhaul of the energy industry law earlier in the day, less than a month after the brazen seizure of then-President Nicolás Maduro in a U.S. military attack in Venezuela's capital.

As the bill was being passed, the U.S. Treasury Department officially began to ease sanctions on Venezuelan oil that once crippled the industry, and expanded the ability of U.S. energy companies to operate in the South American nation, the first step in plans outlined by Secretary of State Marco Rubio the day before. The license authorization by the Treasury Department strictly prohibits entities from China, Russia, Iran, North Korea or Cuba from the transactions.

The moves by both governments on Thursday are paving the way for yet another radical geopolitical and economic shift in Venezuela.

''We're talking about the future. We are talking about the country that we are going to give to our children," Rodríguez said.

Rodríguez proposed the changes in the days after U.S. President Donald Trump said his administration would take control of Venezuela's oil exports and revitalize the ailing industry by luring foreign investment.

Private companies to control oil production

Rodríguez's government expects the changes to serve as assurances for major U.S. oil companies that have so far hesitated about returning to the volatile country. Some of those companies lost investments when the ruling party enacted the existing law two decades ago to favor Venezuela's state-run oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA.

The revised law would modify extraction taxes, setting a royalty cap rate of 30% and allowing the executive branch to set percentages for every project based on capital investment needs, competitiveness and other factors.

It also removes the mandate for disputes to be settled only in Venezuelan courts, which are controlled by the ruling party. Foreign investors have long viewed the involvement of independent courts as crucial to guard against future expropriation.

Will change Venezuela's economy

Ruling-party lawmaker Orlando Camacho, head of the assembly's oil committee, said the reform ''will change the country's economy.''

Those guarantees are among the key changes foreign investors are looking for as they weigh entering the Venezuelan market.

''Let the light shine on in the oil industry,'' Ecarri said.

Some oil workers support overhaul

Oil workers dressed in red jumpsuits and hard hats celebrated the bill's approval, waving a Venezuelan flag inside the legislative palace and then joining lawmakers in a demonstration with ruling-party supporters.

The law was last altered two decades ago as Maduro's mentor and predecessor, the late Hugo Chávez, made heavy state control over the oil industry a pillar of his socialist-inspired revolution.

Chávez's 2006 changes to the hydrocarbons law required PDVSA to be the principal stakeholder in all major oil projects.

In tearing up the contracts that foreign companies signed in the 1990s, Chávez nationalized huge assets belonging to American and other Western firms that refused to comply, including ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips. They are still waiting to receive billions of dollars in arbitration awards.

From those heady days of lavish state spending, PDVSA's fortunes turned — along with the country's — as oil prices dropped and government mismanagement eroded profits and hurt production, first under Chávez, then Maduro.

The nation home to the world's biggest proven crude reserves underwent a dire economic crisis that drove over 7 million Venezuelans to flee since 2014. Sanctions imposed by successive U.S. administrations further crippled the oil industry.

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