Opinions regularly appear in the Venezuelan
media about the need to privatize the company Petróleos de Venezuela, PDVSA, as
a salvation table to solve the country's serious problems; I would like to
express the following opinions on the subject:
1. The true value of an oil or mining
company is its reserves.
2. PDVSA is not the owner of the Venezuelan
oil reserves that belong inalienably to the Venezuelan nation, based on the
principle of the nation's ownership of the subsoil, which comes from the time
of the Colony in the Laws of Indian and then ratified by the Liberator Simón
Bolívar until the present.
3. In Venezuela it does not exist at present
and it is very difficult that there will be sufficient political force in the
future to change the principle that grants the inalienable property of the
subsoil to the nation.
4. Consequently, privatizing PDVSA would in
no way guarantee new members access to Venezuela's reserves and oil
exploitation.
5. Venezuela could liquidate PDVSA and
create a new company if necessary for a better operation of its energy
activity.
6. Venezuela needs to recover its oil,
petrochemical and gas industry and for this requires significant investments
and technology.
7. To achieve the purpose of recovering its
energy industry, Venezuela needs to partner with large global companies and
that is the mechanism that must be established: the association for the joint
exploitation of resources fairly for both Venezuela and transnational
corporations and not the privatization of PDVSA that would in no way guarantee
more benefits to the new partners.
8. With the exception of the United States,
which now uses a highly harmful source to the environment such as fracking, the
tendency to use less polluting sources grows in the rest of the world. The
United States was forced to use the fracking technique due to the depletion of
its conventional oil reserves. A complete study on the situation of natural
resources and specifically on water and conventional oil reserves depletion in
the world can be found in the book Running
Out: How Global Shortages Change the Economic Pardigm in its 2005 and 2008
editions.
9. In its energy policy, Venezuela must take
into account the global reality that tends to the increasing use of less
polluting sources and to efficiently use all its potential today, duly
developing petrochemicals and gas.
10. In summary, the privatization of PDVSA
would not represent any advantage for international investors; what would
represent an advantage for the investors is a fair partnership for specific exploitation
projects.
Running
Out: How Global Shortages Change the Economic Paradigm
- https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01K904U3I/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i9
- Venezuela needs new and
massive international investments in oil, gas and petrochemicals