An often overlooked and ignored aspect of Venezuela’s crisis is the considerable environmental degradation occurring at the hands of the OPEC member’s decrepit oil industry. Two Decades of malfeasanceOil spillages are almost an everyday occurrence due to mismanagement, corruption, and chronic underinvestment in maintaining, fixing, and refurbishing the industry infrastructure. Frequent spillages of crude oil and emission of toxic gases, through flaring, as well as liquids from severely corroded infrastructure, including pipelines, storage facilities, and refineries, are creating an environmental crisis of catastrophic proportions in one of the world’s Most biodiverse countries. Lake Maracaibo is the focal point of Venezuela’s environmental disaster. Satellite images from 2021 show the body of water, which is the largest lake in South America and one of the world’s second-oldest, marred by oil slicks and algae blooms. The lake and nearby Maracaibo Basin have long been at the core of Venezuela’s petroleum industry with the first productive well drilled in 1917. Local fishermen Regularly complain of contaminated catches with fish and the lake’s shore covered in black slime. Oil spills along Venezuela’s Caribbean coast as well as leakages of petroleum liquids and related noxious gases from nearby infrastructure These are regularly updated, almost daily, events. The scale of the disaster engulfing Venezuela’s environment due to oil industry operations is practically impossible to quantify because PDVSA ceased reporting spills during 2016. The national oil company stopped making operational data public after an independent auditor certified that it had published operational data in 2012. Independent experts believe that oil spillages, waste discharges and other environmental emissions have increased over the past decade, despite the fact that there has been no reporting. In 2016, when PDSA stopped reporting environmental incidents, there was an astounding 8,259 spillages, which is nearly four times the number reported for 1999. That is a startling number of oil spills for a country that, according to OPEC secondary sources, pumped an average of 2.1 million barrels per day during 2016 compared to 2.8 million barrels for 1999, which was Chavez’s first year in power.
A February 2022 report from Venezuela’s Academy of Sciences, quoted by News agency ReutersThe report outlined nine major oil spillages that occurred between 2020 and 2021, causing severe environmental damage. This includes the Falcon state spillage of 26,730 barrels oil July 2021, which polluted the Morrocoy national Park, causing severe destruction. According to the academy: “Along the coast, hydrocarbon spills and the discharge of waste by the oil industry happen with greater frequency every day,”
The Venezuelan Observatory For Political Ecology 53 oil spillages have been identified(Spanish) For the period from 1 January 2021 to 16 Sept 2021. This number is alarming considering Venezuela produced an average of 528 800 barrels per day in 2021.
Venezuela Oil Spills 1 January 2021 – 16 September 2021
Source: Venezuelan Observatory For Political Ecology.
More than half of those spills, 33 in total, occurred in Falcon State which contains a significant proportion of Venezuela’s petroleum refineries and related infrastructures such as pipeline, storage, and loading facilities. The observatory reports that the Cardon Refinery’s 310,000 barrels/day Cardon Refinery ruptured, which was part of the Falcon State Paraguana Refinery Complex. It saw 3.6 Million Liters of gasoline leak into the Gulf of Venezuela. According to the newspaper La Prensa Del Tachira(Spanish). The crack in the tank was caused due to a lack maintenance. PDVSA had not conducted maintenance since 2016, despite it being required every 2 years.
Related: Russia protests high oil prices as Brent approaches $100
The condition of PDVSA’s installations has significantly deteriorated over the last decade because corruption, a lack of skilled labor, and a dearth of capital are preventing the national oil company from performing crucial maintenance activities. As the condition of Venezuela’s petroleum infrastructure deteriorates further, due to a decade of neglect, lack of maintenance and chronic underinvestment oil spills, emissions, and other environmentally damaging incidents will occur with greater frequency. PDVSA and the Maduro regime’s primary goal appears to be to pump and refine as much crude oil as current resources on hand allow,Regardless of the state of critical infrastructure in decline and the environmental damage that is being done. That was worsened by Caracas’ reluctance to identify, contain, and clean up oil spills and other environmentally damaging petroleum industry discharges. Industry analysts believe that PDVSA is more important than the Maduro regime. Production data distortionOPEC. It is difficult to estimate the environmental damage from oil spills and spills, flaring and other industrial pollution.
The environmental disaster that is unfolding in Venezuela due to the desperate Maduro regime (nearly bankrupt) is so severe that it will take decades and substantial amounts of capital for it to be fixed. Caracas is putting ever greater pressure on PDVSA, with Maduro. Announcement in January 2022 (Spanish) that the national company’s oil output will reach 2 million barrels per day before the end of the year. This ambitious target is nearly four-times greater than the 528 800 barrels per day that OPEC secondary source data shows was averaged for 2021. It is also around three times higher than the 718,000 barrels produced per day shown by OPEC’s secondary sources and double the one million barrels a day that Maduro claims PDVSA pumped for December 2021. As PDVSA labors to achieve Maduro’s production target using dilapidated and decaying facilities further oil spills, gasoline leaks and noxious emissions are inevitable, causing an ever-greater degree of environmental damage and degradation. Venezuela’s vast petroleum reserves, the world’s largest at 304 billion barrels, are ultimately proving to Be a cursefor the crisis-torn Latin American country. For these reasons, the enduring legacy of Hugo Chavez’s socialist Bolivarian revolution will not be one of greater equality and prosperity but an environmental catastrophe that will scar Venezuela for years and even decades to come.
Matthew Smith, Oilprice.com
Oilprice.com has more top reads