{"id":60547,"date":"2021-11-20T07:07:41","date_gmt":"2021-11-20T12:07:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=60547"},"modified":"2021-11-20T07:07:41","modified_gmt":"2021-11-20T12:07:41","slug":"the-end-of-venezuelas-oil-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=60547","title":{"rendered":"The End Of Venezuela\u2019s Oil Era"},"content":{"rendered":"

The End Of Venezuela\u2019s Oil Era<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Venezuela, once Latin America\u2019s largest oil producer and a founding member of OPEC, has seen its economically vital oil industry collapse triggering one of the worst economic and humanitarian crises of the century. The pain is far from over for Venezuela\u2019s people and the country\u2019s failing economy. Before 1920, Venezuela was a poor agricultural country facing many of the developmental issues plaguing Latin America. The country\u2019s journey to becoming a crude oil superpower, leading petroleum state, and founding\u00a0OPEC member<\/a>\u00a0began in 1914 with the drilling of the\u00a0Zumaque well<\/a>\u00a0in the Mene Grande field on the eastern shores of Lake Maracaibo. This was Venezuela\u2019s first commercial oil well and it launched a monumental oil boom that transformed the country and by 1950 saw it become the world\u2019s fourth wealthiest nation per capita. Venezuela was not only heralded as Latin America\u2019s richest nation but also its most developed. By the 1970s, the country, which is now a socialist dictatorship, was lauded as Latin America\u2019s most\u00a0stable democracy<\/a> at a time when most nations in the region were ruled by military dictatorships.\u00a0By the 1980s, Venezuela\u2019s democracy was unraveling because of a global recession and sharply weaker oil prices. These events weighed heavily on the economy, and government spending, causing the country to spiral into debt. By the late-1980s Caracas had turned to the International Monetary Fund for help. The IMF recommended market-oriented neoliberal economic reforms including savage budget cuts, primarily impacting social programs such as public health and education. When these reforms were implemented by Caracas, they triggered considerable civil unrest. The reforms also sparked runaway inflation which only worsened the suffering of every-day Venezuelans. Those events illustrated the substantial dependence of Venezuela\u2019s economy on oil and the country\u2019s vulnerability to weaker prices…<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The End Of Venezuela\u2019s Oil Era Venezuela, once Latin America\u2019s largest oil producer and a founding member of OPEC, has seen its economically vital oil industry collapse triggering one of the worst economic and humanitarian crises of the century. The pain is far from over for Venezuela\u2019s people and the country\u2019s failing economy. Before 1920, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[18472,1729,592,5332,600,637,851],"class_list":["post-60547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","tag-matthew-smith","tag-oil-and-gas-industry","tag-oil-price","tag-oilprice-com","tag-opec","tag-politics","tag-venezuela"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60547"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60548,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60547\/revisions\/60548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}