Introduction

Venezuela’s national oil company (NOC), Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA), has undergone the most significant recent transformation of the NOCs in this volume. Between its 1976 creation via nationalization and the early 2000s, PDVSA was one of the most capable, forward-thinking, and autonomous NOCs. During 2002 and 2003, however, it launched a series of politically disastrous strikes against President Hugo Chávez. After surviving the strikes, Chávez purged the company in 2003 of (real and perceived) dissidents, converting PDVSA from a commercially oriented firm to one that is less proficient but much more attentive to state objectives. The current version of PDVSA functions simultaneously as an operating company, development agency, political tool, and government cash cow.

Yet in some respects the PDVSA of today remains similar to its pre-Chávez incarnation. PDVSA has maintained its status as one of the world’s fifty largest companies and two or three largest NOCs (Petroleum Intelligence Weekly 1986–2009). Since the 1980s, the company has held extensive international interests, including major US gasoline chain CITGO. And since the 1990s it has been one of a handful of NOCs to partner with international oil companies (IOCs) in domestic upstream operations (though not without acrimony).