The plan called Venezuela, Tierra de Gracia, that leaders opposed to the regime of Nicolás Maduro exposed energy promoters as a program of the new government, links the oil industry and electricity industry as a backbone and the motor of the rescue of the country, which is mired in a deep unprecedented energy crisis.
The project proposes to start in one or two years, since the new government is installed, a process of total privatization of all the production of oil and gas, in which the State acts only as “transparent regulator”, while wealth is generated to the country.
In this way, according to the engineer Lino Carrillo, coordinator of the ambitious program in the area of hydrocarbons, “it is sought that the income from private activity multiplies throughout the economy, and not only sell the girdle, but the lady who does the arepas and empanadas,” in reference to the people.
Oil proposal
The program estimates that in about two years the production of 400,000 to 900,000 additional oil barrels can be lifted, to which the industry currently produces with foreign operators and its own effort, and could reach three million barrels in eight years, which the country no longer produces.
This total oil reactivation plan would require between 10,000 million and 12,000 million dollars annually.
To do this, they propose, the commercial protection by the US and the European Union to avoid embargoes is indispensable.
“This would allow to begin to renegotiate Venezuela’s debt, which is estimated at 150,000 million dollars, plus 10,000 or 12,000 million annually in interest, of which 60,000 million are of the Venezuelan state -owned company PDVSA, and that is unpayable. How can social programs be sustained with that giant debt, although the industry produces everything that can?”
Privatization?
Carrillo, former head of operations of the Venezuelan state company until 2002, explained that the execution of the program seeks privatization from the well to all the downstream development: refining, petrochemicals, gas, gas derivatives. And this will not be done overnight.
To do this, he said is the emergency tactical plan “that defines the steps to follow in the first months of the new government, after the terrifying diagnosis in the energy area. And the first is to take control of the industry to order it.”
On the other hand, the lack of maintenance, investment, management expertise and technologies update, as well as excessive politicization, “made it a structure that serves only an ideology that seeks to control everything.”
“There are 85,000 employees, many of them linked to politics, and there is internal repression. When we leave PDVSA for the dismissal of Hugo Chávez we were 45,000, we produced three and a half million barrels per day, and we refined in the world three million barrels,” he recalled.
The objective, he said, “is to maintain production and make sure that plants and wells will not explode us when there is there, considering all the accidents there are.”
In parallel, the project advocates to start the privatization process, essential in the program.
“Governments are the worst entrepreneurs who may exist and have been demonstrated throughout history. Even before Chávez there were restrictions, if the government needed income for their social programs he took PDVSA. Before Chávez arrived at power, PDVSA gave the government 82% of each dollar that entered him, and the state company operated with just 18%,” he said.
“With this type of government control model we will not get anywhere,” he said.
The former PDVSA Operations Chief said that the Government, with the liberal model that supports the program, becomes a regulatory entity, while the production limit is set by private capital. And this requires legal certainty, an attractive fiscal framework and at the same time allows expansion to generate more income to the State, as Norway, Great Britain and Canada, and other countries do.
Tierra de Gracia
The “is possible,” said Carrillo, and highlighted the natural benefits of Venezuela, a country that, with the world’s largest oil reserves, offers “an incomparable opportunity”, as Machado stood out in his speech at the 2025 Ceraweek.
He also mentioned that Venezuela has one of the lowest costs in the world in crude oil production.
“It is between 10 and 20 dollars per barrel. And that includes the rescue, that is, the repair, the development of the wells that have ruined and shattered, the new technology brought to lift more efficiently greater volumes with respect to 20 years ago, and recover wells that have been shattered by the impericia that exists,” he said.
With the entire process that establishes the program and with a new hydrocarbon law, which allows the Venezuelan Executive to issue guidelines for a more attractive tax regime, María Corina said that “Venezuela will not have regional competence in the development of the industry.”
One of the challenges for the new government and private investment is to rescue refineries, petrochemicals, pipelines, gas pipelines, service stations and polyducts “which are shattered,” he said, “in addition to improving the distribution of fuel in the country, and face the mafias of the truck drivers.”
“You have to arrive fixing everything and putting it in its place, and at the same time make it attractive so that the investor not only see the potential of Venezuela in oil and gas, which is the most obvious, but also perceives the opportunity to invest in the refining, in deterioration since 2002,” he said.
“What is sought is to encourage investments and not only repair refineries to turn them into reliable widths as they were until that year,” he summarized.
Light for the program
According to Carrillo, the transition that involves consolidating this plan can last one or two years, and its success will depend on the bet of investors.
“In that period it is estimated that the active investment arrives in Venezuela, but you have to adjust times,” he said.
But what is fundamentally required is a robust electrical system. “There is no oil without electricity or electricity without oil, he said to explain the symbiosis of the two key industries of the plan.
Currently, most of the Temoelectric plants, alternate sources of hydroelectricity indispensable to resolve electrical contingencies, do not work due to lack of fuel, but also the petrochemical industry suffers the effects of blackouts in the country and the lack of supplies.
“We are working with the Emergency Plan for the oil industry to prioritize the requirements to maintain and lift the entire electrical system of the industry, which can be rescued,” he said.
Towards the rescue of Venezuela
To do this, they plan to rely on the American company, with a strong presence in Venezuela, Citgo.
“It will be an angular piece for the fuel part,” he said without stopping in the political-economic circumstances surrounding the petroleum refinery company and gasoline marketer, Venezuelan lubricants and petrochemicals located in the US.
The new government program, which also details social priorities in public services, also includes the integration of Guayana steel and aluminum companies.
González Urrutia and Machado’s plan is committed to motoring the rescue of Venezuelan democracy and offering well -being to the population.
“We are the generators of the resources they need, and people would no longer look for the CLAP (subsidized food distribution local), but would ensure their own income with a new commercial activity.”
