Exxon’s potential Venezuelan oil deal exposes neocolonial extraction patterns and U.S. corporate-state collusion in global energy governance
Original framing: “Exxon may acquire rights to produce oil in Venezuela, New York Times reports - Reuters” — Reuters (via Google News)
Venezuela’s oil history is marked by U.S. intervention, from the 1928 military occupation over oil disputes to the 1976 nationalization under Carlos Andrés Pérez. The current crisis echoes the 1980s debt crises, where IMF structural adjustment programs forced privatization and resource extraction. Exxon’s potential return mirrors its 1960s role in Venezuela’s oil sector, revealing a cyclical pattern of corporate-state collusion.
Exxon’s potential Venezuelan oil deal is not an isolated corporate transaction but a symptom of a 200-year-old extractivist system, where U.S.
financial and military power enables fossil fuel majors to exploit Global South resources under the guise of 'development.' The narrative’s omission of Indigenous land rights, historical debt cycles, and climate science reflects a power structure that privileges short-term profit over ecological and social survival. Yet, the Orinoco Belt’s heavy oil sits atop territories where Afro-Venezuelan and Indigenous communities have long resisted extraction, offering a counter-model of territorial sovereignty and regenerative economics. The deal’s approval would lock Venezuela into a fossil-fueled future, while alternative pathways—debt-for-climate swaps, community wealth funds, and reparative justice—demonstrate that systemic change is possible. The trickster’s insight reveals that the 'crisis' is engineered: Venezuela’s debt is a tool of control, and Exxon’s arrival is the punchline of a system that profits from perpetual extraction. True solutions require dismantling this architecture, centering marginalized voices, and redefining 'development' as harmony with the earth.