Venezuela’s Citgo board takeover reflects systemic erosion of PDVSA governance amid geopolitical and economic pressures

Indigenous and Afro-Venezuelan communities have long resisted PDVSA’s operations, which have led to environmental degradation, displacement, and cultural erasure in regions like the Orinoco Belt and the Amazon. The systemic collapse of PDVSA has disproportionately affected these groups, who now face heightened vulnerability due to the loss of state services and the encroachment of illegal mining. Traditional knowledge systems, which once guided sustainable resource management, have been systematically undermined by the state’s extractive paradigm.

PDVSA was founded in 1976 as a symbol of Venezuelan sovereignty and social investment, but its decline began in the 1990s with neoliberal reforms and accelerated under Chávez’s resource nationalism, which prioritized political loyalty over technical expertise. The 2002-2003 oil industry strike and subsequent purges decimated PDVSA’s workforce, while U.S. sanctions since 2017 have further crippled its ability to operate. The Citgo takeover mirrors historical patterns in Latin America where state oil companies become instruments of elite control, as seen in Mexico’s PEMEX or Brazil’s Petrobras.

In Nigeria, the Niger Delta’s oil crisis—marked by environmental destruction and militarized repression—parallels Venezuela’s PDVSA collapse, where state capture by elites has led to institutional rot. African scholars like Adebayo Adedeji have argued that resource-rich nations in the Global South often replicate colonial extraction models, prioritizing short-term gains over long-term development. The Citgo takeover, when viewed through this cross-cultural lens, reveals a shared pattern of elite-driven resource governance that transcends national boundaries.

PDVSA’s collapse is well-documented in economic and energy studies, which highlight the role of sanctions in reducing Venezuela’s oil production from 3.5 million barrels/day in 1998 to under 700,000 in 2023. Research by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) shows that sanctions have not only targeted the Venezuelan government but also disrupted global oil markets and supply chains. The systemic failure of PDVSA is also a case study in the resource curse, where high dependence on oil exports correlates with institutional weakness and corruption.

Venezuelan artists like the collective *El Sindrome de Wendy* have used performance and visual art to critique the spiritual and cultural violence of oil extraction, framing it as a form of modern colonialism. Indigenous shamans in the Amazon, such as those from the Pemon people, have long warned that oil exploitation disrupts the balance of the natural world, a belief echoed in Andean cosmologies that view mountains and rivers as living entities. The Citgo takeover, in this context, can be seen as a desecration of both ecological and spiritual orders.

If current trends continue, PDVSA’s collapse will lead to further environmental disasters, as aging infrastructure and lack of investment increase the risk of oil spills and gas flaring. Scenario modeling by the International Energy Agency (IEA) suggests that Venezuela’s oil sector could take decades to recover, even if sanctions are lifted, due to the brain drain and loss of technical capacity. Alternative futures include the rise of decentralized energy cooperatives or international partnerships that prioritize sustainability over extraction, but these require radical shifts in governance.

Marginalized voices—including Afro-Venezuelan activists, Indigenous leaders, and former PDVSA workers—have been systematically excluded from narratives about Citgo’s future. These groups argue that the takeover is not just a political issue but a threat to their survival, as PDVSA’s collapse has led to the loss of social programs that once benefited their communities. Women-led cooperatives in oil-producing regions have proposed alternative models of resource governance, but their perspectives are rarely included in mainstream discussions.