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Economy & Business - February 2026

VENEZUELA: New law reopens oil industry to private sector

On 9 January the CEO of US oil firm ExxonMobil, Darren Woods, told President Donald Trump that Venezuela’s oil industry was “uninvestable” and that a major prerequisite for foreign capital would be a new hydrocarbons law. Less than three weeks later that advice became reality. The national assembly unanimously approved a bill that turns the oil and gas industry on its head and would probably cause former president Hugo Chávez (1999-2013), the father of Venezuela’s socialist ‘Bolivarian Revolution’, to roll in his grave.

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