Amid the often chaotic and confusing ebb and flow of Venezuelan politics, analysts jumped on two important incidents in June. On 13 June, Rafael Ramírez, the energy minister, president of Pdvsa and de facto economic policy supremo, made a speech to investors in London in which signalled a move towards more pragmatic economic policies, including an eventual re-unification of the country’s various exchange rates. Then on 17 June President Nicolás Maduro announced the dismissal of Jorge Giordani from his job as planning czar. Ramírez and Giordani are two engineers whose lives and careers have been intimately intertwined with Venezuela’s ‘Bolivarian…

The annual accounts of Venezuela's state-owned oil company show that both it and the government are (very) short of cash. Petróleos de Venezuela (Pdvsa), the state-owned oil company and government cash-cow, has scale by world standards. Total proven reserves of conventional and extra heavy crude oil of nearly 300bn barrels are the world's largest - and about 12% more than those of Aramco, its peer in Saudi Arabia. Just under one third of the reserves are held by joint ventures (JVs) in which Pdvsa is a majority investor. Huge reserves, but no growth However, as chart 1 shows, Pdvsa is…