Petróleos de Venezuela S.A
True Nationalization
The defense of National Sovereignty is one of the key aspects of the innovative national oil policy effected by the Bolivarian Government of Venezuela.
This strategic policy, intended to bring about authentic oil nationalization, calls for the reaffirmation of the nation’s property rights over its subterranean deposits of hydrocarbons, as well as the recovery of control of oil activities within its frontiers, from the legal and fiscal perspectives to full control over of the national oil industry.
President Chávez declared, January 2003 as the beginning of the first stage of true oil nationalization, with the defeat of the oil conspiracy and the recovery of PDVSA. In this way, the Venezuelan people started the reversal of the process of bequeathing full oil sovereignty, as permitted in the Law reserving the Industry and Commerce of Hydrocarbons to the State. In approving this law the state oil enterprise set itself apart from national interests and responded to financial pressures. This new strategy for rescuing Oil Sovereignty consists of solving the conundrums inherited from the old PDVSA.
As President Chavez said “Little by little we will fix deviations, deactivate domination mechanisms that were set a long time ago and are still here. We are going to start by deactivating them all, with the purpose of recovering Full Oil Sovereignty”.
Internationalization, which was a policy adopted by the old PDVSA in order to privatize the Venezuelan Oil Industry piece by piece, which eventually would have meant great financial losses for the Venezuelan economy .
These revision and reversion actions are included in the National Social and Economic Development Plan for the period 2001-2007. With this Plan, the National Government is looking forward to promoting technical and administrative audits of different oil companies, as well as the analysis of new business, in the framework of the strategic collateral plan called “Internationalization of Hydrocarbons”.
The National Executive Board has clearly stated that the presence of companies in Venezuela and the fact that they receive revenues from their investments is not questioned, but what is really being demanded is their participation with full respect to the nation’s laws and sovereignty.