Oil workers flee crisis for a better life
PUNTO FIJO, Venezuela — Nieves Ribullen, a Venezuelan oil worker sick of struggling to get by as his country falls apart, is betting it all on Iraq’s far-away Kurdish region to give his family a better life.
Over the years he’s watched dozens of coworkers abandon poverty wages and dangerous working conditions at the rundown complex of refineries in Punto Fijo on Venezuela’s Caribbean coast for jobs in far-flung places like Kuwait, Angola and Chile.
Now it’s his turn. Leaving his wife and three children behind, he’ll soon ship out to Iraq’s semi-autonomous northern Kurdish region, where he expects to earn more than $3,500 a month — a fortune compared to the less than $20 he brings home monthly in increasingly unstable Venezuela.
“I only earn enough to buy a kilo (2 pounds) of meat and one chicken each month,” Ribullen said. “We’re in chaos.”
Opposition leader Juan Guaidó has rallied support from distraught Venezuelans and roughly 40 countries that now recognize him as Venezuela’s rightful president.
But the accelerating exodus of oil workers means that Venezuela’s crude production — already at a seven-decade low — is unlikely to rebound anytime soon, even if recently imposed U.S. sanctions are lifted and a business-friendly government replaces President Nicolás Maduro.
Venezuela was once one of the world’s top five oil exporters, pumping 3.5 million barrels a day in 1998 when President Hugo Chavez was elected and launched Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution. Today, the state-run oil company PDVSA produces less than a third of that. Critics blame corruption and years of mismanagement by the socialist government. Even worse, production is about to sink even further due to fresh sanctions by the Trump administration targeting PDVSA and its Houstonbased subsidiary Citgo with the aim of depriving Maduro of more than $11 billion in exports this year.
Despite the short-term pain they will bring Venezuela, Guaidó said the sanctions are a critical part of stopping Maduro from consolidating power in what he calls a “dictatorship.”
Venezuela’s oil workers began flooding out in 2003, shortly after Chavez fired thousands of them — for launching a strike that paralyzed output. The oil workers accused Chavez of riding roughshod over the nation’s democratic institutions, while Chavez said the picketers were plotting a coup.