Venezuela’s oil industry is on the brink of collapse – but there is hope

Paraguana Glenda Galvis Colmenares is always amazed when she looks at the turquoise Caribbean Sea in front of her hotel complex. Two dozen oil tankers are moored there. “It used to be an event when a tanker anchored off the coast,” says the manager. The oil ships docked in the nearby oil port, were refueled within a few hours and left the port again. That’s how it went for decades.

But now ships are lying idle off Paraguaná, a peninsula on the Caribbean coast of Venezuela, for days or even weeks – until they suddenly disappear. Like most people in the area, the manager suspects that the ships are refueled under cover of night and the cargo is then sold on the international black market. The crews of the ships would mention destinations like China, Cuba or India.