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In 2008, crude oil production in Venezuela was the tenth-highest in the world at 2,394,020 barrels per day (380,619m3/d) and the country was also the eighth-largest net oil exporter in the world. Venezuela is a founding member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).[5]
Pre-discovery
Indigenous usage
The Indigenous peoples in Venezuela, like many ancient societies, already utilized crude oils and asphalts from petroleum seeps, which ooze through the ground to the surface, in the years before the Spanish conquistadors. The thick black liquid, known to the locals as mene, was primarily used for medical purposes, as an illumination source, and for the caulking of canoes.[6]
Spanish acquisition
Upon arrival in the early 16th century, the Spanish conquerors learned from the indigenous people to use the naturally occurring bitumen for caulking their ships as well, and for treating their weapons. The first documented shipment of petroleum from Venezuela was in 1539 when a single barrel of oil was sent to Spain to alleviate the gout of Emperor Charles V.[6]
Despite the knowledge of the existence of oil reserves in Venezuela for centuries, the first oil wells of significance were not drilled until the early 1910s. In 1908, Juan Vicente Gómez replaced his ailing predecessor, Cipriano Castro, as the president of Venezuela. Over the next few years, Gómez granted several concessions to explore, produce, and refine oil. Most of these oil concessions were granted to his closest friends, and they in turn passed them on to foreign oil companies that could actually develop them.[7] One such concession was granted to Rafael Max Valladares who contracted to General Asphalt for exploration and developmet of oil fields. The geologist Herbert Hoover, then in London as a consulting engineer for Gold Fields, Ltd. of South Africa, recommended the geologist Ralph Arnold to that company for a survey of oil resources in Venezuela. At that time there was a single oil well in Venezuela producing 40 gallons of oil per day. Arnold's survey, conducted for Caribbean Petroleum Company a subsidiary of General Asphalt Company in Northern Venezuela, employed a staff of 52 geologists, engineers, and drillers. So successful was this venture, that Royal Dutch Shell paid General Asphalt $1,000,000 for 51% in Caribbean Petroleum Company. On 15 April 1914, upon the completion of the Zumaque-I (now called MG-I) oil well, the first Venezuelan oilfield of importance, Mene Grande, was discovered by Caribbean Petroleum in the Maracaibo Basin.[6] This major discovery encouraged a massive wave of foreign oil companies to Venezuela in an attempt to gain a foothold in the burgeoning market.
From 1914 to 1917, several more oil fields were discovered across the country including the emblematic Bolivar Coastal Field; however World War I slowed significant the development of the industry. Due to the difficulty in purchasing and transporting the necessary tools and machinery, some oil companies were forced to forego drilling until after the war. By the end of 1917, the first refining operations began at the San Lorenzo refinery to process the Mene Grande field production, and the first significant exports of Venezuelan oil by Caribbean Petroleum left from the San Lorenzo terminal. By the end of 1918, petroleum appeared for the first time on the Venezuelan export statistics at 21,194 metric tons.[6]
It was the blowout of the Barroso No. 2 well in Cabimas in 1922[8] that marked the beginning of Venezuela's modern history as a major producer. This discovery captured the attention of the nation and the world. Soon dozens of foreign companies acquired vast tracts of territory in the hope of striking it rich, and by 1928 Venezuela became the world's leading oil exporter. Oil ended Venezuela's relative anonymity in the eyes of world powers, making it a linchpin of an ever-expanding international oil industry and a new consideration in global policymaking.[citation needed]
Cabimas still plays an important role in production from the nation's largest oil fields, which are located around and beneath Lake Maracaibo. Other fields are increasing in importance, mainly in eastern Venezuela,[9] where the Oficina Formation was discovered in 1937.[10] About twenty years after the completion of the first oil-producing well Venezuela had become the largest oil exporter in the world and, after the United States, the second largest oil producer. Exports of oil boomed between 1920 and 1935.[11] By the end of the 1930s, Venezuela had become the third-leading oil producer in the world, behind the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as the leading exporter.[12]
First Dutch Disease
By 1929, the dramatic development of the Venezuela oil industry had begun to dominate all other economic sectors in the country, however, agricultural production began to decrease dramatically.[13]
Agriculture accounted for about one-third of economic production in the 1920s, but by the 1950s this fraction dramatically reduced to one-tenth. This sudden increase of oil production restricted Venezuela's overall ability to create and maintain other industries. The government had ignored serious social problems, including education, health, infrastructure, agriculture, and domestic industries, causing Venezuela to fall well behind other industrialized countries.[citation needed]
Venezuela production of crude oil in oil barrels, 1965-2019
By 1940 Venezuela was the third largest producer of crude oil in the world with more than 27 million tonnes per year - just slightly less than the production in the USSR.[14] In 1941, Isaías Medina Angarita, a former army general from the Venezuelan Andes, was indirectly elected president. One of his most important reforms during his tenure was the enactment of the new Hydrocarbons Law of 1943. This new law was the first major political step taken toward gaining more government control over its oil industry. Under the new law, the government took 50% of profits.[7][15] Once passed, this piece of legislation basically remained unchanged until 1976, the year of nationalization, with only two partial revisions being made in 1955 and 1967.[citation needed]
In 1944, the Venezuelan government granted several new concessions encouraging the discovery of even more oil fields. This was mostly attributed to an increase in oil demand caused by an ongoing World War II, and by 1945, Venezuela was producing close to 1 million barrels per day (160,000m3/d).
Being an avid supplier of petroleum to the Allies of World War II, Venezuela had increased its production by 42 percent from 1943 to 1944 alone.[16] Even after the war, oil demand continued to rise due to the fact that there was an increase from twenty-six million to forty million cars in service in the United States from 1945 to 1950.[17]
By the mid-1950s, however, Middle Eastern countries had started contributing significant amounts of oil to the international petroleum market, and the United States had implemented oil import quotas. The world experienced an over-supply of oil, and prices plummeted.[citation needed]
In response to the chronically low oil prices of the mid and late 1950s, the Venezuelan hydrocarbons and mines minister Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo proposes to the oil producing countries Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Kuwait met in Baghdad in September 1960 to form the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). The main goal of the OPEC member countries was to work together in order to secure and stabilize international oil prices to ensure their interests as oil producing nations. This was managed largely via maintaining export quotas that helped prevent the overproduction of oil on an international scale.
In the early 1970s, oil producing countries of the Persian Gulf began negotiations with oil companies in attempt to increase their ownership participation. In 1972 they rapidly obtained a 25 percent participation, and less than a year later they revised those agreements to obtain up to 60 percent participation in the ownership of the companies.[7] By 1973, OPEC Persian Gulf states members decided to raise their prices by 70 percent and to place an embargo on countries friendly to Israel (the United States and the Netherlands). This event became known as the 1973 oil crisis. Following a culmination of conflicts in the Middle East and the oil producing countries of the Persian Gulf no longer exporting to the United States and oil prices rising steeply, Venezuela experienced a significant increase in oil production profits. Between 1972 and 1974, the Venezuelan government revenues had quadrupled. With a new sense of confidence, Venezuelan president Carlos Andrés Pérez pledged that Venezuela would develop significantly within a few years. By substituting imports, subsidies, and protective tariffs, he planned to use oil profits to increase employment, fight poverty, increase income, and diversify the economy.[citation needed]
Well before 1976, Venezuela had taken several steps in the direction of nationalization of its oil industry. In August 1971, under the presidency of Rafael Caldera, a law was passed that nationalized the country's natural gas industry. Also in 1971 the law of reversion was passed which stated that all the assets, plant, and equipment belonging to concessionaires within or outside the concession areas would revert to the nation without compensation upon the expiration of the concession.[7] The movement towards nationalism was experienced once again under decree 832. Decree 832 stipulated that all exploration, production, refining, and sales programs of the oil companies had to be approved in advance by the Ministry of Mines and Hydrocarbons.[7] Led by finance minister Luis Enrique Oberto, nationalization led to the Venezuelan economy reaching an average growth of 5% between 1970 and 1973.[18]
Nationalization became official when the presidency of Carlos Andrés Pérez, whose economic plan, "La Gran Venezuela", called for the nationalization of the oil industry and diversification of the economy via import substitution. The country officially nationalized its oil industry on 1 January 1976 at the site of Zumaque oilwell 1 (Mene Grande), and along with it came the birth of Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA) which is the Venezuelan state-owned petroleum company. All foreign oil companies that once did business in Venezuela were replaced by Venezuelan companies. Each of the former concessionaires was simply substituted by a new 'national' oil company, which maintained the structures and functions of its multi-national corporation (MNC)-predecessor.[19]
All the new companies are owned by a holding company-Petroven or PDV- and which in turn is owned by the State.[20] Ultimately not much had changed in this regard, as all Venezuelans with leading positions in the MNCs took over the leading positions of the respective new companies,[20] and therefore still securing their interests in Venezuela's oil. PDVSA controls activity involving oil and natural gas in Venezuela. In 1980s, in an aggressive internationalization plan, PDVSA bought refineries in USA and Europe as the American Citgo that catapulted it to the third-largest oil company in the world.[citation needed]
1977–1998
After the 1973 oil crisis, the period of economic prosperity for Venezuela was relatively short-lived. As Venezuelan oil minister and OPEC co-founder Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo had presciently warned in 1976: "Ten years from now, twenty years from now, you will see, oil will bring us ruin... It is the devil's excrement."[21] This was the case during the "1980s oil glut". OPEC member countries were not adhering strictly to their assigned quotas, and once again oil prices plummeted.[citation needed]
Second Dutch Disease
During the mid-1980s, Venezuela's oil production steadily began to rise.[22] By the 1990s, symptoms of the Dutch Disease were once again becoming apparent. Between 1990 and 1999, Venezuela's industrial production declined from 50 percent to 24 percent of the country's gross domestic product compared to a decrease of 36 percent to 29 percent for the rest of Latin America,[23] but production levels continued to rise until 1998.[22]
However, the efficiency of PDVSA was brought into question over the years. During 1976–1992, the amount of PDVSA's income that went towards the company's costs was on average 29 percent leaving a remainder of 71 percent for the government. From 1993 to 2000, however, that distribution almost completely reversed, to where 64 percent of PDVSA's income were kept by PDVSA, leaving a remainder of only 36 percent for the government. This change in government revenue was due to a change in accounting methods, lower taxation on private investment, higher production of oil sands, and transfer pricing.[24]
After Hugo Chávez officially took office in February 1999, several policy changes involving the country's oil industry were made to explicitly tie it to the state under his Bolivarian Revolution.[26]:191 Since then, PDVSA has not demonstrated any capability to bring new oil fields onstream since nationalizing heavy oil projects in the Orinoco Petroleum Belt formerly operated by international oil companies ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Chevron.[27][28]
The Chávez government used PDVSA resources to fund social programmes, treating it like a "piggybank",[29] and PDVSA staff were required to support Chávez. His social policies resulted in overspending [25][30][31] that caused shortages in Venezuela and allowed the inflation rate to grow to one of the highest rates in the world .[32][33][34]
According to Corrales and Penfold, "Chávez was not the first president in Venezuelan history to be mesmerized by the promise of oil, but he was the one who allowed the sector to decline the most", with most statistics showing deterioration of the industry since the beginning of his presidency.[35]
Chávez's successor, Nicolás Maduro, continued much of the policies championed by Chávez, with Venezuela further deteriorating as a result of continuing such policies.[25][30][31][36]
Reinforcement of OPEC
From the beginning of his presidency, Chávez took an active role in OPEC and sought to increase international oil prices.[26]:131
The meeting[clarification needed] could be considered a success given the record high oil prices of the following years, but much of that is also a consequence of the 11 September 2001 attacks against the United States, the Iraq War, and the significant increase in demand for oil from developing economies like China and India, which helped prompt a surge in oil prices to levels far higher than those targeted by OPEC during the preceding period. In addition to these events, the December 2002 oil strike in Venezuela, which resulted in a loss of almost 3mmbpd of crude oil production, brought a sharp increase in world prices of crude.[37]
In 2000, the pro-Chávez National Assembly granted Chávez the ability to rule by decree due to the poor economic conditions.[38] On 13 November 2001 while ruling by decree, Chávez enacted the new Hydrocarbons Law, which came into effect in January 2002.[38] The laws "marked a turning point in public sentiment toward the president" with both chavistas and anti-chavistas outraged at the changes.[39] For the opposition to Chávez, such dramatic changes to the government proved to them that Chávez was a "dictator-in-training".[38]
Chávez began setting goals of reinstating quotas, such as ten percent of PDVSA's annual investment budget was to be spent on social programs.[40] Chavez initiated many of these major changes to exert more control over PDVSA and efficiently deal with the problems he and his supporters had over PDVSA's small revenue contributions to the government. By 2002, warnings grew of the Chávez overspending on social programs in order to maintain populist support.[41]
In December 2002, PDVSA officially went on strike creating a near-complete halt on oil production in Venezuela. The aim of the Venezuelan general strike of 2002-2003 was to pressure Chávez into resigning and calling early elections. The strike lasted approximately two and a half months, and the government ended up firing 12,000 PDVSA employees and replacing them with workers loyal to the Chávez government, many of whom came out of retirement to replace the fired.[42] By January 2002, protests involving hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans opposing Chávez became common in Venezuela.[38] In April 2002, mass demonstrations occurred in Caracas and Chávez was temporarily overthrown by the military, during the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt.
A few months after the failure of the coup and the return of Chavez, a combination of labor unions and business groups called for an indefinite national strike.[citation needed]
International deals
In 2005, PDVSA opened its first office in China, and announced plans to nearly triple its fleet of oil tankers in that region. Chávez had long stated that he would like to sell more Venezuelan oil to China so his country can become more independent of the United States. In 2007, Chávez struck a deal with Brazilian oil company Petrobras to build an oil refinery in northeastern Brazil where crude oil will be sent from both Brazil and Argentina. A similar deal was struck with Ecuador where Venezuela agreed to refine 100,000 barrels (16,000m3) of crude oil from Ecuador at discount prices. Cuba agreed to let thousands of Venezuelans be received for medical treatment and health programs, and in turn, Venezuela agreed to sell several thousands of barrels to Cuba at a 40% discount under Petrocaribe program.[citation needed]
Third Dutch Disease
The Chávez administration used high oil prices in the 2000s on his populist policies and to gain support from voters.[25][41] The social works initiated by Chávez's government relied on oil products, the keystone of the Venezuelan economy, with Chávez's administration suffering from Dutch disease as a result.[25][43]
According to Cannon, the state income from oil revenue grew "from 51% of total income in 2000 to 56% 2006";[44] oil exports increased "from 77% in 1997 [...] to 89% in 2006";[44] and his administration's dependence on petroleum sales was "one of the chief problems facing the Chávez government".[44] By 2008, exports of everything but oil "collapsed"[25] and in 2012, the World Bank explained that Venezuela's economy is "extremely vulnerable" to changes in oil prices since in 2012 "96% of the country's exports and nearly half of its fiscal revenue" relied on oil production.[45]
Economists say that the Venezuelan government's overspending on social programs and strict business policies contributed to imbalances in the country's economy, contributing to rising inflation, poverty, low healthcare spending and shortages in Venezuela going into the final years of his presidency.[25][30][31][36][41][46]
Since 2014, oil production in Venezuela has suffered from a poor oil market and Venezuela's insufficient funding of the industry. Venezuela's nationalistic oil policies have not succeeded in making them more independent from their oil customers. In 2016, the United States imported 291,461,000 barrels of oils from Venezuela, an amount consistent with imports in the five years prior.[47] To assuage the oil price decline which began back in June 2014 and continues through to today, President Maduro printed more currency, resulting in inflation as high as 700% of what the inflation rate was in 2014.[48] The Economic policy of the Nicolás Maduro administration did not revive the oil decline, and by 2016, the oil production reached the lowest it had been in 23 years.[49] According to analysts, the economic crisis suffered under President Nicolás Maduro would have still occurred with or without Chávez.[50]
By 2017, PDVSA could not even afford to export oil through international water, which requires safety inspections and cleaning under maritime law, with a fleet of tankers stranded in the Caribbean Sea due to the issue.[51] In July 2017, this arrangement was extended from just the first half of 2017 to continue until March 2018.[52][53] This continued depression in income from oil has led Maduro to pressure the OPEC to raise the falling oil prices to help the Venezuelan economy.[54] In April 2017, a controversial Venezuelan Supreme Court ruling granted Maduro executive powers over PDVSA, which allow him act autonomously in selling shares or make international agreements of the oil company.[55] In October 2017, Venezuela had its lowest oil output in 28 years, with only 1.863 million bpd being pumped that month.[56] By late-2017, the PDVSA struggled to repay $725 million of debt, part of a total $5 billion owed.[57][58]
In August of 2017, the Trump Administration imposed sanctions aimed at PDVSA.[59] While these initial sanctions were mainly aimed to block the company's access to US financial markets, later sanctions extended restrictions to prohibit all trade between companies under US jurisdiction and PDVSA. By 2020, sanctions had halted oil trade between the US and Venezuela.[60] Since then, limited trade has resumed beginning in October of 2023.[61]
Recovery efforts
Beginning in 2020 Iran began assisting Venezuela with maintenance and repair of refining facilities. As of 2022[update] Iranian state firms were negotiating to repair Venezuela's largest refinery complex, the Paraguaná Refinery Complex which has a capacity of 955,000 barrels per day.[62]
Gallery
Shortages leave shelves empty in this Venezuelan store.
Shortages of gasoline in Venezuela in March 2017
Venezuela's Yearly Petroleum Exports Demonstrating The Recent and Continued Decline in Exportation[63]
Figure Depicting Venezuelan Exports and the Interdependence Between the U.S. and Venezuela[64]
1 2 Cederlöf, Gustav (2023). The Low-Carbon Contradiction: Energy Transition, Geopolitics, and the Infrastructural State in Cuba. Critical environments: nature, science, and politics. Oakland, California: University of California Press. ISBN978-0-520-39313-4.
↑ Corrales, Javier; Romero, Carlos (2013). U.S.-Venezuela relations since the 1990s: coping with mid-level security threats. New York: Routledge. pp.79–81. ISBN978-0415895248.
↑ "Venezuela pumps below OPEC target". Al Jazeera. 21 November 2017. Retrieved 23 November 2017. The South American country's oil output hit a 28-year low in October as state-owned oil giant PDVSA struggled to find the funds to drill wells, maintain oilfields and keep pipelines and ports working ... Venezuela pumped 1.863 million bpd in October
The economy of Venezuela is based primarily on petroleum, as the country holds the largest crude oil supply in the world. Venezuela was historically among the wealthiest economies in South America, particularly from the 1950s to 1980s. During the 21st century, under the leadership of socialist populist Hugo Chávez and his successor Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan economy has collapsed, prompting millions of citizens to flee Venezuela. GDP has fallen by 80 percent in less than a decade. The economy is characterized by corruption, good shortages, unemployment, mismanagement of the oil sector, and since 2014, hyperinflation.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is a cartel enabling the co-operation of leading oil-producing and oil-dependent countries in order to collectively influence the global oil market and maximize profit. It was founded on 14 September 1960, in Baghdad by the first five members which are Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. The organization, which currently comprises 12 member countries, accounted for an estimated 30 percent of global oil production. A 2022 report further details that OPEC member countries were responsible for approximately 38 percent of it. Additionally, it is estimated that 79.5 percent of the world's proven oil reserves are located within OPEC nations, with the Middle East alone accounting for 67.2 percent of OPEC's total reserves.
A drop in oil production in the wake of the Iranian revolution led to an energy crisis in 1979. Although the global oil supply only decreased by approximately four percent, the oil markets' reaction raised the price of crude oil drastically over the next 12 months, more than doubling it to $39.50 per barrel ($248/m3). The sudden increase in price was connected with fuel shortages similar to the 1973 oil crisis.
Petroleum politics have been an increasingly important aspect of diplomacy since the rise of the petroleum industry in the Middle East in the early 20th century. As competition continues for a vital resource, the strategic calculations of major and minor countries alike place prominent emphasis on the pumping, refining, transport, sale and use of petroleum products.
Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. is the Venezuelan state-owned oil and natural gas company. It has activities in exploration, production, refining and exporting oil as well as exploration and production of natural gas. Since its founding on January 1, 1976, with the nationalization of the Venezuelan oil industry, PDVSA has dominated the oil industry of Venezuela, the world's fifth largest oil exporter.
The price of oil, or the oil price, generally refers to the spot price of a barrel of benchmark crude oil—a reference price for buyers and sellers of crude oil such as West Texas Intermediate (WTI), Brent Crude, Dubai Crude, OPEC Reference Basket, Tapis crude, Bonny Light, Urals oil, Isthmus, and Western Canadian Select (WCS). Oil prices are determined by global supply and demand, rather than any country's domestic production level.
For further details see the "Energy crisis" series by Facts on File.
Venezuela has the largest conventional oil reserves and the second-largest natural gas reserves in the Western Hemisphere. In addition Venezuela has non-conventional oil deposits approximately equal to the world's reserves of conventional oil. Venezuela is also amongst world leaders in hydroelectric production, supplying a majority of the nation's electrical power through the process.
The nationalization of oil supplies refers to the process of confiscation of oil production operations and their property, generally for the purpose of obtaining more revenue from oil for the governments of oil-producing countries. This process, which should not be confused with restrictions on crude oil exports, represents a significant turning point in the development of oil policy. Nationalization eliminates private business operations—in which private international companies control oil resources within oil-producing countries—and transfers them to the ownership of the governments of those countries. Once these countries become the sole owners of these resources, they have to decide how to maximize the net present value of their known stock of oil in the ground. Several key implications can be observed as a result of oil nationalization. "On the home front, national oil companies are often torn between national expectations that they should 'carry the flag' and their own ambitions for commercial success, which might mean a degree of emancipation from the confines of a national agenda."
Petroleum has been a major industry in the United States since the 1859 Pennsylvania oil rush around Titusville, Pennsylvania. Commonly characterized as "Big Oil", the industry includes exploration, production, refining, transportation, and marketing of oil and natural gas products. The leading crude oil-producing areas in the United States in 2023 were Texas, followed by the offshore federal zone of the Gulf of Mexico, North Dakota and New Mexico.
The proven oil reserves in Venezuela are recognized as the largest in the world, totaling 300 billion barrels (4.8×1010 m3) as of 1 January 2014. The 2019 edition of the BP Statistical Review of World Energy reports the total proved reserves of 303.3 billion barrels for Venezuela (slightly more than Saudi Arabia's 297.7 billion barrels).
From his election in 1998 until his death in March 2013, the administration of the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez proposed and enacted populist economic policies as part of his Bolivarian Revolution.
Iran is an energy superpower and the petroleum industry in Iran plays an important part in it. In 2004, Iran produced 5.1 percent of the world's total crude oil, which generated revenues of US$25 billion to US$30 billion and was the country's primary source of foreign currency. At 2006 levels of production, oil proceeds represented about 18.7% of gross domestic product (GDP). However, the importance of the hydrocarbon sector to Iran's economy has been far greater. The oil and gas industry has been the engine of economic growth, directly affecting public development projects, the government's annual budget, and most foreign exchange sources.
The 2010s oil glut was a significant surplus of crude oil that started in 2014–2015 and accelerated in 2016, with multiple causes. They include general oversupply as unconventional US and Canadian tight oil production reached critical volumes, geopolitical rivalries among oil-producing nations, falling demand across commodities markets due to the deceleration of the Chinese economy, and possible restraint of long-term demand as environmental policy promotes fuel efficiency and steers an increasing share of energy consumption away from fossil fuels.
India–Venezuela relations are the international relations that exist between the Republic of India and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela was a founding member of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1946.
The Venezuelan economic crisis is the deterioration that began to be noticed in the main macroeconomic indicators from the year 2012, and whose consequences continue, not only economically but also politically and socially. The April 2019 International Monetary Fund (IMF) World Economic Outlook described Venezuela as being in a "wartime economy". For the fifth consecutive year, Bloomberg rated Venezuela first on its misery index in 2019.
Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country located on the northern coast of South America. It is known for its large proven oil reserves. Before oil was discovered, Venezuelan production was primarily agriculture, such as coffee and cocoa. After the first commercial drilling for oil in 1917, oil production increased drastically due to the oil boom of the 1920s and was later furthered by World War II, as Venezuela supplied oil to the United States. From 1958 to 1989, democratic leaders attempted to use the large oil revenues to invest in other industry through various policies such as import substitution and other programs designed to diversify the Venezuelan economy away from a highly specialised export range. These attempts, for the most part, were unsuccessful as Venezuelan government revenues continued to be highly volatile due to the fluctuating price of oil, which was reflected especially throughout the 1980s due to the oil price crash. After struggling with fiscal debts due to a variety of trade protection measures and other policies, the President of 1989, President Andrés Pérez, worked with the International Monetary Fund in an attempt to rectify some of the issues plaguing the Venezuelan government. Perez was eventually unsuccessful due to political instability due to proposed austerity measures, and Hugo Chávez was later elected in 1998, after a defeat of both major political parties. The Chávez government begun enacting various socialist programs, such as free education and healthcare. These programs would continue up until Chávez's death in 2013. President Nicolás Maduro, Chávez's successor, was elected on 14 April 2013 and pledged to continue Chávez's work. However, due to hyperinflation, shortages of food and medicine and political instability, about 3 million Venezuelans have fled the country since 2015.
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