Word: venezuela
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Venezuela's revolutionaries never did seize that stage by arms. They took it via votes, when left-wing President Hugo Chavez was elected in 1998. Rodriguez became Energy Minister and then in 2002 won the role of his dreams as president of Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), the nation's $46 billion state-run oil monopoly and one of the U.S.'s top three suppliers. Instead of theorizing from a mountain lair, Rodriguez is perched in an office above Caracas, helping shape the world oil market. "I never imagined I'd be sitting here," Rodriguez tells TIME. "But then...
...billion PDVSA plan to revive and expand oil production while budgeting almost $2 billion a year for antipoverty initiatives ranging from potable-water to literacy projects. Making PDVSA (called Pedevesa) an oil firm cum development agency will be daunting, even with crude prices hovering near $40 a bbl. Venezuela's oil industry has been waylaid by political turmoil, including a reckless near shutdown by anti-Chavez managers and other employees at PDVSA in 2002 and 2003, intended to paralyze the industry and force Chavez's resignation. The stoppage, which Rodriguez calls "sabotage," at one point slashed the nation...
Americans should be watching too. Venezuela, which sits atop 78 billion bbl. of oil--and as much as 270 billion bbl. of extra-heavy crude--is the world's fifth largest oil exporter. It's also a founding member of the OPEC oil cartel (the 11-nation Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries). In past decades, to please consumers in the U.S.--PDVSA's biggest market, which buys two-thirds of its exports--Venezuela often ignored OPEC's guidelines, stepping up production even when oil prices hit rock bottom in the late 1990s. But Chavez, a harsh critic...
Chavez--who faces a national recall referendum on Aug. 15--warned the U.S. this year that he'll turn off the oil spigot if the Bush Administration threatens to invade Venezuela over either politics or oil. U.S. officials dismiss that notion as absurd, but Rodriguez echoes the concern: "Many people here fear what happened in Iraq could happen to Venezuela." Still, Rodriguez, an attorney and a classical-music lover, emphasizes that Venezuela "doesn't want price volatility" and wants to continue being the U.S.'s most reliable supplier. "There is no contradiction between a strong alliance with OPEC," he says...
...supplies almost half the government's revenues, it once ran itself like a private corporation--acquiring subsidiaries like U.S.-based CITGO--and gained a global reputation as a model oil firm. But at home it was viewed as a den of arrogant, pampered technocrats--and a cookie jar for Venezuela's elite, whose corruption has left two-thirds of the population in poverty. Among the poor was Rodriguez's farming family. It made him all the more receptive to economists like Bernard Mommer, a German-born Marxist who taught Rodriguez at Caracas' Central University. As a Congressman, Rodriguez chafed...