Venezuela and Russia. An uneasy energy relationship?

Since the arrival of the Bolivarian Revolution and the socialism to Venezuela, aside from China, Russia has gradually displaced Washington as a key partner of the socialist government, first during the whole Chavez era (until his death) and now under the Maduro administration (although certainly in a lesser extent in the last recent years), making Venezuela some kind of a piece for Moscow’s geopolitical chess, especially through the use of energy, oil and gas, to reinforce its prominence as vital ally of Caracas. 

In this sense, the russian oil and gas giants GAZPROM and ROSNEFT have become the main and almost sole active partners of PDVSA in diverse joint ventures all across the venezuelan oil landscape, along with chinese companies and few remaining european such as France’s TOTAL and Italy’s ENI, leaving an important ground for Russia to expand as the most prominent energy geopolitical player in today’s Venezuela. Actually, ROSNEFT has become the most prominent russian oil partner of PDVSA, more than what GAZPROM was in the past previous years in joint ventures in Venezuela. 

And it seems that, aside from all the worsening situation of PDVSA and the country, Moscow would still be considering Caracas as a good bargain and a prize to control, especially now that the south american geopolitical landscape has been shifting from previously dominant leftism to a more pro Washington right majority of governments recently elected, with the value added of being Venezuela still the largest non conventional oil reserve in the world, although facing important problems in terms of refining , production and marketing. 

Certainly, the reinforcement of ties between Caracas and the Kremlin in the oil and gas sector has been important for Venezuela given the prominent position of Russia in the global energy landscape, but this hasn’t been translated in a wider acceptance of Moscow or even China as main partners of PDVSA and Venezuela, mostly due to their alleged stealth interference in domestic politics, and the important cultural differences in this case between Russia and Venezuela, specifically seen in the oil and gas sector, when it comes to negotiating deals and joint ventures, most of the times qualified by venezuelan oil workers as more beneficial to russian interests and not precisely to Venezuela and PDVSA, because of the visible position of primacy of russian companies financing projects in venezuelan oil sector. 

Therefore, based on these allegations, in venezuelan public opinion and between national oil academics and experts, the common assessment of this relationship is that it has been an uneasy one, a relationship where Venezuela and PDVSA have been losing sovereignty and autonomy, due to the high levels of indebtedness to Moscow, contradicting the longstanding anti-imperialist posture of the Bolivarian Revolution against the U.S., since for many in Venezuela, the country and its vast oil and gas reserves are at the mercy of russian global aspirations of influence and have become a pawn to the Kremlin against the White House. 

Overall, and at the end of the day, what remains to be seen with regards to the future of the role of Russia in Venezuela is if either with a potential regime change in Caracas, forced or peacefully notwithstanding, Moscow will follow either the Libya scenario (this is, negotiate its existing deals with a new non socialist government) or the syrian path (keep in power by all means possible the socialist regime to safeguard its investments in the long term), and if in a pure pragmatic way, given the close negotiations between Washington and Moscow, the Kremlin will return Venezuela to Washington’s traditional sphere of influence.