It’s worth noting that much of the problem with Venezuela’s oil industry predates sanctions. It started with using positions in the state oil company as political favors to shore up support for the current government in the armed forces and elsewhere. So having competent people in there could definitely help Venezuela’s economy. That said, I would personally hope that they could find a way to grow besides yet more fossil fuel. It’s a curse disguised as a blessing, not to mention the CO2 effects.
Oil exports suddenly dropped right after the illegal sanctions were introduced. Seems like a very weird coincidence that this would be caused by previous corruption.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1240462/crude-oil-exports-venezuela/
My understanding is that it wasn’t until 2017 that Venezuela had any sanctions on its oil exports. For that matter, the sanctions in general were pretty targeted. I’m hitting a paywall with your link, but I found another source without a paywall. It looks like they were a couple of years into a collapse in exports before sanctions were passed. This was all happening with a slide in prices that started in 2016. The stats I linked are in barrels, so they shouldn’t be directly affected by oil prices.
