Venezuela's two most powerful women pitch competing visions to investors

Venezuela's acting president Delcy Rodríguez is due to address an international investment summit in Miami on March 25, a day after opposition leader María Corina Machado made her own appeal to the energy industry at a separate conference in Houston, throwing into sharp relief the struggle for investor confidence between the country's rival power centres.

Rodríguez is scheduled to appear at the FII Priority Summit, a two-day forum organised by the Saudi-backed FII Institute and held at the Faena Hotel in Miami Beach. She is expected to take part in a panel titled "The New LATAM Order," which will address macroeconomic prospects for Latin America and the Caribbean, followed by a fireside chat moderated by FII acting chief executive Richard Attias. The summit, which closes on March 27 with an address by US President Donald Trump, has drawn political, financial and business leaders from across the globe.

Ahead of her appearance, Rodríguez has sought to reassure potential investors that Venezuela offers sufficient protections for capital. "You have guarantees, you have legal certainty, political security, stability and peace of mind so your investments can be developed fully, not only in the hydrocarbons sector, where there are many opportunities, but also in the mining sector," she told investors at an event at the presidential palace in Caracas earlier this week. Washington's oil embargo, lifted earlier this year following the capture of Nicolas Maduro, had cut Venezuelan output sharply. 

The damage wrought by years of US sanctions remains evident: Venezuela's oil export revenues stood at just $18.2bn last year, central bank data showed earlier this week, down from $18.4bn the year before and far below the levels the country once commanded. The country is now working to recover to the roughly 1.2mn barrels per day it pumped before sanctions took full effect.

Venezuela holds roughly 17% of the world's proven oil reserves, predominantly extra-heavy crude suited to certain US Gulf coast refineries. Yet output has plummeted from 2.5mn barrels per day in the mid-2010s to approximately 1mn b/d currently, following years of sanctions, capital flight, mismanagement and operational deterioration.

Machado, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning opposition leader, struck a notably different tone on March 24 at CERAWeek, the flagship energy industry conference in Houston. She welcomed the growing attention from foreign companies but warned that further inflows depended on sweeping improvements to the country's legal framework, including new hydrocarbon legislation. "I'm here to attract attention to Venezuela, not delay it," she told Reuters ahead of her address.

Machado put Venezuela's long-run production ceiling at 5mn barrels per day, contingent on $150bn in capital and a wholesale transformation of the country's legal and institutional framework – none of which, she argued, could be secured before Venezuela holds a free presidential election. She backed continued US control over the proceeds from Venezuelan oil sales, arguing that Treasury's handling of those funds since January was a necessary check against graft.

Asked whether investors should engage with her or with the Rodríguez administration, Machado replied that it depended on whether they wanted "to refer to the past, or to the future."
That dynamic reflects a broader awkwardness for Machado. Despite her prominent role in the opposition movement that had long lobbied the US for help to bring down Maduro, the Trump administration has so far opted to work with Rodríguez’s interim government, largely sidelining the opposition leader in its dealings with Caracas. Trump has spoken warmly of Rodríguez, hailing her as a "terrific person who is doing a great job" – an imprimatur that sits uneasily with Machado's supporters, given her years of struggle against the Chavista regime Rodríguez helped run.

Her appearance came as senior energy industry figures made clear that the legislative changes so far had fallen well short of what they needed to sanction major new projects. ConocoPhillips chief executive Ryan Lance, who also addressed CERAWeek, said Venezuela needed to "completely rewire" its fiscal system and described recent legislative changes as "woefully inadequate." Chevron, the only US oil major to have remained in Venezuela during the Chavista era, has similarly signalled that the current framework does not yet meet the bar for large-scale investment. "There's still things that need to happen to encourage investment at the scale that people would like to see," chief executive Mike Wirth said.

Venezuela's National Assembly approved a wide-ranging reform of the country's main oil law in January, giving international companies more freedom to manage production and market their output independently. Industry executives have broadly said the reforms do not yet go far enough to meet Trump's stated goal of drawing $100bn in investment to the country. Rodríguez told investors this week that a new mining law would be approved this week following its second parliamentary reading.

Not all companies are holding back. Spanish oil firm Repsol said on the sidelines of CERAWeek that it planned to triple its gross crude production in Venezuela to 150,000 barrels per day over the next three years, according to Reuters.

Machado said she remained committed to the three-phase transition plan set out by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and that elections, once called, would take nine months to organise. She added that under a future democratic government, investors would be able to book reserves, access international arbitration and participate in a privatised electricity sector. She also said she wanted Houston-based refiner Citgo Petroleum, a PDVSA subsidiary whose ownership has been subject to a contested auction process that has yet to receive a final determination from the US Treasury, to remain in Venezuelan hands.