Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, announced on Sunday that her administration has finalized “a contract to export the first molecule of gas,” which she expects to be followed by more, with the goal of transforming the country into “a major gas power,” in addition to its existing status as an oil power. This comes after Venezuela recently began exporting crude oil to the United States under a new framework of relations following the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
“We have already finalized a contract to export the first molecule of gas from Venezuela, and now we are going for more,” she stated at an event with a group of workers at the Puerto La Cruz refinery on the coast of Anzoátegui state.
Rodríguez also expressed Caracas’s intention to increase gas production and exports, arguing that, as with oil, “Venezuela can also be a major gas power,” while maintaining, in both cases, the “untouchable and intact principles” she attributed to the late former president Hugo Chávez, “such as energy sovereignty.”
“These oil and gas reserves must be transformed into happiness, development, prosperity, and hope for the Venezuelan people,” she declared, adding that her interim government has asked the National Assembly to allow the exploitation of Venezuela’s subsurface resources “for the economic and social well-being of Venezuela.”
The announcement of this gas export contract comes less than two weeks after Rodríguez informed the National Council of Productive Economy that her government had signed a liquefied natural gas marketing contract.
This same week, the Venezuelan Parliament approved in its first reading an amendment to the hydrocarbons law that opens up oil exploitation to the private sector, amidst a political rapprochement with the United States following the US attack on Caracas that resulted in more than a hundred deaths and the capture of Maduro.
