Venezuelan political leader Maria Corina Machado is pitching her country as a top U.S. oil partner and "beacon of hope and wealth creation for this hemisphere" after she said the Trump administration's arrest of former dictator Nicolás Maduro has opened up a "new era" of free markets.
Addressing several thousand oil and energy executives at the CERAWeek conference in Houston, Machado, who until recently lived in the U.S. as a political exile, predicted that Venezuela will soon be a critical contributor to U.S. prosperity.
She thanked President Donald Trump and Energy Secretary Chris Wright for laying the groundwork for a "new chapter" in Venezuela, which she said will greatly benefit the U.S. She touted Venezuela's energy potential, calling its reserves the "largest proven oil reserve in the world" and its natural gas supply the seventh-largest globally.
"For decades, all this was locked away by ideology and corruption; that time is ending," she said, adding, "A new era has already begun with an upside of a completely different order of magnitude."
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Machado said that since the Trump administration's covert operation to topple the socialist Venezuelan dictator, "important steps have been taken to re-engage Venezuela's oil and gas sector and begin addressing years of institutional decline and corruption." She predicted that Venezuela would soon "turn from the criminal hub of the Americas" and instead become a "driving force in the global energy sector."
"After Jan. 3, we finally feel that freedom is at the threshold; we are there," she said.
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Though current Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez is a lieutenant of Maduro, Machado predicted that the next election, which she said will likely be at least nine months away, will show "overwhelming" support for democratic free-market capitalism. She vowed that the government would "get out of the way," saying, "We have learned the cost of socialism… We want open markets."
"It takes at least nine months, or 40 weeks, from a technical perspective to have perfect, free and fair elections. But they will take place. And when they do, you will see the awakening of a country that will turn into the beacon of hope and wealth creation for this hemisphere."
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After her address, Machado received a standing ovation from the auditorium full of oil and energy leaders. On a panel discussing her speech, S&P Global Vice Chairman Daniel Yergin said Machado "answered a lot of the questions" that energy executives had.
However, another panelist, Luisa Palacios, a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy, said Venezuela still has a "long way" to go before enough confidence builds in the country to attract significant oil investment.
