According to the survey of the US Energy Agency, Venezuela's oil reserves are as high as 300 billion barrels, more than the Arab oil giants, 7 times the size of the United States, the world's largest oil storage country, its area is only 900,000 square kilometers, only twice the size of our Sichuan Province, and the population is indeed only more than one-third of Sichuan. And unlike Arab countries that only have oil, Venezuela belongs to Latin American countries, with nearly half of the country's area devoted to arable land and rich in top-quality coffee and cocoa beans. It stands to reason that such a country with natural resources and agriculture should live without food and clothing. For example, Brunei, Kuwait, Qatar, Dubai.
Geographical location of Venezuela
In fact, Venezuela used to be a rich country, living the same life as the tyrant countries in the Middle East, but in the past ten years, the political turmoil, corruption, and public security corruption of the Venezuelan government have led to serious inflation. In 2016 alone, prices rose by 800%, and it cost 14 million glass vals to buy a chicken. A chicken can be carried in one hand, and the currency you have to carry in a sack. There is no fixed price for the items in the store, they are all based on the price at the time of payment, because the inflation is too strong, and the price may increase several times an hour.
With the financial crisis, the crime rate in Venezuela is 18 times that of the United States, a teacher living in the capital of Venezuela, Caracas, earns only seven US troops a month, and this money can only buy a kilogram of cheese and a box of raw eggs in the local area, there is no way to survive normally, and more than 80% of the country's people are currently living in poverty. Even if you have money, it is of little use here, because Venezuela is now seriously short of materials, there is no money to import all kinds of living materials needed by the people, supermarkets are often empty, how did Venezuela mix from an oil-rich country to the current poverty? Let's talk briefly about it today.
Venezuela
The name "Venezuela" comes from the Italian translation of "Little Venice", which was named after Italian explorers who saw the floating village inhabited by the local Native Americans and thought of their hometown Venice. In order to attract more European investors, it was advertised as "Little Venice". After that, due to the long-term rule of Spain, it was not independent until 1830, and the newly independent United States said that it would learn from the United States and follow the American constitutional assembly system, but from the actual effect, he learned the violent line of the French Revolution, but they were not as lucky as France, and there were no big figures like Napoleon in France, resulting in many factions of domestic military leaders, and from independence to the 1950s, the Venezuelan government was military or dictatorship.
In 1958, the dictatorial Venezuelan military government was overthrown, Venezuela ushered in real democracy, Venezuela before the discovery of oil, has always been an agricultural country, accounting for more than half of GDP, but after the discovery of oil in 1920, suddenly became a rich man, like an upstart, even in the dictatorship special period from 1950 to 1958, the annual GDP continued to grow, per capita and developed countries in Europe are not the same, GDP is the fourth in the world, The standard of living of the people is predictable, and the future seems bright.
After the democratic government came to power after 1958, in addition to being the country with the largest oil reserves in the world, other natural gas, gold, silver, copper, iron reserves are all in the forefront of the world, a proper resource power, is a rich second generation born with a golden key, farming, mining, light industry, heavy industry, so many industries any industry to do a good job, to establish a complete industrial system of the country is no problem at all, but the Venezuelan government did only choose the most trouble-free, that is, export oil.
The 1960s-1970s were the golden age of rapid development of the oil industry, after two oil crises, oil prices soared, and the Venezuelan government earned a lot of foreign exchange by exporting a large amount of oil, compared with other Latin American countries in the same period.
At that time, the Venezuelan country was vibrant, full of vitality, all aspects were very good, but also the happiest time for the Venezuelan people, ordinary office workers are eating steak every day, driving Mercedes-Benz BMW to work, shoppers fly to Paris every day London sweep the major stores, there is no reason, like is to buy buy.
The time came to the middle of 1980, because the oil tycoon countries in the Middle East increased production, oil prices plummeted, which caused the collapse of the Venezuelan economy with oil exports as the main economy, which caused social unrest, the oil economy brought about by the elite, corruption, widened the gap between the rich and the poor in society, and the chaos lasted for more than a decade, when a young officer raised the banner of the uprising, the slogan was to overthrow the corrupt government authorities and narrow the gap between the rich and the poor.
Chavez
In 1999, Chávez won the presidential election, and immediately after coming to power, he promised the slogan before the election, to give the people of the country a good life, so he opened the universal medical care free, education free, housing free, and even you buy a car to refuel for free, as well as import a large number of living materials, lower the national price, 1/3 of the country's people accept direct government subsidies, such high welfare makes the bottom Venezuelan people directly full of happiness.
In 2013, Venezuela was named the happiest country in the world. This makes the people of the whole country worship Chávez as a god, but although the welfare of the people is good, the expenditure of welfare requires a lot of money, so what channels does the money come from?
It turned out that Chávez nationalized all the oil industry, and all the money originally earned by foreign enterprises to invest is now owned by the Venezuelan state, so that there has always been money to pay welfare to the people of the country. Oil alone was not enough, and then all large industries such as communications, cement, and steel were nationalized, and most of the money earned by industries brought by foreign technology were collected into their own pockets, and the Venezuelan government suddenly became the richest country in Latin America, thus burying a major hidden danger for itself.
However, Chávez was fortunate that from 1999 to 2013 during his tenure, oil prices rose steadily, and the Venezuelan people followed for more than a decade. Due to the nationalization of oil leading to corruption, most of the cronies were placed directly involved in management, resulting in a sharp decline in productivity and economic problems began to emerge, but only high oil prices did not collapse the economy for the time being.
Maduro
After Chávez died in 2013, his student Maduro promised to continue the teacher's previous welfare policy after coming to power, but in 2014, the United States, which had long been unhappy with Venezuela, came with a heavy punch, releasing breakthrough news on shale oil technology exploitation, to become the largest oil exporter, the oil bigwigs in the Middle East were unhappy when they heard it, in order to compete with the United States, increasing oil production led to a direct collapse in international oil prices, which made the Venezuelan government that only relied on oil to eat instantly collapsed "what are you doing",
In fact, as early as the 1980s oil crisis, Venezuela almost died, fortunately at home is okay, wait until the recovery of oil prices to avoid a disaster, other Middle Eastern tyrant countries have therefore turned to diversified development, but unfortunately the committee still only exploits oil and does nothing else, all kinds of industries, agriculture is not vigorously developed, even a roll of toilet paper has to rely on imports, is to sell oil to make money, 95% of domestic income all from oil, 90% of commodities all from imports, so as long as oil once plummeted, The government will become an imperial era to a dark age.
Another reason is that after the nationalization of the oil industry, many foreign companies withdrew their investment and took away key technologies, although Venezuela is the world's largest oil reserves, but most of them are deep underground revisits, exploitation requires higher technology and costs, must rely on Western oil companies to help, Chávez's forced nationalization, so that foreign capital no longer dare to come in to invest. Equipment alone, without talent, will not mine.
Therefore, once the price of oil plummets, the Venezuelan economy will collapse with it, and in serious cases, it will not even be able to generate electricity, let alone continue to dig for oil. Even if the price is now stable back, but Venezuelan production still can't get up, high light reserves are useless, and the second president Chávez and Maduro are anti-American, everywhere with the United States to sing the opposite tune, provoke who is not good, a small country to provoke the world's first United States, resulting in long-term US economic sanctions, can not get Western oil exploitation technology, although our country and Russia have oil technology, but everyone dare not invest, because Venezuela foreign investment restrictions are particularly strict, So this leads to a situation where no one will exploit oil.
Without oil income how to pay welfare to the people of the country, the way is to keep printing money, so inflation has been getting more and more serious, so it has been a vicious circle into the black hole, the official glass Val currency has plummeted 99.999%, paper is more expensive than money, ordinary people can only exchange a million wages a month for less than $10. The Venezuelan government has always relied on our country's borrowing from Russia to maintain the country's operation. The foreign debt has exceeded $150 billion. The country is now on the verge of bankruptcy.