By Rodrigo Acuña

February 28, 2026

Venezuela has lost its sovereignty as an independent nation-state. In late January — just a few weeks after the Trump administration bombed the country, reportedly killing between 100 and 120 people, damaging 463 homes, and kidnapping President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores — Venezuela’s National Assembly, which is dominated by pro-Maduro lawmakers, approved reforms to the Organic Hydrocarbons Law. This set of reforms moves Venezuela’s oil industry away from state-controlled exploration and drilling by Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA, the state-owned oil company), and joint ventures between PDVSA and foreign oil companies, by authorizing private companies — foreign and domestic — to participate directly in upstream hydrocarbon activities (exploration, production, transportation, and initial storage). This change to the country’s hydrocarbon’s law is viewed as a dramatic shift from the strict nationalization model in place in Venezuela since the early 2000s.

Acting President Delcy Rodríguez, who first proposed the reforms, claimed they would allow investment flows to be directed toward new oil fields, as well as fields where no investment or infrastructure has previously existed. She said that the reform would incorporate production models from the Anti-Blockade Law (which aimed to attract foreign investments into Venezuela in order to get around the U.S. economic blockade) so that “investment flows are incorporated and shield our hydrocarbons.” Emphasizing Venezuela’s right to have trade relations with China, Russia, Cuba, and Iran, Rodríguez added: “If one day I have to go to Washington as president in charge, I will do it standing, walking, not crawling.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. Rodríguez is now following Washington’s dictates and the new hydrocarbons law is a reflection of that. According to a leaked video of a meeting between Caracas officials and social media influencers, seven days after the U.S. attack, Rodríguez told gatherers via phone that, after Maduro was kidnapped, the U.S. military called her to inform her that the president and his wife had been “assassinated.” The Guardian reported that Rodríguez claimed that “she and other members of his cabinet were given 15 minutes to decide whether to comply with Washington’s demands — ‘or they would kill us.’”

Rodríguez claimed that both she and her brother replied that they “were ready to share the same fate” adding, “we stand by that statement to this day, because the threats and the blackmail are constant, and we have to proceed with patience and strategic prudence.”

Rodríguez’s statement about Washington’s threats is not out of sync with Donald Trump’s first comments after Maduro’s kidnapping: “If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” were Trump’s exact words.enezuela has lost its sovereignty as an independent nation-state. In late January — just a few weeks after the Trump administration bombed the country, reportedly killing between 100 and 120 people, damaging 463 homes, and kidnapping President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores — Venezuela’s National Assembly, which is dominated by pro-Maduro lawmakers, approved reforms to the Organic Hydrocarbons Law. This set of reforms moves Venezuela’s oil industry away from state-controlled exploration and drilling by Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA, the state-owned oil company), and joint ventures between PDVSA and foreign oil companies, by authorizing private companies — foreign and domestic — to participate directly in upstream hydrocarbon activities (exploration, production, transportation, and initial storage). This change to the country’s hydrocarbon’s law is viewed as a dramatic shift from the strict nationalization model in place in Venezuela since the early 2000s.

Speaking to a group of oil workers in Puerto La Cruz toward the end of January, Rodríguez returned to the issue of the pressure that Trump was placing on her government. “Enough already of Washington’s orders over politicians in Venezuela,” she said, adding that Venezuelans should resolve their own differences, and that the country had already paid an extremely high price for having to confront fascism at home.

But the violence unleashed by the domestic opposition on Venezuela since it first carried out an unsuccessful coup against Hugo Chávez (Maduro’s predecessor) in April 2002 pales in contrast to the aggression the U.S. delivered on January 3. Worse, as Roger Carstens, a U.S. diplomat, retired Army Special Forces lieutenant colonel, and best known for previously acting as a prisoner swap negotiator with officials in Caracas, told “60 Minutes,” if Venezuela’s new government does not follow Trump’s dictates, they should expect further armed aggression — a task which can easily be achieved given how the U.S. military was able to neutralize Venezuela’s air defense capabilities.

Venezuela is “currently living under a kind of military occupation, although not with soldiers physically on the territory, but with imminent, evident, and close military pressure and threat over the current authorities of the country,” Carlos Dürich, a lecturer at the Center for Communal Studies, Learning, and Research at the Kléber Ramírez Polytechnic University in the state of Mérida, told Truthout. “That means that the policies followed since January 3, both in terms of legislative reforms and even in decision-making regarding amnesties and so on, have been strongly influenced by that reality.”

An outspoken critic of the changes made to the Organic Hydrocarbons Law, Dürich says the reforms “severely affect the sovereignty of the country.”

“Previously, a minority partner (partner B) could not administer, plan, or develop oil fields,” he said. “Now they have the authority to do so and can also commercialize crude independently and even create accounts abroad to deposit these resources, which severely limits the Ministry’s and Central Bank’s auditing capacity.”

Regarding taxation of the country’s oil industry, Dürich said that taxes have been “drastically reduced” given that, prior to the current changes, the Venezuelan state imposed five or six taxes in contrast to the current “consolidation” of a “single 15 percent tax, which can even be lower.”

Dürich added that, while the state is “formally entitled to 30 percent” of royalties, the new reform has introduced the possibility of “reducing them with no minimum floor, meaning they could effectively reach zero.”

Prominent Venezuelan historian Luis Britto García is also highly critical of the new Organic Hydrocarbons Law. A long-time supporter of the Bolivarian revolution, Britto García recently wrote that “the previous law allowed the nation to receive between 60 percent and 65 percent in royalties and taxes, while the provisions of the recently amended law allow multinationals to reduce this contribution to below 15 percent.”

In his view, the new legislative changes “tend to diminish the Republic’s exclusive jurisdiction over hydrocarbon exploitation, enabling a gradual privatization of the industry.” With a serious reduction to the revenues generated by Venezuela’s resources, argued Britto García, eventually, the financial management PDVSA and the republic itself will be jeopardized.

David Paravisini, a Venezuelan energy expert and university professor at the Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela (UBV), has a very different perspective. Paravisini argues the new Organic Hydrocarbons Law is a “major step forward for Venezuela” in light of U.S. economic sanctions. Paravisini noted that it was “developed in an environment in which companies and investors from the United States, Europe, and other parts of the world were able to express their opinions regarding the draft legislation.” Paravisini added that the legislation allows foreign companies to invest in the Venezuelan oil industry without forming “any kind of partnership with the national oil company.”

Commenting on social media on the new relationship between Washington and Rodríguez’s government, U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) recently stated, “Trump took Venezuela’s oil at gunpoint, and gave it to one of his biggest campaign donors” — Vitol, a Geneva-based energy and commodity trading firm whose U.S. arm is headquartered in Houston, Texas. In 2024, one of Vitol’s senior traders, John Addison, donated $6 million to Trump’s reelection campaign.

Asked to comment on the validity of Senator Murphy’s remarks, Paravisini said they “have no basis, but instead form part of political propaganda.” He added that while the U.S. had kidnapped Maduro and Flores, the action was a “failure” given that “it did not succeed in removing the foundation of the government, nor did it manage to change the [hydrocarbons] law.”

Contradictory statements, such as the one given by Paravisini, are not uncommon in Venezuela.

Speaking to NBC News in mid-February, Delcy Rodríguez was asked if she was “taking direction from President Trump.” She replied that she had had two dialogues over the phone with Trump that were “very respectful conversations,” and that she “must be really grateful for this level of cooperation” that they are “going to build together.”

Questioned if she supported “the way the United States is carrying out sales of Venezuelan oil and dispersing its proceeds,” Rodríguez replied that the sale of oil was taking place in the framework of any buyer who comes to Venezuela and buys oil. What the buyer then decides to do with that oil (in this case the United States) said Rodríguez, is up to them.

Recently, and for the first time in years, Venezuelan oil is being transported to Israel by the Bazan Group, a major Israeli refiner. “In the last month,” Bloomberg reported on February 11, “cargoes” of Venezuelan oil “have been sold to buyers in India, Spain, the U.S. and now Israel.” As these developments occur, Cuba, Venezuela’s long-time ally, isn’t receiving Venezuelan oil and has entered one of its worst economic crises since the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, as Trump has imposed a total oil blockade on the island in order to overthrow its government.

In Caracas, when asked by NBC News if there would be transparency in how Venezuela spent its oil revenues, Rodríguez replied that shortly after she was sworn in, she set up “two sovereign funds.” The first is to guarantee the health and education of Venezuelans while the second aims to guarantee infrastructure. Her government, she said, had “started a new app” so people could “log in and see exactly where the funds are going” and “how they are being used.”

If Rodríguez’s interview was difficult to watch, the one given by her brother, Congressional President Jorge Rodríguez, was far worse.

Speaking to pro-MAGA media outlet Newsmax on February 10, Jorge Rodríguez was asked how his government was handling leading Venezuela “in coordination with the United States, which is completely antithetical to everything that your government has stood for … for the past 25, 26 years.” Claiming that “interim President Delcy Rodríguez is totally in charge of Venezuela and its sovereignty,” Rodríguez conceded that the relationship between Washington and Caracas was “very intense,” however, “in the last 36 days, we have had a very good understanding and relationship working with the government of the United States.”

Conceding that his government was in regular conversations with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Rodríguez said the future looked “very promising.” While noting the difficulties that the U.S. economic blockade had caused Venezuela, and mistakes made by the Maduro administration of which he was a part, Rodríguez said that the country was welcoming new foreign investments. In his view, Venezuela was going to “move forward and promote health, education, culture throughout a free market economy.” When asked what Venezuela’s citizens thought of the government’s new direction, Rodríguez replied in English that “they are very okay,” and laughed nervously.

Shortly after the January 3 U.S. attack on Venezuela, some international commentators like Tariq Ali, who previously hosted a show on Venezuela’s teleSUR network and served on its international advisory board, insinuated that, given the lack of resistance to U.S. forces by the Venezuelan military, what really occurred in Caracas was a coup d’état led by the Rodríguez siblings. Writing on his social media on January 5, Ali claimed that the “U.S. is backing Delcy who has promised them whatever they want” as “CIA assessments virtually published this in so many words.”

Asked about these allegations, Carlos Dürich told Truthout that he was aware of them, but that there was no solid proof. “What is certain is that, after January 3, the speed with which closeness has developed between the two states — the U.S. and Venezuela — and the way diplomacy is being expressed, suggests that there were prior conversations to achieve the rapid progress that is now taking place,” he said. As an expert on the oil industry, Dürich claims that the change in the industry “requires time for research, analysis, and cost assessments” — factors which appear to have not come into play in the new legislative changes.

For now, inside Venezuela, the government has continued to call for the release of President Maduro and his wife Flores. These calls have been supported by large demonstrations that have received next to no coverage in the mainstream Western press. Juan Lenzo, a Venezuelan activist, told Truthout that while the protests are almost a daily occurrence, the Rodríguez government has “not established sufficient mechanisms to put pressure” on the United States in order to obtain Maduro and Flores’s release.

Under the Venezuelan constitution, a vice president who steps in because of a temporary absence may occupy the presidency for up to 90 days. After those 90 days, the National Assembly can extend the acting interim period for another 90 days, if it so decides.

Given the volatility of the Trump administration, it remains to be seen if Delcy Rodríguez will last that long.

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