Venezuelans prepare to suffer the consequences of the American oil blockade between queues and power cuts

The measure declared by Trump on Tuesday would prevent sanctioned ships from entering or leaving Venezuelan territorial waters, increasing pressure on the regime. Nicolas Maduro and the country by preventing its main source of income and foreign exchange.

According to the strategy of the North American country, this would aggravate the economic asphyxiation of the Chavista leadership, which allegedly leads the so-called Cartel of the Suns, as well as the anti-drug operations, which resulted in the death of around a hundred suspected drug traffickers in Caribbean waters.

After U.S. forces intercepted the Skipper vessel, leaving Venezuela and making several voyages to Iran, and confiscated the crude oil it was carrying, at least 30 sanctioned vessels were identified in the vicinity of Venezuela, according to the maritime intelligence firm Windward, several of which altered their course to minimize the possibility of sharing the Skipper’s fate.

These belong to the so-called “ghost flotilla,” which transports crude oil from countries sanctioned by the United States and which represents 40% of the ships that arrive in Venezuela to load crude oil, according to data from Transparencia Venezuela. Ships participating in this black market often turn off their transponders, change flags and names, and transmit false location signals to avoid detection.

These are facts that lead Venezuelans to get ahead before scenes like those of 2019 repeat themselves, when the wait to be able to buy gasoline could take days of waiting at the gas station counters.

Throughout the capital, queues are visible in front of gas stations and several reports indicate that in cities like Valencia and Barquisimeto they stretch for several kilometers. In these cities there is also a crisis in public transport, already irregular, and it is feared that several drivers will stop providing their services if they do not see profitability, a situation also experienced in previous years.

A man waiting at a gas station near the Chuao housing estate speaks indignantly about the prospects of this situation. “It’s something that affects me in my activities because I sell raw materials for local industries, and without energy, I cannot meet my customers,” he exclaims.

Engineer by profession, remember that Venezuela has lost more than 20,000 oil technical experts since the government of the former president Hugo Chavez and they were replaced by people who did not know how to manage the industry’s resources, which led “to the collapse of refining in the country, so that Venezuela currently does not export gasoline, but imports from countries like Brazil, Iran and even the United States.”

“And several newspapers say that these tankers were going to Cuba, that they are not paying for our oil and are in turn negotiating its sale to China,” explains the engineer.

Benigno Alarconpolitical analyst and founder of the Center for Political and Governmental Studies at the Andrés Bello Catholic University (UCAB), emphasizes that “it is obvious that there will be a significant impact on the government’s treasury and also on the internal level due to our dependence on additives for the production of gasoline.”

“Clearly, negative expectations can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, because no country can tolerate the entire population going to fill up with gas at the same time,” he says.

He also highlights as additional problems that “Venezuela’s oil storage capacities are limited and if it is not possible to extract all the oil produced, production levels must necessarily be reduced” and that “as the risk of transporting oil increases, so do costs, resulting in a greater discount on the final prices at which Venezuelan oil can be sold.”

The military invasion: reality or bluff?

In addition to the possible shortage of gasoline, several Venezuelans expressed conflicting feelings of fear and expectation about the possible start of military operations on their territory.

The rejection by the United States House of Representatives of two initiatives to withdraw American troops from the Caribbean was one of the signs that several commentators and media figures in both countries interpreted as a prelude to a formal declaration of war.

For the third time, the House failed to pass resolutions invoking Section 5 of the War Powers Resolution, which would allow Congress to order the president to withdraw the military if there is a joint resolution.

In the words of the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, Chuck SchumerTrump “does not have the authority” to “use military force in the Caribbean without authorization from Congress”, although he later failed to gain the votes needed to withdraw troops from the Caribbean.

During his appearance Wednesday evening, the president barely referred to the “bloody cartels” that he accuses of attacking Americans through drug trafficking, about which he limited himself to saying that “the arrival of drugs by sea and land has decreased by 94%”, without mentioning the declaration of the Maduro administration as a foreign terrorist organization.

Shortly before the bloc’s statement, the bloc said Venezuela had illegally taken away “energy rights” from the United States. “We want our oil back,” he said.

Shortly thereafter, White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Millerassured that he was referring to the nationalization of the Venezuelan oil industry in 1976, which he called “the greatest theft” in the history of the United States.

For his part, Maduro insists in his statements on the obligation of Venezuelans to defend the territory from the “puppet government” that, according to him, the United States wants to impose, referring to the leader of the opposition. Maria Corina Machadowho openly supported Trump’s pressure methods.

The mobilization of military and civilians has reached the point of forced recruitment, particularly of adolescents and elderly people, into military bodies called Bolivarian militias, according to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

According to an expert consulted by EL ESPAÑOL, who said on condition of anonymity, the military escalation aims at the collapse of the Maduro regime.

“No major clashes or prolonged resistance are expected, quite the contrary, because neither the majority of the military sector nor the civilian population would take his side to defend him,” he declares. “Ordinary people want political change and don’t care if it happens through negotiations, pressure, interventions or coups, and many say they perceive that Washington’s problem is not with them, but with the Maduro regime.”

Power outages across the country

On Wednesday, around the last hours of sunlight, several areas of Caracas and other states lost power. These are no longer the multi-day power outages that characterized the worst phases of the crisis before dollarization in 2022, but have been repeated over the past two years at key moments in the country’s political crisis, such as in the days before and after the July 2024 presidential elections.

In one of the many homes in Caracas, Margarita, who prefers to testify under a fictitious name, holds a candlestick with a lit candle as she checks her household appliances. “It’s horrible, the house is very dark and I had to look for the candles that we had kept because it’s not something new,” he laments.

As he speaks, some lights come on before going out a few minutes later. The candle flame continues to flicker. “It has already gone out more than four times, I am worried about the refrigerator, the washing machine and the cell phone, because one of these outages burned a computer that I had connected,” says the woman, who is now waiting for the electricity to return.

In the street, several areas are covered in darkness barely touched by the lights of passing cars. At some intersections, traffic lights are also turned off, creating scenes of chaos amid the sound of bugles warning of accidents that almost never happen.

And if these irregularities last for several hours in the capital, it is worth recalling the numerous reports which indicate that each crisis that affects it multiplies in severity in other states of the country.

The fear of a new series of power outages like those of 2019, which lasted up to more than five days, invades the cities. The lack of maintenance of the Guri Dam, the country’s main hydroelectric complex, is evident in these electricity losses, the last of which occurred in mid-2024, although Chavismo spokesmen blame alleged sabotage by opposing political forces.

When the power returns, Margarita begins to check the refrigerator to see if it is still working. “A Cuban woman told me that it was a tactic of Castroism to give ephemeral joy, as if the arrival of light and water, which we also often lose, was a gift.”

Several houses on the same street are starting to recover the light points in their windows which, seen from the outside, look like cocuyos.