Venezuela: economic collapse leads to environmental pollution

Bloomberg has a short article up about how Venezuela's economic collapse has led to environmental pollution. This pollution is driven by what should be bringing in the most wealth for Venezuela: oil.

PDVSA’s cleanup policy is, on paper, strict, because “if spills aren’t quickly attended to, they become environmental liabilities,” said Carmen Infante, a Caracas-based industry consultant . . . According to workers in the field, many of the services contractors that specialize in sponging up spills, with trucks equipped with giant vacuums, have gone out of business because they’ve had such trouble getting paid by PDVSA.

The reason for this: as the headline states, a lack of investment in their oil industry has led to a breakdown in equipment. It is an indication of how important it is to always invest in continued upkeep, because if you don't the problem eventually explodes. As the article ends with:



To get it back on its operating feet in this one area may well require more money than Venezuela earned selling crude on the foreign market last year: $22 billion.

As a side note:

Guyana, which borders Venezuela, is about to start pumping oil. Per the linked opinion piece:

Guyana could be producing up to 750,000 barrels per day by the late 2020s. 

I've written blog posts about how Venezuelans working in the oil industry are walking off the job. I wonder how many Venezuelans in the oil industry will make their way to Guyana? Guyana only has a population of around 800,000. One has to assume that you'd need immigrants to help in the oil industry. Who better than Venezuelans who are currently working in the oil industry? If this movement happens, expect Venezuela's oil production to fall.