Harsh reaction to a rare questioning of official dogma by Venezuelan energy minister and PdV chief executive Eulogio Del Pino cast into stark relief a deepening ideological schism in the ruling elite as it scrapes through the country's worst economic crisis in a century.
Del Pino announced in Maracaibo last week that the 2009 nationalization of up to 100 local and foreign-owned oil services companies was a mistake that PdV proposes to correct by returning seized assets to former owners willing to create joint ventures with PdV.
"I believe that what was done in Lake Maracaibo had many errors," Del Pino said. "We must go to a new model with majority private-sector ownership."
The controversial plan breaks with the government's state-directed economic approach in effect since former President Hugo Chavez took power in 1999. But it also testifies to PdV's worsening operational problems reflected in falling oil production that the cash-strapped company has been unable to check. Large oil services companies such as Schlumberger have withdrawn from Venezuelan this year because they have not been paid.
But reaction so far suggests that Del Pino lacks the political capital needed to implement the reverse nationalization plan.
"I want to tell those who love to talk that we will not return even a single one of the companies that the revolution seized for conspiring against the Bolivarian revolution," former national assembly president Diosdado Cabello told governing PSUV party supporters yesterday in the western state of Zulia.
Venezuela's "path is fundamentally socialism," Cabello said. "If mistakes were made, the majority (of those mistakes) were made by the people we placed in charge of these companies. But the state will continue every time it's necessary to seize companies that are halted and conspiring against the people. We will continue seizing paralyzed companies."
Cabello, widely regarded in Venezuela as an influential political peer to President Nicolas Maduro and defense minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez, publicly repudiated Del Pino without naming him.
In contrast, Del Pino's remarks were cautiously welcomed by the Maracaibo-based Venezuelan Oil Chamber (CPV) that was established in 1978 to represent the country's oil services providers. The former owners of over 50 oil services companies already have confirmed their interest in PdV's plan to return their assets, an energy ministry official who quietly supports Del Pino's plan told Argus.
But CPV officials in Maracaibo declined to comment publicly today. "There could be reprisals, so it's best not to say anything. This is an internal government problem that only the government can resolve," a CPV official said.
But Cabello's "public de-authorization of Del Pino will create more doubt and uncertainty in the oil industry," the CPV official added. "It's now clear that Del Pino has no power or authority within the government, and the oil companies have no idea who will be the government's chief interlocutor with the companies."
Maduro, Chavez's increasingly unpopular hand-picked successor, has stated repeatedly that he is determined to accelerate Venezuela's transition towards a socialist state with majority state control over the economy.
"We already have taken control of 77pc of the country's productive enterprises," Maduro said yesterday in Caracas during a televised meeting of the defense minister's committee in charge of consolidating state control over Venezuela's food sector.
Cabello's remarks expose infighting over the future of the "Bolivarian revolution" authored by Chavez, who remains a colossal political influence three years after his death from cancer.
The divide is growing as senior government officials begin to question the roots of an acute economic crisis characterized by widespread shortages of food, medicine and basic services. The political opposition is pressing for a recall referendum against Maduro, but the government is throwing up roadblocks.
