{"id":3123,"date":"2026-01-14T02:42:47","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T07:42:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/2026\/01\/venezuelans-deserve-democracy-not-fossil-fuel-driven-regime-change\/"},"modified":"2026-01-14T02:42:47","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T07:42:47","slug":"venezuelans-deserve-democracy-not-fossil-fuel-driven-regime-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/?p=3123","title":{"rendered":"Venezuelans deserve democracy not fossil fuel-driven regime change"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Global Witness has criticised the US attack on Venezuela in what the Trump administration says will enable US companies to exploit the country\u2019s vast fossil fuel reserves.<\/p>\n

The investigative campaigning organisation has called for a peaceful and democratic solution that allows the people of Venezuela to decide the future of their country and resources.<\/p>\n

After the US conducted an attack on the Latin American country and abducted Maduro, President Trump said that: \u201cWe\u2019re going to have our very large United States oil companies \u2013 the biggest anywhere in the world \u2013 go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country. We\u2019re going to have a presence in Venezuela as it pertains to oil\u2026 we\u2019re going to be taking a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground,\u201d Trump stated.<\/p>\n

Global Witness CEO Mike Davis said:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cTrump\u2019s attack on Venezuela reminds us that a world dependent on fossil fuels is one that\u2019s riven with conflict, instability and human rights abuses.<\/p>\n

\u201cMuch of the oil and gas the world uses is controlled by regimes that are undemocratic and systematically abuse human rights. We know that these qualities breed instability but the global addiction to fossil fuels entrenches that harmful power and condemns us all to the impacts of further conflicts.<\/p>\n

\u201cSwitching to renewables is great for the climate but it is also a form of liberation, as it frees us all from dependence on dictators and warmongers.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt COP30 in Brazil, 80 countries pledged to develop national plans to phase down their use of fossil fuels. Events of the past two days in Venezuela underscore how urgently not just plans, but action, to end dependence on oil and gas are.\u201d<\/p>\n

A history of oil and power<\/h3>\n

Following Venezuela\u2019s nationalisation of its oil industry in 1976<\/u><\/a>, there has been tension between its government, the US and the foreign oil companies operating in the country.<\/p>\n

In the late 90s and<\/u> 2000s<\/u><\/a>, Venezuela introduced policies aimed at increasing state revenue from the oil industry to support social programs, including bringing the oil industry under control of a state-owned company.<\/p>\n

In 2007, then President Hugo Chavez introduced a decree<\/u><\/a> requiring a foreign-owned oil operations be converted to 60 percent ownership under the country\u2019s state-owned oil company.<\/p>\n

Foreign companies that resisted these changes \u2013 including ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil \u2013 had their assets seized. The two US<\/u><\/a> companies<\/u><\/a> and Chevron spent years in legal battles seeking compensation following the seizures.<\/p>\n

After last week\u2019s attack Trump said<\/u><\/a> the seizures were the \u201clargest theft of property in the history of our country\u201d and that \u201cmassive oil infrastructure was taken like we were babies, and we didn\u2019t do anything about it\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Global Witness has criticised the US attack on Venezuela in what the Trump administration says will enable US companies to exploit the country\u2019s vast fossil fuel reserves. The investigative campaigning organisation has called for a peaceful and democratic solution that allows the people of Venezuela to decide the future of their country and resources. After […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[742],"class_list":["post-3123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ciencia-y-tecnologia","tag-vr-news-net"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3123\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}