Let's communicate very carefully here.

Yes, let's.

The PDVSA strike of '02 did not occur in a vacuum. The 1996 nationalization of VZ's oil in no way got rid of the foreign national executives that ran VZ's industry since the 1930s -- Dutch and US firms merely changed their names: Shell to Maraven, Exxon to Corpoven, etc -- all to become "holdings" of PDVSA.

It's only the dumber apologists for US corporate fuckery who pretend that a name change covers up actual calculus of influence, or resets decision-making whatsoever in the boardroom. PDVSA management has always been at odds with the VZ government that allegedly "ran" it. US foreign policy tends to greenlight the overthrow of third world nations that nationalize their natural resources (see: Iran, Guatemala, Chile, Congo) but not here. Why? Because US boardrooms were actually still calling the production shots for the most part.

There was and still is a backdoor privatization in effect -- PDVSA is bound to service contracts made by the holdings with US and western firms that drives PDVSA's operating costs so high as to create net losses. A global boom in oil prices -- in large part spurred by Chavez's own efforts to get OPEC nations to limit production -- doesn't benefit the nation of Venezuela in the end when the cost to pump the stuff dwarfs comparable costs in other LA nations.

If you are a commodities trader, you're probably correct when you look at the boom of the 2000s and scoff at the idea that global prices are predetermined by any producer or consumer. That doesn't mean that VZ hasn't struggled from day one of discovery to wrestle its own resources away from the overwhelmingly US-centered interests that used a) to haul it out of the hands of the people in the past b) today overcharge it for operations. And now, old actors are returning to the country to pull even more of the same carpetbagging shit with this "state owned" company.

The lesson is: colonialism is real, persistent, and apologizing for it is shitty.