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3.1: Case Study, Venezuela

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    Case Study: Venezuela

    While water is essential to human life, oil isn't, but we treat them equally. And there are a number of related environmental issues to investigate. Extraction and delivery of oil brings up similar issues of local environmental damage and human consequences of that damage. One way to consider these issues is to look at the role that oil use, trade, and extraction has in specific examples, especially in petrostates.

    Definition: Petrostate

    "A country with several interrelated attributes: government income is deeply reliant on the export of oil and natural gas, economic and political power are highly concentrated in an elite minority, and political institutions are weak and unaccountable, and corruption is widespread” (Council on Foreign Nations).

    Please watch the video below, taking notes and posing questions.

    Venezuela serves as a meaningful current case study of a petrostate, and the impact global and national policies of extraction can have on citizens. The Council on Foreign Relations defines a petrostate as “a country with several interrelated attributes: government income is deeply reliant on the export of oil and natural gas, economic and political power are highly concentrated in an elite minority, and political institutions are weak and unaccountable, and corruption is widespread” (Council on Foreign Nations). The council notes, “Countries often described as petrostates include Algeria, Cameroon, Chad, Ecuador, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Libya, Mexico, Nigeria, Oman, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela” (Council on Foreign Nations). Considering Alexander Etkind writes that “oil is related to dictatorship, corruption, and aggression,” it’s important to understand the various ways in which “the oil curse,” called “the Dutch disease” economists and “extractivism” by anthropologists, impacts nations not currently defined as petrostates by the Council on Foreign Nations and to question the position of oil in environmental injustices to a nation’s citizens alongside a nation’s governments and their foreign policies. Understanding the history and connections opens large questions of local and global impact of oil extraction and trade.

    Read the following as part of this case study and write a Response.


    3.1: Case Study, Venezuela is shared under a CC BY 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.

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