Three Days in Venezuela's Oil Belt Show the Price of Pillage
As the mainstay industry withers, thieves take equipment, materials and the liquid itself
Venezuela’s oil fields have become silent, save for the cicada-like buzz of the occasional functioning electric pump.
Source: Bloomberg
The men step out of the van and act fast. As one stands guard, the others approach an oil pump and remove filler plugs. They drain the viscous liquid into buckets that they stack in their van and take off.
In Venezuela’s remote Orinoco Belt, theft used to happen in the dead of night to avoid the gaze of security cameras like the one that captured the scene near the town of El Tigre. Now, the cameras themselves have been stolen and oil is taken in broad daylight, much of it destined for auto repair shops in cities. Thieves take electric motors, transformers, heat-controlling devices, valves and especially valuable copper wiring – kilometers of the stuff.