Brain haemorrhage

[Bacchus4.0]

http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21607824-venezuelas-loss-thousands-oil-workers-has-been-other-countries-gain-brain-haemorrhage


IN 2003 Venezuela’s then president, Hugo Chávez, fired more than 18,000 employees, almost half the workforce, of the state-run oil corporation, Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA). Their offence was to have taken part in a strike (pictured) called in protest at the politicisation of the company. Their punishment was to be barred from jobs not only in PDVSA itself but also in any company doing business with the oil firm. The axe fell heavily on managers and technicians: around 80% of the staff at Intevep, PDVSA’s research arm, are thought to have joined the strike. At the stroke of a pen, Venezuela lost its oil intelligentsia.

It was a blow from which PDVSA has never recovered. The firm’s oil production has since stagnated (see chart), despite a big run-up in prices. The financial crisis bears some of the blame for that, as does the economic mismanagement of Chávez and, since last year, Nicolás Maduro. But the loss of skilled personnel was a huge handicap, hurting exploration and management. The Centre for Energy Orientation, a Venezuelan NGO, says the number of incapacitating injuries due to accidents at PDVSA rose from 1.8 per million man-hours in 2002 to 6.2 in 2012. At Pemex, Mexico’s state oil firm, the rate was 0.6 in 2

--------------------------------
No country has benefited more from the Venezuelan exodus, however, than one next door. Colombia’s oil output was declining at the time of the purge, falling from 687,000 barrels a day (b/d) in 2000 to 526,000 five years later. Today, average daily production stands at around 1m b/d. Much of this renaissance is thanks to the Venezuelans.

Former PDVSA executives had been heading to Colombia even before the purge. (Luis Giusti, a former chairman who quit as soon as Chávez came to power in 1999, helped the Colombian government redesign its energy policies.) But it was the post-2003 influx that revolutionised the industry. All of a sudden, says Alejandro Martínez of the Colombian Petroleum Association, “Colombia was filled with real oilmen.” The Venezuelans had years of experience, lots of it spent abroad. They had an excellent technical heritage: PDVSA was created in the mid-1970s when the local subsidiaries of sophisticated firms like Exxon and Royal Dutch Shell were nationalised. They were also used to thinking big. “They did not shy away from projects that needed $2 billion in investments when for Ecopetrol [Colombia’s state oil firm] $50m was a big deal,” says Mr Martínez.