“...The communists socialists nationalized the oil business and we all left. Then it fell apart. Any more than that from the NYT is just fluff. It is a 15 word story.....”
That pretty well sums it up.
Their oil is a heavy sour type that requires certain technology and expertise to refine. That technology/expertise resides with the USA. In other words, they crapped a massive load of socialist diarrha in their own mess kits.
Chavez put people in place to run the refineries that were political types. They did zero maintenance on the plants.
They didn’t do any upgrades. So the plants slowly became incompetent just like their leaders.
PDVSA used to be a world player. Now they are a dead man walking.