Oil expats desperately needed in Venezuela don't want to go home

Venezuela needs more than money to revive its battered oil industry. 

It needs a sprawling diaspora of oil workers who fled the Caribbean country under president Nicolás Maduro to return. Even with the former strongman now sitting in a US jail, that’s a hard sell.

Twenty years of repression and economic collapse forced many geologists, engineers and roughnecks to leave, building new lives from western Canada to the shale patch of Patagonia. They took into exile their knowledge of Venezuela’s tricky oil fields – filled with heavy, hard-to-process crude – even as they learned the latest technologies in their new homes.

Their departure helped cripple the country’s most important industry, with oil production falling from more than three million barrels per day in 2002 to less than a million today. Resuscitating the industry and rebuilding its tattered infrastructure has been estimated to cost US$100 billion.  

Now, the expats’ combination of local expertise and cutting-edge skills makes them the ideal candidates to get Venezuela’s oil flowing again. Both the government and international companies like Chevron Corp want them back. They’re considered more talented and driven than employees of state-run Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), which has packed its ranks with political appointees. And as the US war with Iran restricts Middle Eastern oil shipments, boosting Venezuela’s exports could help keep global prices in check. 

But the expats are torn between a desire to rebuild their homeland and preserving the hard-won prosperity they’ve achieved abroad, for themselves and their families. Bloomberg spoke with more than a dozen former Venezuelan oil workers across the Americas, the Middle East and Asia. Most are waiting for the ruling autocrats in Caracas to leave and crime and extortion to subside before considering a return. ​

“I would only return if there’s a change in the government, or if [opposition leader] María Corina [Machado] is president,” said Juan Álvarez, 47, who fled to Argentina in 2019 with his family after 18 years at PDVSA. He now works in the shale fields of Neuquén as a gas compressor operator and plans to visit Venezuela in the coming months. But he isn’t ready to move back.  

Undeterred, headhunters are hustling to map out where the expats are and how much it will cost to convince them. They will doubtless demand more pay than the oil workers still in Venezuela. PDVSA employees earn just US$500 per month in salary and benefits, according to people familiar with the company’s practices. PDVSA’s joint-venture partners pay engineers more, about US$1,500 a month, but much less than equivalent jobs in other countries, according to one of the people.

“There won’t be enough talent in Venezuela for all the demand that’s coming,” said Jesús Castillo, a managing partner in charge of oil clients at Contevenca, the largest executive search firm in Venezuela. “We’re already in a war for talent in Venezuela, and this will accelerate.”

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Luisa Hurtado, 45, saw PDVSA’s decline up close.

Both of her parents hailed from oil towns in Venezuela’s interior, and trips there as a child convinced her to pursue a petroleum career. “We would drive for six, eight hours, and what I looked at were the pumpjacks in the oil fields,” she said. “I always wanted to be a part of this.”

Hurtado studied hard and was accepted to the petroleum engineering programme at the Universidad Central de Venezuela, joining PDVSA after she graduated in 2004. She rose fast and became a manager monitoring production at PDVSA’s eastern division in the port city Puerto La Cruz. There she met her husband, a geophysicist who was returning from a post-graduate programme at Stanford University paid for by PDVSA.

But the couple grew dismayed by the rising political influence at what had been considered Venezuela’s most meritocratic institution. Her husband had been promoted to a general manager and was expected to appear at political rallies and get his subordinates to vote for the ruling party, she said. They started looking for jobs.

“The industry was going downhill, and it was time to leave,” she said. “It was a difficult decision.”

Her husband, who declined to be interviewed to avoid problems with his employer, landed a role with an international oil services provider in Rio de Janeiro in 2011. The couple moved to Brazil – starting over in a new country with a different language. Despite feeling lost, Hurtado found work with a start-up that had acquired an onshore oil field from Brazil’s national oil regulator. She’s now the chief operating officer of Petroborn Oleo e Gas SA, which is investing US$35 million in oil and gas fields in northeastern Brazil. 

She’s encouraged by the potential for political change in her home country and would like to be part of PDVSA’s recovery. She wants to help restore the company to its status as an industry leader but doesn’t see herself moving back full time after setting up a life in Brazil. “I’m willing to help,” she said.

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Andrés Eloy Terán Vetencourt planned to work at PDVSA until retirement. Instead, he was thrown out of the company while Hurtado was still in engineering school.

It was 2002, and PDVSA’s technocratic management was pushing back against political interference under the new administration of Maduro’s mentor, then-president Hugo Chávez. They joined a nationwide strike – bringing oil production to a standstill – and Chávez started firing managers on live television. The thousands of employees who lost their jobs were put on blacklists, preventing them from finding work with any of PDVSA’s partners or contractors. 

After a period of unemployment, Terán left Venezuela in 2003 to work for Valero Energy Corp in Aruba. He landed a job at Shell Plc, which took him to Colombia, then to his current home of Calgary – Canada’s oil capital. The thousands of Venezuelans who relocated to Canada in the 2000s are credited with accelerating oil production at so-called tar sands projects that resemble the largest oil deposits in Venezuela.

“Canada is a terrific country,” Terán said. “I’ll always be indebted to it. They gave me a hand when I needed it the most.”

Terán and his wife immersed themselves in their new city’s Venezuelan community, getting together with other expats on weekends and posting in a 6,600-member Facebook group called ‘Venezolanos en Calgary,’ where people share party invitations, exchange political opinions and sell used cars.

Members also celebrated Maduro’s recent capture. Terán said he is “very grateful” to Trump for removing Maduro, but he’s holding his breath before declaring his country liberated. “Venezuela is not free,” he said. “There’s still a criminal government running the country. It’s just reality.”

Even so, there’s one thing that could convince him to move back: PDVSA. “It would be very difficult for me to say no if they tap me to work at PDVSA,” he said. “If they call me, I’m going. Because that company shaped me.”

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Jonny Álvarez – who worked in refining and trading at PDVSA – also got sacked by Chávez during the oil strike and then couldn’t find work. He recalls inquiring about a position advertised in a local paper.   

“The first question was, are you a former PDVSA?” he said. “In that case, you cannot apply for this position.”

Álvarez, 67, landed in Canada and helped ramp up production at oil sands projects for Shell and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. Now retired, he hasn’t been back to Venezuela since leaving in 2006. Still, the Edmonton resident would be willing to return under a different administration, knowing the stakes.  

“The oil and gas is going to be the key cornerstone for that recovery,” Alvarez said.

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While many expats are hesitant to go back, Ramiro Nasser says he’s eager to return to Venezuela’s oil industry. As long as the money is good. 

Nasser, 55, graduated from Venezuela’s Escuela Náutica, a merchant marine academy, in the 1990s and worked for years as a safety superintendent for a project in Lake Maracaibo, where Venezuela’s oil industry got its start more than a century ago. But like many of his colleagues, he signed a petition calling for a referendum against Chávez, and in 2003, Maersk Drilling transferred him to Brazil to avoid political reprisals.

He has now worked in the country more than 20 years as an offshore logistics coordinator and consultant for oil companies. An opportunity to get in early on a possible Venezuelan oil boom sounds alluring. He’s interested in a job that would pay between US$8,000 and US$12,000 a month, depending on what the role is and the benefits offered.

“I will be more than happy to return to my home country to improve the oil industry and speed up the recovery,” said Nasser, who lives in Rio’s Copacabana neighbourhood. 

Even for someone who left before Venezuela’s long, steep decline, going back would not be easy. He has two children in Brazil: one preparing to study medicine at a university, the other working for a foreign soft-drinks manufacturer. His idea would be to leave his children with his ex-wife, so he can capture opportunities. 

So far he has only caught wind of roles for drilling managers. But as soon as oil companies start moving in and exploring for crude, they will need people with his logistics expertise, he said. Lake Maracaibo, the shallow-water basin where he once worked, offers some of the best opportunities to rapidly expand production at a reasonable cost. 

“With the professional experience acquired during all these years, I can manage an entire supply base,” said Nasser.

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Lino Carrillo, a former general manager at PDVSA, fled the country more than two decades ago and has remained active with the opposition from abroad. Like Vetencourt, he found work in Canada’s oil sands, the closest parallel to the heavy crude in Venezuela’s Orinoco region. 

He doesn’t see many Venezuelan expats rushing back to a country where most oil professionals make about US$500 a month. General managers in the oil sands, for example, can make north of C$300,000 (around US$220,000) per year, plus 20 percent to 25 percent bonuses for performance, he said.

“I don’t think people make a hundred thousand dollars a year in Venezuela working for any of those companies, which is, you know, the starting job for many engineers,” said Carrillo, 67. 

He has been working with María Corina Machado and is part of an opposition energy group that has been planning for how to revitalise the oil industry after the regime truly falls. That group, he said, has been in touch with oil services giants including Halliburton Co, SLB Ltd and Weatherford International Plc to fix the infrastructure. Halliburton and SLB have expressed interest in moving Venezuelan employees back in, he said.

A spokesperson for SLB did not comment on whether the company had met with the opposition but said the business can quickly ramp up operations in the country “under the right conditions and safety environment.” Halliburton and Weatherford did not respond to a request for comment, although Halliburton’s top executive said in January he is “excited” about the opportunities in the country.

Carrillo is ready to come back from retirement if there’s a change in government and a chance to enact a recovery plan for the industry. But he’s also aware that he would be leaving his wife, children and grandkids in Canada. When he spoke to his wife about going back, her answer was clear: “I’ll come visit.”