Despite Venezuela’s seven-year-old economic crisis and restrictive pandemic-related measures, the city of Caracas appears relatively calm. It might appear that gasoline shortages that have caused many challenges in recent years have lessened compared to the beginning of last year.
By nacla
But in regions outside the capital, which have always borne the brunt of the crisis, are experiencing a new problem that Venezuelans, even in the worst moments, haven’t faced before: diesel shortages. They are like a tsunami whose magnitude many don’t yet recognize.
Paradoxically, the economic liberalization measures that President Nicolás Maduro has introduced since 2018—such as ending currency and price controls, eliminating taxes on imported goods, and strongly supporting de facto dollarization—have eased the pressure of food shortages and hyperinflation. This comes amid a state of affairs that oscillates between economic stabilization and the dismantling of social achievements.
The decline of the oil industry forced the country to find new sources of income, such as remittances, gold mining, and crypto-mining, as well as other non-traditional activities that are turning the page on the country’s total dependence on the oil industry. A post-petroleum Venezuela is being born, though without any kind of industrial development.
Even the opposition living in the country recognize that, poverty aside, the economic and political tension of previous years is no longer. Although the country has not overcome the crisis, it has managed to achieve greater economic stabilization in spite of the significant paralysis of the state oil company, PDVSA. Hyperinflation has eased and basic products are in supply.
But in reality, as a Spanish saying goes, the turmoil happens below the surface. The surprising diesel scarcity poses the question: why have the shortages of this fuel and its impacts happened now, after so many years of economic and gasoline crises?
Venezuelan life is totally dependent on diesel. Transportation of food, medicine, various goods, and passengers almost completely use this fuel because the country does not have rail lines and gasoline is used only in private household vehicles. Only three cities have metro lines.
For the rest, without diesel, large and small cities would stop receiving all kinds of products.
Since the end of February, trucks that transport food and other goods have been stranded or must wait in very long lines to be able to stock up on fuel. Day by day, the time it takes to get to the cities grows. Since the beginning of March, truckers in regions that produce food, like the states of Lara and Aragua, have protested the fuel shortage.
The Federation of Ranchers (Fedenagas) stated that “the lack of diesel makes it impossible to produce and distribute food products [like] beef, milk, and cheese.” The Venezuelan Association of the Chemical and Petrochemical Industry (Asoquim) warned that 80 percent of the industry faced serious problems sourcing diesel and that 76 percent had problems obtaining raw materials from suppliers to similar reasons.
Aquiles Hopkins, president of the National Federation of Agricultural Producers (Fedeagro), told the BBC in an article dated March 15: “The gasoil [diesel] shortage is very serious. If there is not a solution, even a temporary one, in the next 15 days, paralysis of the whole production chain will begin.” Some estimate that seven in 10 trucks are already immobilized.
If Venezuelans thought we were dependent on oil and gas, now we will realize that our addiction to diesel is much greater. These shortages could lead to a public health and food catastrophe, particularly as the new Brazilian strain of the coronavirus wrecks the worst pandemic havoc yet.
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