Oil is like mining.
You need a large company to extract it from the ground or else you get to get a shovel and wheelbarrow and try to mine it yourself. (Dumb stuff like this is what is being claimed)
ExxonMobil drilled the wells, spudded the wells, put in the pipeline infrastructure and separators to make it light sweet crude AFTER BUYING THE LAND THE WELLS ARE ON. ExxonMobil and Shell built docks to safely and efficiently load the oil onto tanker ships.
On top of this they paid the Venezuelan Government taxes and fees for every barrel removed.
Everyone WAS happy.
Maduro decided that the oil wells now were going to belong to the government because his communist policies were impoverishing the luxurious paradise of Venezuela.
Maduro crushed the economy, everyone lost their jobs left and right. So in order to subsidize ALMOST free rice and beans for everyone (when they had been eating meat daily) Maduro declared and seized all oil infrastructure declaring it now was the property of the government....
Kinda similar to what is happening in California under Newsom and the Vallero refinery in Benecia. Except Vallero has to pay their way out.
Same as Nvidia, TSM, Micron, Western Digital, Panasonic, Intel, Sony and etc in Taiwan. CCP wants to nationalize all the banks and Chip manufacturing in Taiwan.
Then because we refused to buy oil from Venezuela....they began selling drugs on the black market. Covaine, Heroine and Fentanyl.