Asier Achutegui, former international affairs manager at PDVSA: “Even though Venezuela and the United States should be natural energy trading partners, politics have hampered this enormous commercial potential since the arrival of Hugo Chávez in 1999. Interestingly, most obstructions have come from the United States, while Venezuela was trying to insist on sticking to capitalist principles and leaving politics out of the energy relationship. By slowly making it more difficult for Venezuela to export oil to the United States and for U.S. companies to invest in Venezuela’s energy sector, different administrations have pushed Venezuela to look for new and more reliable partners. This peaked with Trump’s sanctions on the entire energy and financial sectors, forcing Venezuela to turn mainly to Russia for support. These policies have pushed Maduro to create such a strong dependence on Russia that it would be inconceivable for him to jeopardize it…”