Alejandro Velasco

Like, how quickly does it fall apart?

The decline of the industry had begun as soon as the oil industry strike in 2002 and 2003.

And as we talked about, that moment

was one marked by the firing of 18,000 longstanding, mostly professional engineering personnel, right?

So for instance, you started to see things, I'll give you one small anecdote.

So growing up, every other weekend, we would go to the beach from Caracas.

And there was one beach in particular that we liked to go to.

And to get to this beach, you had to go through one of the primary oil refineries in Venezuela, right?

And I have a very distinct memory imprinted in my mind of you drove by this refinery and there was a big placard on the side of the road that said, days since the last accident.

And it was something like, you know, years worth of days.

And then I remember going back there years later during this time, and the placard was gone.

So, like, many accidents would happen.

And some of these would be deadly.

Of course, it's hard...

in part because of the visibility of the oil industry in Venezuela.

It's not something that's out of sight.

It's quite plain.

When an accident happens, you know about it, right?

And so, you know, you started to see, like, explosions in refineries.

You started to see leaks in the lake, things that hadn't really happened or at least we didn't know about.