Kenny Malone

The economic history of Chevron in Venezuela.

The OG Petro State after the break.

So you had all those oil executives at the White House talking about Venezuelan oil and not all that excited, except for Chevron.

Venezuelan oil was discovered more than 100 years ago at Lake Maracaibo, which actually happens to be the same lake that inspired Italian explorer Americo Vespucci to give Venezuela its name.

I was going to ask, should we guess?

Erica, you want to guess?

But not for long.

This is a time in the world where there are European and American explorers and botanists and geologists all over the Americas looking for something on land or in the ground that might make them rich.

And in Venezuela, some of them were digging up oil in that same place that gave Venezuela its name.

You want sound effects?

And that oil, it blew for nine straight days.

Raining oil on people and trees and houses.

It made headlines.

It made lines of oil on people's heads.

Also, kind of freaked out the townspeople reasonably.

It made a huge mess, and then it caused a proper oil rush to Venezuela.

Because, of course, oil in the ground is not an oil industry.

Turning that into something requires machinery and geologists and refineries and companies.

Venezuela makes some money from this, but those companies make so much more.

And so this was the very messy, gold-rushy way that the world's first oil-based economy sort of snapped into existence overnight.