Published at: 14/01/2026 09:00 PM

(Phrases and Thoughts by Hugo Chávez, author Carlos Herrera, prologue Walter Martínez, Editorial Primicia 21, 2014)

The mission, values and thinking that governed Commander Hugo Chávez's oil policy, with an emphasis on the undisputed full sovereignty of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela over its energy, mineral and natural resources, are summarized in the following phrases and actions carried out as an urgent mission that, well beyond its brief life, constitutes a legacy and a weapon of struggle for the present and future generations of the Venezuelan people.

170 years before Hugo Chávez assumed full sovereignty over the oil industry, El Libertador Simón Bolívar, in his Decree of Quito of October 24, 1829, enacted, for all of Gran Colombia, the first law enshrining the inalienable rights of the nascent power over subsoil resources.

It goes like this: “According to the laws, mines of any kind belong to the Republic (Gran Colombia)”.

Starting with the above-mentioned decree, which will soon be 200 years old, Hugo Chávez relaunched for posterity all of Venezuela's inalienable rights in oil matters, directing our future with a legacy of thousands of thoughts and statements. Some of them include:

• “We are planting oil, Mr. Arturo Uslar Pietri, wherever you are, we are planting oil!” . (Hello President No. 255, Guayana City, Bolivar State, May 21, 2006).
• “Oil tends to run out, the biggest deposits have been exhausted by Dracula's voracity and big consumers.” (Managua, January 11, 2007).
• “We are an independent country and we have a new oil tax regime, which charges 33% royalty and 50% income tax; PDVSA maintains hegemony in the entire oil business” (Anzoátegui State, July 13, 2012).
• “The oil rental model was imposed on Venezuela from the north, Venezuela was converted into an oil colony throughout the 20th century, we were an oil factory, we have freed ourselves from that curse, with the favor of God and the help of all of you, but we will never return, ever again” (Brazil, June 6, 2011).
• Caracas, May 3, 2007, Aló Presidente program: “The United States is running out of oil. I always give the example, the comparison with a vampire, imagine the desperation of a vampire, what wouldn't a vampire be able to do? He knows that if he doesn't suck up oil before the sun comes up, he dies. And the way that vampire swallows oil.”

“20 million barrels of oil are consumed daily in the United States, with only 5% of the world's population sucking up 20% of world production. This way of life can't stand this planet, it's breaking this planet, it's breaking that model well. Like someone desperate for Venezuelan oil and for the birth of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) in the south of the continent.”

“The empire is desperate, the empire is like Dracula's joke: desperate because the sun is rising. This is the way the empire is, like Dracula, desperate because the sun of DAWN is rising”.

“The United States has no oil left. They ran out of oil because they sucked everything, they exploded the world and now they want to come for ours. Never! Oil is ours,” he said during the delivery of loans to 49 companies that are part of the Framework Agreement on Co-Responsibility for Industrial Transformation.

“There they are, in Iraq, filling that people with blood, looking for oil,” he also recalled the constant threats that the U.S. government maintains against the Islamic Republic of Iran.

“They have the whole war plan ready to invade Iran but, if they invaded Iran, another real madness, they would also bite the dust of defeat there,” he said, referring to the consequences of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

• “Carlos Delgado Chalbaud was assassinated because he tried to advance a sovereign oil policy that clashed with the interests of large American corporations. Any government that tried to recover oil was overthrown or eliminated. The financier who hired the thugs was a Venezuelan oil magnate Aranguren because Delgado Chalbaud didn't fit into the equation to guarantee the flow of cheap oil under his own conditions.” (Hello President No. 327, 2010).
• “What is the U.S.'s commitment to control the Middle East? Petroleum. And to control the north of South America? Petroleum. And Mesopotamia and all this? Petroleum” (Nicaragua, January 11, 2007).
• “We cannot accept being paid for a barrel of oil, from which many developed countries make a profit of more than 100 dollars per barrel, we cannot continue to sell it for 5 or 10 dollars a barrel, no” (Inauguration speech before the National Assembly as President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela period 2000—2006).
• “With the recovery of oil, the recovery through tax collection (which before the rich didn't pay taxes here; now it's not that they're paying everything they should pay, but we've improved tax collection) and the management of our oil resources. That money is for you to use for the benefit of everyone, of everyone, Socialism!” (Military Circle, February 15, 2007).
• “That oligarchy that always governed, because it surrendered the country and they reached these extremes that are difficult to imagine, such as the company that Venezuela bought in the United States, Citgo: eight refineries, I don't know how many terminals, gas pipelines, oil pipelines from the east coast to the west coast, from Florida to Canada, 100% Venezuelan, and that company did not give a penny of dividends to Venezuela” (edo. Anzoátegui, February 21, 2007).
• “We have discovered in these past two years that today a country that gets a deposit of 500 million barrels celebrates and announces it with great fanfare; 500 million barrels is what they call a giant reservoir. In two years, we have achieved the equivalent of 40 giants, 40 giant deposits, the equivalent, that places us as a great oil and global power and we are consolidating it”. (Annual message to the National Assembly, January 11, 2008)
• “The Oil Belt is 55,000 square kilometers long, the entire northern fringe of the Orinoco River.” (Installation of the First South American Energy Summit, Nueva Esparta, April 17, 2007).
• “According to the gringo companies and the so-called world of the north, the Orinoco Oil Belt was classified as a non-oil belt, but as a bituminous belt, with the story and all the technical reasoning that what is here is not oil. According to them... this crude oil, according to them, was not oil, but it was coal...” (Pozo Ayacucho, Anzoátegui state, February 21, 2007).
• “We want Venezuelan oil to serve for peace and for love, to get so many people out of misery.” “We can't sell that oil to the poorest countries for $100.” (Summit of Heads of State, Santiago de Chile, November 9, 2007). “We should all know about oil, its political, economic, social and geopolitical implications.” “God has given us here, on a silver platter, the elements to build a truly strong, powerful and sovereign nation, free and egalitarian for the future, and we will. Me, I'm sure we will.” Ref. 21, p. 279
• “God is also with us, but of course he is with us because we are fighting for justice, for peace, for equality and for equity in a world of inequalities, such as the one we live in.” “The hand of God and nature favored Venezuela with this geographical location and these walking paths, as the poet said.” Ref. 43, p. 4

Mazo News Team