The Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) —elected at the XVI National Congress, Nov. 2022— denounces to the country that the proposed partial reform of the Organic Hydrocarbons Law (LOH) constitutes a serious violation of the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and a historical setback in the defense of national sovereignty over strategic energy resources.
The United States’ military aggression is being used as a political pretext to justify dismantling Venezuelan oil sovereignty through a new and serious violation of the constitutional order. This process is neither circumstantial nor temporary: it has clear antecedents in the so-called “anti-blockade law,” through which the leadership of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) institutionalized opacity, discretion, and the systematic concealment of the country’s strategic affairs. This was further entrenched by the agreements signed with Chevron, the terms of which continue to be deliberately hidden from the Venezuelan people, even to this day.
In this context, the PCV demands the immediate repeal of the “anti-blockade law” and denounces the so-called “Chevron Model” as a set of maneuvers harmful to national sovereignty, aimed at auctioning off the country’s strategic resources in exchange for guaranteeing the permanence of the ruling elite in power, outside the Constitution, democratic control and the national interest.
This position does not imply an absolute, a priori rejection of all private capital participation in the national oil industry, provided that such participation serves the national interest and does not, under any circumstances, entail the loss of sovereignty to imperialist domination. The Venezuelan oil industry is experiencing a profound crisis that is not only a consequence of the criminal unilateral coercive measures imposed by imperialism, but also of the failure of government policy, characterized by corruption, improvisation, and the progressive dismantling of institutions. The imminent danger lies in the fact that the “solution” promoted by the PSUV leadership is not aimed at the recovery and sovereign development of the productive forces, but rather at satisfying the appetites of transnational capital, deepening dependency and jeopardizing the country’s future.
Under the false pretense of “modernization” and “economic efficiency”, the proposed reform of the LOH progressively and systematically opens the doors to the privatization of primary oil activities, disregarding express constitutional principles and weakening the democratic control of the State over the country’s main wealth.
First, the reform violates Article 302 of the Constitution, which establishes the State’s exclusive control over the primary activities of exploration, extraction, collection, transportation, and initial storage of hydrocarbons. The explicit incorporation of private companies, without any state participation, as direct operators of these activities, as well as the creation of contracts that allow them to carry them out at their sole cost and risk, represents a de facto relinquishment of state control, even if the formal intention is to maintain ownership of the deposits.
This violation is aggravated by allowing these private companies to receive their remuneration in kind, through the delivery of volumes of hydrocarbons for direct commercialization, which implies an effective transfer of oil revenue and a loss of economic sovereignty to the benefit of private capital.
Furthermore, the reform directly contradicts Article 151 of the Constitution by eliminating the requirement that contractual disputes be resolved by the courts of the Republic, thus opening the possibility of resorting to alternative mechanisms outside the national legal system. This provision exposes the country to international arbitration and decisions contrary to national interests, seriously undermining the Republic’s legal sovereignty.
Similarly, Article 150 of the Constitution is violated by substantially reducing the powers of the National Assembly in approving contracts of national public interest. While current legislation requires prior parliamentary approval for the establishment of joint ventures and the definition of the conditions under which primary activities are carried out, the reform merely requires notification, effectively nullifying the oversight, auditing, and control functions that belong to the Legislative Branch.
The reform also introduces mechanisms that allow the effective management of joint ventures to remain in the hands of the private minority partner, subordinating the direction of a strategic sector to criteria of corporate profitability rather than the national interest. The requirement to guarantee “economic and financial equilibrium” and “return on investment” opens the door to interpretations that could obligate the State to ensure profit-making conditions for private capital.
In fiscal matters, the differentiated reduction of royalties and extraction taxes for private and mixed-ownership companies constitutes an unacceptable transfer of public revenue in the context of a profound social crisis. These tax breaks, which are nonexistent in current legislation, can only be explained by the introduction of private actors into activities that are constitutionally reserved for the State.
The Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) warns that this reform is not an isolated event, but part of a systematic policy of dismantling oil sovereignty, carried out outside of democratic debate and in open contradiction with the constitutional text approved by the Venezuelan people.
We reiterate that the defense of hydrocarbons as the patrimony of the Venezuelan nation is inseparable from the defense of the Constitution and the country’s right to sovereignly decide its development model.
The PCV calls on the working class and, in general, the revolutionary, popular, genuinely democratic and patriotic forces to reject this reform and to defend the strategic, public and sovereign character of the Venezuelan oil industry.
Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Venezuela
Caracas, January 29, 2026
