Anzoategui

Anzoátegui State demonstrates how petroleum infrastructure creates economic geography resistant to diversification even during extraction decline. Since oil's 1930 discovery, the state has produced approximately one-tenth of Venezuela's petroleum, with Puerto La Cruz's natural bay converted into refinery and export port that defined the region's economic identity for nearly a century.

The contemporary infrastructure represents both asset and constraint. The Puerto La Cruz Refinery, one of Venezuela's largest, originally processed 190,000 barrels daily but now operates under 100,000—a decline trajectory mirroring national patterns. The Jose Antonio Anzoátegui port handles oil exports to China (80% of Venezuela's sales) but requires investment capital the state cannot provide. Chevron's Eastern Venezuela organization maintains headquarters overseeing Orinoco Belt operations, providing technical expertise beyond PDVSA's degraded capacity.

The Eastern Division (Anzoátegui, Monagas, Bolívar) has partially offset Western Venezuela's production collapse, becoming crucial for light oil extraction. However, this compensation cannot reverse the fundamental arithmetic: national production declined from 3.2 million to under 1 million barrels daily. The July 2024 figure of 993,000 barrels reflects modest recovery but remains far below historical capacity.

The Orinoco Belt's extra-heavy crude—requiring specialized extraction technology and diluents—creates technical dependency that sanctions have weaponized. International oil companies possess the expertise but face access restrictions. PDVSA lacks both capital and qualified personnel. The result: 235 billion barrels of potentially producible reserves sit largely inaccessible despite constituting the world's largest petroleum deposit.

By 2026, Anzoátegui's trajectory depends on whether sanction relief and foreign investment can restore refining capacity, or whether infrastructure continues degrading toward functional obsolescence while reserves remain stranded.