White House gives Maduro ultimatum as U.S. moves toward land operations

[NickB79]

46. That's largely because Venezuela doesn't have the tech or knowledge base to maintain domestic oil production

After nationalizing foreign oil resources to fund social programs, they quickly found out that they didn't have the ability to keep the oil flowing without foreign help. Oil fields declined, a brain drain of qualified petro engineers crippled the industry, and equipment wasn't replaced as it should have been.

So, they were forced to get outside assistance, and that left them open to US demands on American firms (like Chevron) who want to operate in Venezuela.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Venezuelan_oil_industry

After Hugo Chávez officially took office in February 1999, several policy changes involving the country's oil industry were made to explicitly tie it to the state under his Bolivarian Revolution.[26]: 191  Since then, PDVSA has not demonstrated any capability to bring new oil fields onstream since nationalizing heavy oil projects in the Orinoco Petroleum Belt formerly operated by international oil companies ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Chevron.[27][28]

The Chávez government used PDVSA resources to fund social programmes, and PDVSA staff were required to support Chávez. His social policies resulted in overspending [25][29][30] that caused shortages in Venezuela and allowed the inflation rate to grow to one of the highest rates in the world .[31][32][33]

According to Corrales and Penfold, "Chávez was not the first president in Venezuelan history to be mesmerized by the promise of oil, but he was the one who allowed the sector to decline the most", with most statistics showing deterioration of the industry since the beginning of his presidency.[34]