General Discussion

The US did not 'take over Valenzuela', we didn't pull an Iraq War there. The VZ citizens are still there. The ones who elected Chavez on the promise he'd rein in the multi-nationals who were invading the oil fields (with the blessing of PDVSA, which was its own corrupt kingdom by that point) and leaving the VZ people with jack shit in royalties.

A bunch of these companies lost a shit-ton of investment $ when Chavez won and negated a bunch of deals PVDSA had made with global big oil, which he called corrupt (and they may well have been). It took them decade plus of int'l court cases to claw some of that money back, and it wasn't that close to what they were a$king for. Many of the potential players will look at the situation and go "yeah, not worth the risk" currently.

Plus ramping up production down there takes a long time. Infrastructure is reportedly pretty decrepit generally. It's not type sitch where the oil co's who might invest down there are doing it with an eye towards the current situation with Iran. These projects are planned well in advance and then take awhile to get online.