Interview: Brazilian labor leader says U.S. pressure on Venezuela targets oil sovereignty

SAO PAULO, Feb. 2 (Xinhua) -- U.S. pressure on Venezuela is aimed at gaining control over the country's oil resources and weakening its state energy sector, mirroring tactics that have previously reshaped Brazil's own energy industry, a senior Brazilian labor leader said.

In a recent interview with Xinhua, Deyvid Bacelar, general coordinator of the Unified Federation of Oil Workers (FUP), said Washington's actions toward Venezuela "have nothing to do with defending democracy or combating drug trafficking ... The real objective is imperial domination and the appropriation of natural wealth."

Bacelar warned that efforts to weaken Venezuela's state-owned oil company PDVSA are intended to open space for U.S. companies at the expense of Venezuela's sovereignty and social welfare.

"We know the United States aims to place its companies on Venezuelan soil to the detriment of PDVSA, a company that has always generated wealth for the Venezuelan people despite sanctions and economic blockades," he said.

"Defending Venezuela today means defending all of Latin America," he added.

Bacelar argued that Brazil faced a similar process beginning in 2014, when the probe code-named Operation Car Wash (Lava Jato) targeted contracts at the country's state oil and gas giant Petrobras.

He described the operation as "an instrument of U.S. imperialism" that facilitated foreign access to massive deep-water oil reserves discovered in 2007 in Brazil's pre-salt layer.

"Without a doubt, Lava Jato served the interests of U.S. oil companies and other international firms by giving them stronger access to offshore oil," he said.

"Of the more than 100 billion barrels put up for auction from pre-salt reserves, more than 50 billion are now in the hands of international oil companies, many of them American," he added.

The labor leader said the shift later expanded beyond oil and gas to mining, renewable energy and other strategic industries. The privatization of the energy giant Eletrobras in 2022 was a key example, he said.

"They advanced through distribution networks, logistics systems, Eletrobras itself and the entire production chain, harming national engineering and major Brazilian companies that provided infrastructure services in Brazil, Africa, Latin America and elsewhere," he said.

In Bacelar's assessment, Lava Jato "was not just an attempt -- it succeeded" in opening Brazil's energy sector to foreign capital and weakening national sovereignty. ■