BRUSSELS — In Europe’s fight against wildfires, eyes are turning toward the sky: not just looking for rain or water-dropping Canadair planes, but also for ways to exploit new satellite capabilities to help contain or even prevent new blazes.
Satellites and the images and data they gather from space are increasingly seen as a means of providing European governments and firefighters on the ground with more accurate information: to map damage and detect fires at an early stage.
Such help is more than welcome during another scorching European summer with wildfires in France, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Approximately 600,000 hectares have burned across EU countries since the start of the year. Just last weekend, Belgium was hit by one of the largest wildfires in its history, in the High Fens nature reserve.
Still, this latest use of satellites is another reminder that Europe needs to step up its game in yet another strategic arena. After Elon Musk’s Starlink showed how satellite-based services could revolutionize everything from mobile communication to waging war, space technology for disaster management offers a potential avenue for Europe to compete.
Greece, a country that seems to be battling bigger wildfires every summer, was the first to act.
In early May, a rocket of Musk’s SpaceX carried four small satellites into space with the specific task of helping the country detect and track wildfires in near real time. It was a crucial step in the build-out of the “Hellenic Fire System,” which the Greek government boasted was the first national satellite system of its kind.
The system was set up through European-wide collaboration, with the help of the European Space Agency, its Greek counterpart, German wildfire intelligence platform Ororatech and Finnish radar-based satellite provider ICEYE.
“By integrating space-based capabilities into our emergency response systems, we are equipping our fire services with the tools they need to respond faster,” Dimitrios Papastergiou, Greece’s minister of digital governance and artificial intelligence, said at the launch in May.
The satellites that were launched before the summer were equipped with two infrared imagers. Those pick up the heat energy radiated by fires, allowing satellites to detect hotspots and gauge their intensity.
The system is designed to “support early detection of emerging hotspots and continuous monitoring of fire behavior,” the European Space Agency said.
Satellites’ role in gathering vast, real-time data and images can also help with other extreme weather events. The Finnish company ICEYE offers monitoring services for governments and businesses to manage both natural catastrophes, such as floods and wildfires, and man-made ones, such as illegal deforestation.
ICEYE raised €1 billion in new financing this year, and became the first company to get backing from the Scaleup Europe Fund, a new fund backed by the European Commission to help companies expand rapidly.
“If we want to be effective in managing the environment around us, both in terms of growth and development, as well as preventing or managing natural catastrophes, these sorts of space-based systems are extremely effective,” ICEYE CEO Rafal Modrzewski told POLITICO.
He said the company has been mostly focused on “managing” wildfires, but is now “trying to push towards predicting wildfires or at least detecting them in an earlier stage.” Modrzewski says a similar offering is available for floods, and for wind damage stemming from hurricanes and typhoons.
The impact can be maximized if Brussels becomes a coordinating “buyer” of those services. “Using space-based capabilities is much more effectively done on an EU scale through [the European] Commission than on a national scale in 27 separate nations,” Modrzewski said.
The Commission is already prominent in helping governments and emergency services map and detect wildfires. The European Forest Fire Information System, which sits within the Commission’s research desk, maps both active fires and burned areas based on data from NASA’s MODIS and the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-3, an Earth observation satellite.
Currently, data and images arrive every 10 minutes, but the launch of a new satellite from the Meteosat third generation next Thursday should speed that up — with images arriving every 2.5 minutes, improving detection and even forecasting of possible wildfires.
BRUSSELS — EU countries will be able to fund small local media without asking Brussels for permission, according to a draft of the bloc’s revised state aid rulebook obtained by POLITICO.
Government subsidies to businesses are strictly disciplined by Brussels under state aid rules, but there are exceptions. These are spelled out in frameworks, with the master one, the General Block Exemption Regulation (GBER), up for revision at the end of the year.
The European Commission put out an initial draft for public consultation in February with a view to finalizing it by year’s end. The updated, 200-page draft gives a leg-up to local and independent journalism by allowing governments to fund small- and medium-sized outlets without formal vetting by Brussels.
“SMEs active in the press sector play an essential role in safeguarding media pluralism, cultural and linguistic diversity, democratic participation and citizens’ access to reliable information, particularly at local and regional level,” the Commission writes, highlighting structural challenges arising from the digital transformation of media markets.
To qualify for assistance, beneficiaries would need to fulfil at least one item in a Commission checklist that includes preserving media pluralism and diversity of opinion, transitioning to digital content while also preserving print editions.
“The exemption covers aid pursuing cultural objectives — including linguistic diversity, the digitalization of press publications or the promotion of printed publications,” said Carole Maczkovics, of Counsel at Covington & Burling, of the press measures.
Many European media outlets are struggling to stay viable, with print readership declining and publishers complaining that online platforms, such as search giant Google, are reducing referral traffic to their websites.
Broad scope
The GBER covers most sectors of the economy, from agriculture to transport, and is the target of intense lobbying from EU capitals, traditionally torn between big government spenders led by Germany and smaller member states, including the pro-free-trade Nordics, which complain that national subsidies distort the EU single market.
Countering the stereotype, Denmark was a leading advocate to extend GBER exemptions to the media. In a consultation response last year, the Danes said the state aid framework should be broadened to include private and public media providers “to promote harmonisation and simplify the general management of state aid in the media sector.”
The latest GBER draft focuses strongly on SMEs and innovation, as well as on the social dimension of state aid — as it expands on conditions for money that governments can put in training programs and the inclusion of disadvantaged workers.
But it may not necessarily make things easier.
“Although the revision aims to simplify the State aid framework, it may ultimately make it more detailed and prescriptive,” warned Maczkovics. She added that the Commission’s gradual shift from broad aid categories to narrowly defined exemptions may sway EU countries to design measures that don’t quite fit the real needs of companies — for the sake of avoiding a notification.
Industry, for its part, is keeping a close eye on state aid exemptions, with airport lobby ACI Europe quick to react to the latest leak.
“The revised GBER remains too restrictive for Europe’s smaller regional airports,” said Philippe Sacré, the association’s secretary general. He was referring to aid exemptions that would be restricted to airports handling over 500,000 passengers a year, according to the Commission’s draft.
The Commission’s latest State aid Scoreboard shows that EU countries spent €168.2 billion in state aid in 2024, with Germany, France and Italy the top spenders. Capitals are increasingly taking advantage of block exemptions, with GBER representing close to 70 percent of all active exemption measures.
Companies including Tesla and Base Power are vying for a piece of the rapidly growing market for home batteries. One technology has made it all possible.
After months of fuel and water shortages, Cubans are facing a dire public health crisis. | Yamile Lage/AFP via Getty Images
Since January, many Cubans have lived a life of near-constant darkness. The Trump administration’s oil blockades have led the country into a worsening energy crisis, collapsing what was already an eroding national power grid.
Daily blackouts have plunged the Cuban nationalized, universal health system, once the pride of the country, into a humanitarian crisis. For months, hospitals have been without necessary power and ambulances strapped for fuel. Piles of trash line the streets, increasing the risk of disease. Cold storage issues threaten lifesaving vaccines, and a combination of the frail economy and US sanctions has left pharmacy shelves almost empty.
The public health crisis exposes an often overlooked aspect of the way we tend to think about the promise of universal healthcare. Having accessible and free medical services is only one part of the solution. While Cuba’s once-vaunted health system is bound up in its own history and national context, it still demonstrates that public health of all kinds can only be as resilient as the electricity, water, transportation, refrigeration, supply chains, and institutions that enable it.
An old prototype for universal healthcare
Not long ago, Cuba’s health system was seen as a promising model for successful free universal healthcare. In the years following Fidel Castro’s rise to power, health authorities focused on the integration of healthcare delivery models into a single public system. The Castro government aimed to expand services once concentrated in Havana into rural areas, such that the entire population would have access to basic care services. In 1974, the government launched community-based polyclinics that placed primary care specialists in almost every Cuban community.
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Over the decades that followed, that widened access to healthcare led to significant, measurable returns. Infant mortality in the country has dropped from 37 per 1,000 live births right after the revolution to seven per 1,000 live births in 2024. Infectious and parasitic disease mortality also improved, dropping from a rate of 45.4 per 100,000 inhabitants in 1970 to 9.8 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2019, according to data reported by the Cuban Public Health Ministry.
It’s not entirely surprising that the successful Cuban national health model has been the site of curiosity and enthusiastic scrutiny in American health equity circles, despite vast differences in state ideologies. The US has never ensured that every citizen has affordable access to healthcare, and large disparities persist in low-income and rural populations. The chokehold of private insurance has ensured that, unlike nearly every other country in the world, the US has largely rejected the prospect of universal care. Even historic gains in insurance coverage have faced rollback threats under the One Big Beautiful Bill.
On certain key metrics, the US also falls far behind Cuba, which boasted 9.5 physicians to 1,000 people in 2021. That same year, the US reported just 3.7 physicians to every 1,000 people. The 2019 measles epidemic demonstrated a gap in childhood vaccination rates as well: 92 percent of childrenages 13 to 17 in the US received two doses or more of the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine. In Cuba, the childhood completion rates were well over 99 percent, and the country has not seen a measles outbreak since 1993.
From its early years, the Cuban health system has functioned against a background of economic decline particular to the country, one attributable to a complex combination of external pressures, among them US blockades, a complicated economic reliance on Venezuela, a struggling state-run economy, and a flailing industry heavily impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic.
While other sectors faced attrition, Cuba’s health system, at least, appeared capable of weathering these crises. During the pandemic, the country proved to be a model in global health, having developed a homegrown Covid-19 vaccine rapidly and reaching a 95 percent vaccination rate. Its robust supply of trained health professionals made headlines when Cuban healthcare workers provided essential pandemic aid to a small town in Italy.
So why has this system proved to be so fragile now?
New blockades deal the final blow after Hurricane Melissa
Torrents of rain and flooding from the Category 3 Hurricane Melissa hit Cuba in October of last year, affecting much of the island’s eastern provinces. More than 735,000 people were evacuated, and the environmental disaster has put the country’s basic health infrastructure in a precarious state.
In the storm’s wake, a combination of flooding and damaged water systems increased the spread of viral infections of arboviral diseases such as dengue and oropouche. A report by the Pan American Health Organization published in March placed water, food, and vector-borne diseases in the “very high” health risk categories. Apart from damaged water and sanitation infrastructure, the report describes how disruptions to health service access, routine surveillance of disease vectors, and environmental conditions that breed mosquito-borne disease outbreaks have dramatically increased the risk of infectious disease spread.
For years, Cuba’s economy was propped up in large part by its relationship with Venezuela. In exchange for support from Cuba’s highly trained professionals — especially healthcare workers — Venezuela long provided a critical supply of crude oil, which helped the country keep the lights on even in the face of US sanctions.
That partnership ended in January after the nighttime capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and the sweeping Trump oil blockade soon after has dealt a challenge too difficult for the energy infrastructure to withstand.
Already struggling to recover from other disasters, Cuba plunged further into its present crisis. Mario Cruz Peñate, Pan American Health Organization representative for Cuba, said that while the public health situation has been evolving for a while, he has seen more acute upheavals as sanctions persist, causing mass blackouts that have made it impossible to sustain vital health services and emergency care.
Disease control continues to struggle post-Melissa, with aid organizations worrying about communicable food- and water-borne diseases, such as hepatitis A and diarrhea, that can be caused by unrefrigerated food. On the administrative level, limited transportation resources and electricity have led to a dearth of vaccine supplies, which typically require cold rooms for transfer and storage.
Continuity of care, in particular, has been affected for the worse. More than 100,000 elective and reconstructive surgeries have been postponed, for example, because of a lack of supplies and a backlog of emergency surgeries. At a briefing in May, representatives of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the World Health Organization reported that over 32,000 pregnant women faced limited access to diagnostics and limited amounts of the stable electricity needed to sustain neonatal units. Prenatal care faces delays because of the lack of everything from testing supplies to available facilities. And now, even once successful improvements in health indicators have fallen: a report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research measured an increase in infant mortality rates from 4.0 to 9.9 per 1,000 births between 2018 and 2025.
For humanitarian aid organizations, alleviating this health crisis also poses a stark challenge. Cruz Peñate ascribes this to availability, timing, and opportunity to distribute aid supplies, all of which have been made inconsistent by the ongoing blockade.
“The response to the situation in Cuba has to increase; we have to scale up the response. All the support we can manage to receive will be important,” Cruz Peñate said. “Here in Cuba there is really a situation that needs attention.”
Is Cuba now an outdated prototype for universal healthcare?
While Cuba’s healthcare system was never bound to map precisely onto the US, some of its most notable successes — the high physician-to-patient ratio, the almost entirely vaccinated population, the ample health screenings — still remain desirable. And yet those very accomplishments have crumbled under the threat of extreme weather events and the country’s inability to restore its broken power grid.
Trump targeted even more petroleum suppliers in his latest round of sanctions on July 23, leaving Cuba scrambling still further to revitalize its energy sector. Those same sanctions also took aim at the Cuban healthcare export economy, alleging that it involves forced labor.
Earlier this month, Cuba’s government loosened constraints on a handful of private operations, including pharmaceuticals and elder-care facilities, in response to the shortage of medicine in the country. With state-stocked shelves running empty, the new decree allows private pharmacies with Cuban health registration to fill in the medicine gap. Similarly, privatized elder facilities are also allowed to operate at a capped rate of 60 people per home, with mandatory visits from state physicians.
The government still prohibits private sector medical and dental care, and Cuban officials remain adamant that the “socialist state enterprise keeps its central role,” so it’s difficult to claim that the country’s medical model is being pressured towards privatization. But the erosion of some of its elements still speaks to a state-run health system under strain.
We often think of healthcare itself as an equation of medical services along with healthcare personnel and the authorities — government, industry, or both — that control it. But the crisis facing Cuba gets at the dependence of all of these factors on the broader energy ecosystem. Even a once-promising healthcare model can quickly collapse when a crucial component is missing: fuel.
President Donald Trump paused a 50 percent tariff on Canadian goods hours before it was scheduled to kick in, saying the two countries had reached a preliminary deal.
In a post on social media late Tuesday, Trump announced that he would delay the duties, set to go into effect at midnight on Wednesday, for three days “based on the fact that Canada and the U.S.A., subject to the finalization of documents, have a DEAL!”
The president teased that the agreement could include resurrecting the Keystone XL Pipeline, a long-stalled pipeline extension intended to pump crude oil from Alberta, Canada to the Midwest of the United States.
BRUSSELS — Europe’s seas are overheating and climate change is to blame, researchers said Wednesday, warning that marine heat waves are threatening ecosystems and coastal communities.
The culprit is climate change, scientists from the World Weather Attribution consortium said in a study released Wednesday. They found global warming is the driver behind this year’s high ocean temperatures.
The report lands during a summer marked by record-breaking heat waves on land, droughts and fires — all worsened by climate change, according to the same scientists. In the sea, the soaring temperatures harm marine species, boost jellyfish populations and increase the risk of destructive storms later in the year.
“This summer, we’ve seen some really exceptional ocean temperatures around Europe,” said Catherine Gregory, a climate scientist at the University of Bern who contributed to the study.
“By July, the average temperature of the entire Mediterranean Sea was just over 27C, which was the highest July value on record,” she added. “We’ve had a buoy reading to the west of Mallorca measuring more than 33C in open water … and we’ve seen similarly extreme conditions in the North Atlantic.”
The scientists used peer-reviewed methods to analyze four regions: The Eastern and Western Mediterranean; the Atlantic around the Bay of Biscay and Iberian Peninsula; and the seas around Ireland and western Britain.
“We find it’s the most extreme July marine heat wave conditions in the record for the Western Mediterranean, the Celtic region, and for the Bay of Biscay-Iberian Peninsula region,” said Gregory.
The scientists concluded climate change made both Mediterranean regions 2C warmer while heating the Iberian waters by 1.4C and the Irish seas by 1.3C.
Global warming has also vastly expanded marine heat waves, the researchers found when comparing this year’s conditions to a simulated world without climate change. This year, 90 percent of the Bay of Biscay experienced hot temperatures and 80 percent of the Western Mediterranean; without global warming, only 40 percent of each region would have been affected.
The difference is even more dramatic in the Eastern Mediterranean, where 70 percent of the seas experienced marine heat waves this year, a figure plunging to 9 percent in a world without climate change. Around Ireland, the extent drops from 80 percent to 30 percent.
Oceans absorb the vast majority of the excess heat produced by burning fossil fuels. The warming waters push some species to relocate in search of cooler seas, while those that cannot move — such as corals or seagrasses — are at risk of mass die-offs.
“We have what we call winners and losers. So a lot of species wane in abundance or completely disappear while others bloom and proliferate,” said John Bruno, an ecologist from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and one of the study’s co-authors.
Beyond the impact on ecosystems and the fishing industry, marine heat waves increase the extreme weather threat to coastal communities. The scientists noted that warm oceans supercharge the dangerous combination of heat and humidity along the shores, while also building up moisture that can fuel storms, such as the deadly 2024 floods in Valencia.
“We find that when we have very warm sea surface temperatures, they provide added energy to storms,” said Gregory. “And then we also have the added impact of additional stress during land heat waves as well.”
President Donald Trump is waiting for Iran to cave to his economic pressure. Tehran may be willing to wait even longer.
Even as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent promises a level of economic isolation “never seen before,” former Trump administration officials, U.S. ambassadors and other Middle East experts are skeptical that tightening the economic vise will force Iran to relinquish its desire to toll ships passing through the State of Hormuz and make the other concessions Trump is demanding to bring an end to the war.
“It’s an attrition campaign, and I am sure Treasury tweaks this or that to fill gaps or expand coverage of sanctions,” said James Jeffrey, a former ambassador who served in the Middle East during three presidential administrations, including Trump’s first term. “But, it’s hard to believe [there will be] something decisive after 20 years of U.S. sanctions and Iranian experience of going around them.”
It’s an acknowledgement that underscores the asymmetry of the situation. The Trump administration is staring down a consequential midterm election amid an unpopular war that has sent oil prices back up to roughly $90 a barrel and helped push long-term borrowing costs to their highest level in nearly two decades as hope dims that a peace deal is near.
Iran’s leaders, meanwhile, see the conflict as existential, giving Tehran reason to absorb the extraordinary economic pain rather than accept terms it believes could imperil the regime — especially as U.S. inflation remains elevated and treasuries sell off.
The increase in the yield to its highest level in nearly two decades isn’t solely because of the six-month war; global fuel shortages and broader instability have kept energy prices higher for longer, increasing the threat of persistent inflation. And that’s heaped even more risk on global bond markets that have repeatedly blanched at Trump-related shocks.
“We are in a situation where we’re spending more and more to finance more and more,” said Julia Coronado, founder of MacroPolicy Perspectives. And the war has created “a riskier world full of more frictions, full of more supply shocks.”
Iran’s outsized incentive to muscle through the pain is partly why some former administration officials doubt that the naval blockade, while unprecedented in its scale in the modern era or whatever new strategies Bessent may unveil, will change Iran’s calculus.
“I think the economic pressure would need to hit them in new ways we haven’t seen so far to change the mindset of the regime,” said one former Trump administration official, granted anonymity to candidly assess the impact of the U.S.’s economic pressure campaign.
The administration has yet to indicate what further action it plans to take, but options include going after major Chinese banks that facilitate Iran’s oil trade, expand secondary sanctions on countries doing business with Iran and confiscating Iranian assets under U.S. jurisdiction instead of just freezing them.
Iranian leaders publicly mocked U.S. efforts to sanction them into submission.
“Americans think squeezing Iran harder will win concessions that were never part of the agreement,” Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, posted on X Tuesday.
“Bessent and [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth are way out of their league,” he wrote. “Stop waiting for the clown crew to pull a rabbit out of their hat and clean up the mess you made.”
White House aides, however, continue to contend that the leverage is on its side.
“The crushing sanctions and one of the most successful blockades that have crippled Iran’s economy and has left Iran completely broke,” said one administration official, granted anonymity to share the U.S.’s thinking. “There are many levers the president can crank harder in the weeks and months ahead.”
In the half-year since the Iran war began, the president has deployed an array of pressure tactics to choke Iran economically, including physically preventing the country from selling its most important export — oil — as part of an ongoing naval blockade of Iranian ports. The administration has also sanctioned foreign buyers of Iranian oil, targeted the country’s shadow fleet of ships that ferries it and sought to cut the country off from the financial networks it uses to move money.
But those who have worked on previous Iran negotiations say that’s far from enough to get the regime to cave, especially after six months of U.S. bombing that has killed, by Tehran’s own measure, more than 3,000 Iranians.
“It’s undeniable that there is economic pressure. The question is whether there is a breaking point, and I would say for a regime that is fighting for its life and has never hesitated to transfer economic pain to its population, there is no breaking point,” said Ali Vaez, the International Crisis Group’s Iran project director, who helped work to bridge differences between Iran and world powers during negotiations over the 2015 nuclear agreement.
Yet Trump continued to project patience on Tuesday, signaling that he was prepared to let the pressure campaign play out.
“There are no talks or conversations going on, or scheduled, with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Naval Blockade remains in full force and effect. The Hormuz Strait is open and operating. All water mines have been removed or detonated. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
A senior White House official, granted anonymity to discuss the situation in Iran, insisted that Iran will cave long before the pain in the U.S. or world markets become intolerable.
“Ultimately we want a deal, but in the interim, the Iranian economy is tanking … people are lining up for gas, just for a half gallon of gas. And there’s a lot of civil unrest going on in Iran, that’s not being played on the news for whatever reason,” the official said late last week. “We’re fine if that’s the route they want to take.”
Still, there are signs inside the White House that the economic impacts are a growing concern. Vice President JD Vance last week said on Fox News that the administration’s first goal in the Iran war was to “keep oil and gas cheap for Americans all over the country.” The president, meanwhile, has repeatedly insisted voters will bear the pain of higher gas prices for an end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
The voters have a more dyspeptic view. A Reuters/Ipsos survey released this week showed Trump’s approval rating at 33 percent, the lowest level of his presidency. Roughly 80 percent of Americans — 87 percent of Democrats and 71 percent of Republicans — think U.S. involvement in Iran “will go on for an extended period of time,” the poll found.
But some former Trump administration officials, however, are holding out hope that patience will be rewarded and that the administration’s economic pressure campaign will work, in part because they see the other options on the table, including putting U.S. boots on the ground in Iran, as politically untenable.
Fred Fleitz, Trump’s former National Security Council chief of staff and vice chair of the American First Policy Institute’s American Security, predicted that the U.S. could be “dealing with a different Iran” in 30 to 60 days.
“I think patience is the best approach,” Fleitz said. “I don’t believe that a large-scale military attack right now is going to make a difference in changing the regime’s position, and I strongly oppose the idea of seizing Kharg Island or sending in American troops. The American people don’t want that. That would really bog us down in a quagmire.”
Several independent U.S. oil producers are expected to sign production contracts with Venezuela’s state-run oil company in the coming days, according to three industry representatives familiar with the plans — a step forward for the Trump administration’s efforts to boost production in the beleaguered South American nation.
A signing ceremony involving several smaller U.S. producers and the Petróleos de Venezuela had been set for Tuesday evening in Houston, according to the people, who were granted anonymity because details of the event have not been made public. Venezuela’s oil minister is scheduled to attend, as is the head of exploration for PDVSA, one of the people said. The ceremony could be pushed back until Wednesday morning, another of the people added.
The White House, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment, is not expected to be formally involved with Tuesday’s ceremony, but it comes after top administration officials traveled to Caracas in late April to secure memorandums of understanding that laid the groundwork for formal production deals in the country that holds some of the world’s largest oil reserves.
It marks a sign of progress after the Trump administration’s effort to push new oil development in Venezuela, which began after the U.S. raid that captured former leader Nicolás Maduro in January, had slowed in recent months. Despite a boost from higher crude prices, negotiations have bogged down around key details like dispute resolution, while authorities in Caracas dealt with a devastating pair of June earthquakes that killed thousands.
Venezuela’s interim president Delcy Rodríguez last month unveiled new regulations offering more favorable fiscal terms to international oil companies.
The signings come after the Trump administration renewed pressure on Rodríguez to have PDVSA sign contracts with American companies, an industry source familiar with the negotiations. Those efforts included outreach from Secretary of State Marco Rubio to discuss how increased oil revenue could help the country after a devastating earthquake earlier this summer, this person said.
“There’s a renewed acknowledgement from Delcy that increased oil production is the pathway to rebuilding after the earthquakes and accomplishing what her government wants to do for the people who are suffering because of the earthquakes,” this person said.
David Goldwyn, head of the international energy consulting firm Goldwyn Global Strategies, said investment from independent oil producers and expanded production from existing fields are likely to be Venezuela’s “primary source of new oil growth for the next couple of years.”
“While the supermajors bide their time until they see how the politics sort out, and whether they can cherry pick the best assets, independents can derisk their projects in a short period of time,” Goldwyn said.
But those investments are only likely to add up to 300,000 barrels a day to the country’s oil production over the next year, far from the increase of millions of barrels the authorities in Caracas and Washington would like to see, Goldwyn said.
“Incremental production is all we will see until the framework improves, electricity is restored, and the political picture becomes clearer,” he said.
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