The decline of an oil giant

"Leaks, rusted pipes, pieces of broken equipment scattered about and staircases leading nowhere: Lake Maracaibo’s oil field is a metaphor for Venezuela’s once-flourishing petroleum industry that is now on its knees.More than a century ago, the Maracaibo basin in northwestern Zulia state was the birthplace of a business that transformed the country into one of the world’s 10 largest oil producers and a Latin American economic heavyweight. By 2008, the country was producing 3.2 million barrels of oil a day. Just 13 years later, it can only muster 500,000 to one million barrels per day amid a grinding economic crisis marked by years of recession and hyperinflation. Venezuela’s gross domestic product per capita is now similar to that of Haiti."