kmarad wrote:This country is so full of resources like you have so much oil, I don't understand why people barely survive.
Having a lot of natural resources while not being a developed country is a curse. There are many countries in
Africa for example with plentiful natural resources (like rare earth metals), who are just being abused by western countries and companies.
Having some mad people rulíng your country is no good either. They did all kinds of stupid things with their currency, eventually causing yearly inflation of more than 2 000 000%.
Problem is that no one wants to exchange a currency that may lose 99% of its value within the next year, if the ruler decides to do something stupid again.
Venezuela is also rather dependant on imports from other countries. They are having issues having even their oil plants running, because they cannot afford (or just refuse to?) to buy parts and work for maintenance.
Here in France, one single litre of fuel is sold something like 1.50€ that's about 1.65$. There must be so much people in between that get all the profit.
Taxation on fuel is usually high, most likely more than 50% of that is tax imposed by french government.
Transporting fuel costs like nothing if it can be done with ships, because of the great efficiency that huge oil tankers provide. Cost of one liter of fuel is only few dozen cents in countries where it is produced.