The mess has driven away beachgoers and decimated the fishing industry on Lake Maracaibo, an immense, brackish tidal bay connected to the Caribbean Sea.
One result is nearly constant leaks from pipelines, pumping stations and oil platforms, says Jesús Urbina, who works for the anti-corruption group Transparency International in western Venezuela.
A U.S. Agency for International Development report last year noted that many of Venezuela’s oil facilities are located within 30 miles of protected areas and said that contamination from the industry poses the main threat to country’s marine ecosystems.
The Trump administration said the sanctions aimed to prevent the government of President Nicolás Maduro from “plundering” Venezuela’s assets and resources at the expense of its people.
But over the past year, large oil slicks have fouled the beaches of the lakeside metropolis of Maracaibo, Venezuela’s second-biggest city, making them much harder for Venezuelan authorities to ignore.
But Monaldi, the Rice University analyst, says it will be difficult to entice international energy companies to invest in the oil industry around the lake due to environmental liabilities.
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