{"id":18149,"date":"2026-04-12T07:50:49","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T07:50:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?p=18149"},"modified":"2026-04-12T07:50:49","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T07:50:49","slug":"former-citgo-6-political-prisoner-sees-karma-in-maduro-ouster-but-venezuelan-oil-wont-rebound-until-theres-true-regime-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?p=18149","title":{"rendered":"Former \u2018Citgo 6\u2019 political prisoner sees \u2018karma\u2019 in Maduro ouster, but Venezuelan oil won\u2019t rebound until there\u2019s true regime change"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThat is exactly what this guy did to us,\u201d Pereira said of the former Venezuelan strongman leader. \u201cFor me, it was like, \u2018Wow, now you\u2019re suffering. Now, this is karma.\u2019 I was very glad. It\u2019s not vengeance; it\u2019s justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rewind nine years to the beginning of 2017, Pereira, then 55, was freshly promoted to the top of his profession as the interim CEO of Citgo Petroleum in Houston.<\/p>\n

The year would end with Pereira in handcuffs in Caracas in a military prison, tried and convicted in a kangaroo court for corruption and treason with five of his colleagues\u2014the \u201cCitgo Six.\u201d Citgo, the storied American oil refiner, was acquired by the Venezuelan government and its state oil company, PDVSA, in 1990, eventually becoming a political pawn of Maduro.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how Pereira\u2014and five other Houston-based Citgo executives\u2014became the unfortunate \u201cCitgo Six\u201d political prisoners in Venezuela for five years before their negotiated release in 2022. Eventually, he published his memoir of the ordeal, \u201cFrom Hero to Villain: My True Story of the Citgo 6,\u201d as his form of writing therapy.<\/p>\n

Pereira, who was born and raised in Venezuela, was the only one of the six prisoners who wasn\u2019t an American citizen. He had worked for more than 25 years with Venezuela\u2019s state oil company\u2014often with U.S. companies until their assets were expropriated in 2007\u2014before he moved to Texas to work for Citgo in 2012 and obtained permanent resident status in the U.S. <\/p>\n

His decades of insight into the inner workings of Venezuela politics and its oil sector are why he\u2019s confident his home country can only thrive again politically and economically following the U.S. military intervention<\/a> in the South American country\u2014if fair democratic elections are enacted as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n

Venezuela cannot grow and oil companies will not want to invest if interim president Delcy Rodriguez<\/a>\u2014Maduro\u2019s former vice president\u2014remains in charge with the rest of the old Maduro regime, Pereira says. They may be acting moderately and cooperating with the Trump administration for now, but they\u2019re just biding time, Pereira insists. \u201cThey are masters in gaining time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThese guys don\u2019t operate like a normal government; they operate like the mob. You take out the head of the mob, and somebody is going to replace him,\u201d Pereira told Fortune<\/em>. \u201cIt\u2019s the same regime. There\u2019s no real change there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, he remains confident elections are coming. He\u2019s just not sure if they can come by the end of 2026 as he prefers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis transition has to be shortened,\u201d Pereira said. \u201cIt will take time, but it will be done. You need a reliable [business] partner in the government, and the only way you\u2019re going to get that is having a free election and having a democracy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sure Venezuela will become an energy hub<\/a> if this is done right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Energy dreams<\/h2>\n

Indeed, Rodriguez and the interim Venezuelan leadership have cooperated and passed a new hydrocarbons law to re-open the country\u2019s energy sector up to more foreign investment\u2014a legal reform that the CEOs of Chevron<\/a>, Shell<\/a>, and ConocoPhillips<\/a> said shows progress but still falls short of what\u2019s needed. And, in large part because of that cooperation, there\u2019s no fast-tracked timeline for elections yet.<\/p>\n

In January, Exxon Mobil<\/a> chairman and CEO Darren Woods famously called the Venezuelan oil<\/a> sector \u201cuninvestable.\u201d Exxon now has a small team on the ground there to evaluate<\/a> the state of the industry. Pereira says Exxon is right to tread cautiously: \u201cIf I were Exxon, they expropriated me two times already. What will be the guarantee that they\u2019re not going to do it the third time?\u201d<\/p>\n

While Venezuela counts the world\u2019s largest oil reserves on paper, the country\u2019s oil production volumes have plunged from 3.2 million barrels daily in 2000 to about 1 million barrels today due to a combination of mismanagement, underinvestment, and U.S. sanctions. Largely thanks to Chevron, the only U.S. producer which never left, Venezuela is on track to grow to roughly 1.2 million barrels by the end of this year\u2014still a shell of its former self. Chevron and, yes, Shell, count among the few planning to invest more thus far.<\/p>\n

Pereira confirmed that the Venezuelan oil industry is \u201ctotally deteriorated.\u201d An economic resurgence is possible, but it will take years, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere has to be a lot of investment. At the end of the day, it\u2019s going to get done because the assets are there, the oil is there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

A long, crude story<\/h2>\n

When Trump intensified sanctions on Venezuela in 2017 and relations between the two countries became further strained, Pereira expedited his plans to retire in early 2018.<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t make it that long.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, \u2018Oh, I don\u2019t like this.\u2019 I was appointed as interim CEO in the worst moment of the relationship. This is a nightmare,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to November 2017\u2014three months prior to his retirement\u2014and Pereira was fatefully summoned to Venezuela to make Citgo business presentations to government leadership. He brought five of his top executives along with him.<\/p>\n

After the presentations seemingly went well, they trekked to the airport to return to Houston\u2014two days before Thanksgiving. That\u2019s when all hell broke loose for their lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was in my retirement mode. The plane was waiting for me to begin my new life, and that\u2019s when the guards came,\u201d Pereira recalled.<\/p>\n

It seems as if the six Houston-based Citgo leaders made ideal bargaining chips and, therefore, political prisoners for Maduro. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe were accused of being spies, corruption, treason of the country, and like 10 more charges,\u201d he said. As the boss, Pereira was sentenced to 13 years in prison, while his colleagues got nearly nine years each.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything was false. We were the first experiment of Venezuela taking [political] hostages. We were the guinea pigs,\u201d he added. \u201cAfter us, they began to do it very frequently. This is a business model\u2014take people and negotiate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rats the size of rabbits<\/h2>\n

He initially was sent to military prison, or \u201cdungeon\u201d as he called it, and then eventually transferred to the infamous El Heliocide prison in Caracas that\u2019s well known for its torture and long list of human-rights violations. It was somehow a slight improvement from the military dungeon, he said, but the rats were the size of rabbits.<\/p>\n

He lost nearly 100 pounds from starvation and suffered through bronchitis, pneumonia, and scabies, he said. There was no running water and sometimes he\u2019d go months without seeing the sun.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the other side of the wall, there was a room they called the \u2018madness room,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cWe heard in the night when they were torturing people. Can you imagine sleeping in the middle of the night and hearing the screaming and the yelling and the crying and the beatings? It was like living in a hell.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lack of food forced his family to make a big sacrifice, but eventually offered a semblance of hope. His family had to ship him food to eat for lack of prison funding, which proved impossible from the U.S. So one of his sons moved to Colombia, where he could buy and ship the imprisoned Pereira weekly grocery boxes of food.<\/p>\n

Pereira eventually figured out how to smuggle letters to his family, and he and his wife and children began writing letters back and forth to each other\u2014both for his sanity and to keep him abreast of political, prisoner exchange negotiations that remained stagnant for years. The saved letters also served as the basis for his memoir.<\/p>\n

Eventually, came Oct. 1, 2022. He and the rest of the Citgo Six\u2014one of them was released months prior as a goodwill gesture\u2014were told they were being sent to a meeting. It was ominous, but eventually they learned they would be released. \u201cWe didn\u2019t believe it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Without being told where they were headed, they were flown to the Caribbean island country Saint Vincent and the Grenadines\u2014a neutral ground for the negotiated prisoner exchange that swapped the Citgo employees for two nephews of Maduro who had been arrested seven years prior for narcotics trafficking (the so-called \u201cNarcosobrinos\u201d\u2014or drug trafficking nephews\u2014affair).<\/p>\n

Then they finally flew back to Texas. The relief was great, but so was the post-traumatic stress disorder.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter almost six months, I began to feel like I had my life back,\u201d Pereira said. \u201cI felt like I\u2019d come in a time machine. All those years lost.\u201d<\/p>\n

For him, writing and talking about his experience became his \u201chealing process.\u201d<\/p>\n

And watching Maduro behind bars offered its own therapeutic assist.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur story is very tied to what\u2019s going on today in Venezuela,\u201d Pereira said, but now there\u2019s reason to hope again.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThat is exactly what this guy did to us,\u201d Pereira said of the former Venezuelan strongman leader. \u201cFor me, it was like, \u2018Wow, now you\u2019re suffering. Now, this is karma.\u2019 I was very glad. It\u2019s not vengeance; it\u2019s justice.\u201d Rewind nine years to the beginning of 2017, Pereira, then 55, was freshly promoted to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":960,"featured_media":18150,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[123],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"yoast_head":"\nFormer \u2018Citgo 6\u2019 political prisoner sees \u2018karma\u2019 in Maduro ouster, but Venezuelan oil won\u2019t rebound until there\u2019s true regime change | Unlock Informed Choices with Us<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Former 'Citgo Six' captive sees democratic elections as the only way to build international business trust in Venezuela again.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" 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Blum","author_link":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?author=960"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"\u201cThat is exactly what this guy did to us,\u201d Pereira said of the former Venezuelan strongman leader. \u201cFor me, it was like, \u2018Wow, now you\u2019re suffering. Now, this is karma.\u2019 I was very glad. It\u2019s not vengeance; it\u2019s justice.\u201d Rewind nine years to the beginning of 2017, Pereira, then 55, was freshly promoted to the…","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/960"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}