By Stefano Pozzebon, CNN
Anzoátegui State, Venezuela (CNN) — It’s a scenario that seemed impossible just 40 days ago: A high-ranking US official walking side by side with Venezuela’s leader to discuss investments in the country.
Yet that was the scene Thursday when US Energy Secretary Chris Wright toured oil producing facilities in the South American nation with its acting president Delcy Rodríguez.
As they walked through the sprawling tank farm of compressors, valves and hissing pipes, Wright was shown a small fraction of the enormous energy potential trapped under Venezuela’s soil, as the US moves to control sales of the country’s oil.
During the tour, US and Venezuelan flags stood side by side at the facility the group visited, and Rodríguez held several conversations in English, a language she perfectly mastered after studying in the UK but that she declined to speak in public for years for political reasons.
Thursday’s visit was full of smiles, laughs and handshakes – a stunning reversal in international affairs less than two months after a US Delta Force operation captured Rodríguez’s predecessor, Nicolás Maduro, before detaining him in the US on drug-related charges.
Wright’s visit is part of a two-day trip to Venezuela that also included a formal reception at the Presidential Palace in Caracas on Wednesday. Maduro’s name was only mentioned once on the first day, Wright told CNN, because the trip was to discuss business, not politics.
“North of $100 million will be invested to upgrade and increase the throughput capacity of this facility,” Wright said live on CNN from Petropiar, an oil processing plant operated in a joint venture between US energy giant Chevron and the Venezuelan public oil company PDVSA.
“They’re on target to double production in that particular field in the next 12 to 18 months and probably quintuple it over the next five years,” Wright added.
“This is the way forward. This is the path of cooperation, and it is the agenda for a long-term productive partnership,” Rodríguez told CNN.
Until very recently, Rodríguez used to have a markedly different tone for the US administration, saying on January 26 that Venezuela would not accept mandates or orders coming down from Washington.
On Thursday, Wright was quick to point to the consequences Venezuela would face if the newly found cooperation was reverted: “The leverage we have is we control the flow of the dominant industry of Venezuela. We control the flow of funds from oil. (Rodríguez) wants to work with us.”
A new long-term relation
The group was joined by the new US Chargé d’Affaires to Venezuela Laura Dogu, who has moved to Caracas less than two weeks ago and is now working to build up on the relation.
“We are working a fast-paced agenda to strengthen our bilateral cooperation,” Rodríguez told CNN, “Chevron has been here for a hundred years, and they are doing fantastic work,” she said.
Over the last 20 years, successive Venezuelan governments under Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chavez almost brough the oil industry to a standstill by threatening foreign companies with expropriations.
Conoco Philips CEO Ryan Lance recently suggested the new government should pay back millions of dollars in unpaid debt if it was serious about a new business relation.
Venezuela has operated a series of U-