How satellite images expose the hidden cost of Venezuela's oil and mining boom
A new study uses photographs and satellite data to reveal how Venezuela's extractive industries generate massive environmental damage while producing little national benefit. As authoritarian governments increasingly obscure resource extraction impacts, the research suggests visual analytics may become critical tools for policymakers and investors assessing true operational costs.
Originaltitel: Sensing Extraction: Visualizing the New Geography of Extractivism in Venezuela
<p>While scholarship has long focused on the correlation between oil wealth and Venezuelan modernization, the industry's 21st-century decline necessitates a revision of the oil-society nexus. Moving beyond the symbolic and material value of petroleum, this study considers the hidden abodes of fossil capital: the production of waste, territorial appropriation, and the disregard for constitutional protections. Under the Maduro administration (2013-2026), the intersection of economic sanctions and authoritarianism fostered an opaque extractive landscape where extractivism produces limited national value in addition to enhanced systemic socio-environmental degradation. To explore this institutional opacity, the study defines the operational dynamics of visualization tools such as photography and satellite imagery to establish the foundation for an understanding of the visual politics of extractivism. The study does this by analyzing two specific cases: photographs documenting the pollution of oil-rich Lake Maracaibo and satellite images capturing the expansion of mining and deforestation in the Orinoco Mining Arc (OMA). By situating these cases within the post-2013 collapse, the study argues that visual media is essential for sensing extractivism where regulatory controls have failed. Ultimately, this work demonstrates how visual practices provide alternative historical records and narratives that challenge state-led accounts of oil and mineral extraction.</p>