Her father, an oil engineer, met her mother after he moved to Cabimas, an oil town. Because of Venezuela’s oil wealth, Pombo, now 37 years old, studied for free at an excellent public university in Caracas. Word traveled northward, and the Rockefellers of Standard Oil and the Mellons of Gulf Oil saw a business opportunity. Betancourt’s stance that Venezuela resented America but needed America is reflected in Miguel Otero Silva’s 1961 novel, Oficina No. Read: The global oil market is based on a fictionThe perception that Maduro gave away oil to keep himself in power has made some Venezuelans more comfortable with the idea of giving oil to America, the country that got rid of the strongman.