Juan Pablo Perez Alfonso
Juan Pablo Perez Alfonso appears in Chevron, Venezuela and the Paradox of Plenty as the Venezuelan oil minister who helped turn oil wealth into a state-bargaining problem. The source says he helped negotiate the 50-50 agreement that required foreign oil companies to share half of what they took, making him central to Oil Concession Bargaining before full national control.
The episode also places him in the origin of OPEC. By encouraging oil-producing countries to coordinate rather than compete, Perez Alfonso helped extend Venezuela’s domestic oil nationalism into international Oil Producer Supply Coordination with Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait.
His later warning gives the episode its darker institutional frame. Perez Alfonso told Terry Karl to study what oil was doing to Venezuela, calling oil “the devil’s excrement”; the source uses that warning to connect Petrostate wealth, Oil Nationalization, and Political Resource Curse.
Connections
- Venezuela - country and political-economy context.
- Oil Concession Bargaining - 50-50 agreement mechanism.
- OPEC and Oil Producer Supply Coordination - producer-country coordination branch.
- Terry Karl - later scholar prompted by his warning.
- Petrostate, Oil Nationalization, and Political Resource Curse - concepts tied to his role in the source.