The capture of Nicolás Maduro on January 3rd by U.S. military commands has catapulted Delcy Rodríguez Gómez to the highest echelons of power within the Chavista ranks and the state structure. Until that Saturday of the special forces operation, Rodríguez—who had previously served as Minister of Foreign Affairs—was functioning as Executive Vice President and Minister of Oil in Maduro’s cabinet. Now, she acts as Acting President of the Republic amid a traumatic succession monitored from Washington by Donald Trump.
In these days of intense news activity, it’s easy to overlook her role in the Ministry of Oil, which she has held since August 2024 following the downfall—and imprisonment—of the once-powerful Vice President, Tareck El Aissami, and the former head of the state oil company Pdvsa, Pedro Tellechea, due to the corruption scandal Pdvsa-Cripto. However, considering her position is crucial for understanding her suitability as an interlocutor for the Trump administration in navigating post-Madurista Venezuela.
One of the factors that “had impressed” U.S. officials in choosing Delcy Rodríguez as a leader for a political transition in Venezuela was, notably, her “management of the crucial oil industry” in Venezuela, as disclosed this week by The New York Times. Additionally, The Washington Post reported on Friday that “Chevron officials, the only U.S. company allowed to operate in Venezuela amid U.S. sanctions, met monthly with Rodríguez and spoke highly of her to the U.S. government (…) Chevron’s model was working, according to company representatives, and Rodríguez was granting their wishes.”
The management of Venezuela’s oil resources has opened doors for Delcy Rodríguez to maintain an ongoing dialogue with the United States. Credit: AFP.
During her leadership of the oil business, Rodríguez pushed for the introduction of the Productive Participation Contracts (CPP) in 2024, a sort of privatizing formula that, under the veil of the secretive Anti-Blockade Law from October 2020, aimed to attract investors for oil exploitation and production, offering the private partner more advantages than previous mixed enterprises, a scheme implemented during Hugo Chávez’s era under the Hydrocarbons Law of 2006, where the private entity contained a maximum stake of 49% in the business. This shift in the legal framework for private capital participation aimed to draw new players to replace the big names in the global oil industry, currently barred from participation due to international sanctions.
Indeed, the newly created scheme attracted new actors, mostly regime allies and even close associates of Delcy Rodríguez, resulting in “an ecosystem designed to navigate sanctions and sustain financial flows in a context of institutional collapse,” as noted by a press release from the organization Transparency Venezuela in Exile, distributed in December 2025 in conjunction with their report PDVSA: privatization controlled by families in power and militarized. “The process shifted from being technical to evolving into a political-financial framework that included temporary intermediaries, short-lived companies, offshore crude transfers, triangulated routes, and cryptocurrency payments—mainly USDT—a mechanism that remains active as of 2025.”
For instance, the American oil magnate and friend of Donald Trump, Harry Sargent III, was among the first beneficiaries of the new figure. However, Rodríguez also had the chance to offer a special deal through the CPPs to businessman Manuel Antonio Robalino Orellana, whose corporate ties connect him to influential figures from former Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa’s circle, as reflected in documents obtained for this investigation jointly conducted by Armando.Info and the independent outlet Plan V from Quito.
Melons Without Fruit
Since 2018, Delcy Rodríguez has counted among her advisors two former ministers of Economy and Finance from Rafael Correa’s administration: Patricio Rivera and Fausto Herrera.
“I have a team that is permanently there. They do an extraordinary job. You have no idea what it’s like to survive with that oil blockade. In Venezuela, everything was oil,” Correa admitted in an interview published last August by the digital newspaper El Español.
Patricio Rivera and Fausto Herrera have assisted Rodríguez in stabilizing the economy following years of scarcity, hyperinflation, and contraction of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Sources from the Venezuelan oil industry indicate that the Ecuadorian advisors have also been crucial in managing the oil sector in recent years, including the conception and design of the CPPs. Furthermore, according to the same sources, the former Ecuadorian ministers have utilized offices within Pdvsa for their operations.
In 2025, a CPP was signed with Territorio Trading Group, a company registered in Spain in September 2024, directed as “sole administrator” by Manuel Antonio Robalino Orellana, a 45-year-old Ecuadorian businessman. Robalino Orellana has business ties both in Spain and Ecuador with Héctor Eduardo Egüez Álava, a trusted man and right-hand associate of Ricardo Patiño Aroca during his tenure as Minister of Economy and Finance, Coordinator of Policy, Foreign Affairs, and Defense under Rafael Correa’s government. Today, Patiño is a representative of the Correísmo party, Movimiento Revolución Ciudadana, in Ecuador’s National Assembly.
Territorio Trading Group announced the agreement on its website last June. It detailed that the signing with the Venezuelan state oil company would allow exploitation in the Melons field of the Orinoco Oil Belt. A month later, they celebrated the “inauguration of offices in Caracas,” and in September 2025, they reported “well tests in the Melons field” before deactivating the site.
The Melons field, located in the heavy crude area of the San Tomé district, on the northern edge of the Orinoco Oil Belt in Anzoátegui state, spans nearly 700 square kilometers and currently produces about 8,000 barrels of crude daily, according to figures from Pdvsa. The field’s proven reserves are estimated at around 300 million barrels, making it an attractive site for any oil company.
Internal sources from Pdvsa explain that the state company was pressuring Territorio Trading Group to begin the necessary investments to increase production. However, by the end of last year, the company could not demonstrate results due to a lack of required resources. In fact, the production goal for the end of 2025 was set at 10,000 barrels daily, a 30% increase from what the company had accomplished thus far. This failure, compounded by the political shift resulting from the U.S. military intervention and the total control that Donald Trump intends to exert over hydrocarbon production in Venezuela, threatens to jeopardize Robalino Orellana’s petroleum venture entirely.
Correa’s Legacy
This week, former Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa unreservedly condemned Donald Trump’s actions in Venezuela. “They are thinking about how to divide the Venezuelan oil, please, that’s outrageous, it’s something insólito, we’ve normalized it,” he stated while speculating that “knowing Delcy Rodríguez, she would prefer to die than submit.”
“It’s good if foreign investments, from the north or Europe, arrive to recover Venezuelan oil production; that’s what Nicolás Maduro sought, but it’s another thing for Donald Trump to want to run the country and give away the oil,” complained Correa, who was identified in a recent note by The New York Times as an active advisor of Delcy Rodríguez.
In any case, the Ecuadorian clan close to Correa has long harbored an interest in Venezuelan oil. In mid-2024, Pdvsa announced a partnership with Globalable Holding S.L, a company owned by Venezuelan magnate Ricardo Cisneros Rendiles, for the operation of the mixed enterprise Petrocabimas, in the traditional oil basin of Lake Maracaibo, in the northwestern state of Zulia.
In the information released by the state company and covered by specialized media like Petroguía, it was revealed that beside Cisneros Rendiles, Manuel Robalino Orellana, the administrator of Territorio Trading Group, and Héctor Egüez Álava, the right-hand man of former Ecuadorian minister Ricardo Patiño, were also present at the signing. The press release was accompanied by an image featuring both men.
However, months after the announcement, Pdvsa denied the agreement and clarified that the company Suelopetrol Exploración y Producción S.L. remained the private partner in Petrocabimas.
Robalino Orellana and Egüez Álava also shared ownership in Orbit Global Trading Corp (Orbitralcorp), registered in Ecuador on January 26, 2018. This company, dissolved in 2025, reported business relations with the Venezuelan Foreign Trade Corporation (Corpovex), a state holding created by Maduro to centralize public imports in Venezuela. According to the company’s financial statements, they supplied crude palm oil to the Venezuelan regime, purchased from a Uruguayan company.
Even before that, Robalino Orellana faced setbacks in another commercial venture in Venezuela. He was subject to a criminal complaint for alleged forgery related to the sale of 4 million dollars worth of aluminum sulfate to the Venezuelan company Inversiones Revotronics JM C.A in 2013. This was when there was a surge of fictitious exports from Ecuador to Venezuela to obtain dollars at the preferred rate of the then-active currency control regime via the Regional Unified Compensation System (Sucre), a basket of regional currencies advocated by the governments of Rafael Correa and Hugo Chávez to facilitate payment for imports among members of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples (Alba-TCP).
According to the criminal complaint against Robalino Orellana, he allegedly received payments from Inversiones Revotronics JM into the account of the Ecuadorian company Oleopalma Compañía Industrial and forged checks to divert the funds without delivering the products. The investigation was handled by prosecutor Javier Bósquez Villena, who decided not to charge the accused, leading to his exoneration in 2019.
While Robalino Orellana was engaged in these dealings with Venezuela in 2013, Égüez Álava served as undersecretary of Commerce and Investments at the Foreign Ministry, with Ricardo Patiño as Foreign Minister. From that position, he promoted the operation of the Sucre. That year, Egüez Álava visited Chavista authorities, introducing himself as “chief of staff of the Ecuadorian Foreign Minister” to advocate for productive projects involving palm oil and rice financed by the Ecuador-Venezuela Economic and Social Development Fund (Fevedes).
Égüez Álava is 66 years old. Former officials from the Ministry of Economy and Finance recall him holding positions in that office for at least since the 1990s. In 2006, during the administration of Alfredo Palacio González (who, as vice president, completed the term of ousted president Lucio Gutiérrez from 2005 to 2007), he was designated as Undersecretary of the Coast and Undersecretary of Public Investment Programming, when Diego Borja Cornejo was at the helm, a vice-presidential candidate who, along with presidential candidate Luisa González, formed the correísta duo for the April 2025 elections, won by Daniel Noboa.
In 2007, with Rafael Correa as president, Ricardo Patiño became Minister of Economy and appointed Egüez as his advisor. Within months, Egüez’s face became known throughout the country as he appeared in the so-called pativideos, a series of covert recordings showing Minister Patiño discussing with some consultants how to induce panic in international markets to lower the cost of state bonds for repurchase.
Following the scandal, Patiño took charge of the newly created Coordinating Ministry of Policy, while Egüez remained in his role. It was the only time during Correa’s administrations that they worked separately. In 2008, Egüez became the general director of the Ecuadorian Social Security Institute (IESS), a position that requires the President’s trust. A year later, he rejoined Patiño in the Coordinating Ministry of Policy. From then on, he accompanied Patiño everywhere. They served in the Foreign Ministry from 2010 to 2016 and in the Ministry of Defense during the twilight of the Correísmo era.
In July 2017, with Lenín Moreno Garcés as the new president, Patiño and Egüez entered the Presidency of the Republic. The former as government advisor and the latter as advisor. They held these positions until the end of August that year, when Correísmo definitively broke with Moreno. Since then, Egüez has been out of the public eye until now.
There’s another business link that ties Egüez to Robalino Orellana. Both are listed as administrators in Global Maval Inversiones S.L, a company created on October 27, 2025, in Spain, in the same jurisdiction as Territorio Trading Group. On the incorporation papers, both companies are noted as sharing the same office on Serrano Street in the upscale Salamanca neighborhood of Madrid.
Despite the large oil ventures he directs in Venezuela, Robalino Orellana currently has an unpaid tax debt in Ecuador of more than 131,146 dollars, while his company, Orbit Global, carries another of 291,392 dollars. In a document filed in August 2024 by Robalino in the context of a civil lawsuit against him, he stated he was residing in Singapore for “work reasons” and would remain in that city-state in Southeast Asia for several months. This is the last public document reflecting his whereabouts.
As of this edition, neither Robalino Orellana nor Territorio Trading Group responded to the interview request made via email.
