This brief but intellectually very rich book puts forward an action plan for Venezuela, the implementation of which would lead to effective control over its natural hydrocarbon resources, through an adequate level of exploitation that would avoid economic and physical waste.

This strategy foresaw an Organization like OPEC as being one of its main pillars. Without OPEC’s presence, an oil strategy for a country in similar circumstances was seen as fragile and dangerously exposed to risky unilateral or weak bilateral actions, the kind of risk that OPEC, with its fundamental objective of policy coordination and cooperation on oil matters, tries to avoid.

The strategy is anchored on five pillars, from which the title of the book, The Petroleum Pentagon, is drawn.