The US War on Venezuela began in 2001 : Peoples Dispatch

Former PDVSA President Rafael Ramírez with former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The United States had no problem with Venezuela per se, not with the country nor with its former oligarchy. The problem that the United States government and its corporate class have is with the process set in motion by the first government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.
In 2001, Chávez’s Bolivarian process passed a law called the Organic Hydrocarbons Law, which asserted state ownership over all oil and gas reserves, held upstream activities of exploration and extraction for the state-controlled companies, but allowed private firms – including foreign firms – to participate in downstream activities (such as refining and sale). Venezuela, which has the world’s largest petroleum reserves, had already nationalized its oil through laws in 1943 and then repeated in 1975. However, in the 1990s as part of the neoliberal reforms pushed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) …