Venezuela is nearly tapped dry for oil-majors investors after years of treating them as political scape goats.

"They are desperately inviting people back in, but no one's going there," Shell's Chief Financial Officer Simon Henry said in London according to Reuters.

Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, and Exxon Mobile have all decided that Venezuela just isn't worth it anymore. Thus the nation is forced to look for low hanging fruit when it comes to partnerships, which is hurting.

Welcome to Venezuela 2010:

WSJ:

The Isla refinery on the Dutch island of Curacao, which is operated by Venezuela's state oil firm, entered its third week without production and an official said Monday it will be at least until April before production returns.

"When it will re-start, I can't tell you because I don't know," said the official at the refinery, who asked not to be identified. "But it definitely won't be until at least April. For March, there will be no production."

...

The plant has a capacity to process 320,000 barrels a day of crude, but over the past year has averaged closer to 220,000 barrels a day, the refinery official said.

Maybe that's why they're shipping crude oil to be refined in Belarus.