PUNTO FIJO, Venezuela: Nieves Ribullen, a Venezuelan oil worker sick of struggling to get by as his country falls apart, is betting it all on far-away Kurdistan to give his family a better life.
Over the years he’s watched dozens of co-workers abandon poverty wages and dangerous working conditions at the rundown complex of refineries in Punto Fijo on Venezuela’s Caribbean coast for jobs in far-flung places like Kuwait, Angola and Chile.
Now it’s his turn. Leaving his wife and three children behind, he’ll soon ship out to Kurdistan, where he expects to earn more than $3,500 a month — a fortune compared to the less than $20 he brings home monthly in increasingly unstable Venezuela.
“I only earn enough to buy a kilo (2 pounds) of meat and one chicken each month,” Ribullen said. “We’re in chaos.”
Opposition leader Juan Guaido has rallied support from distraught Venezuelans and roughly 40 countries that now recognize him as Venezuela’s rightful president.
But the accelerating exodus of oil workers means that Venezuela’s crude production — already at a seven-decade low — is unlikely to rebound anytime soon, even if recently-imposed US sanctions are lifted and a business-friendly government replaces the increasingly wobbly President Nicolas Maduro.
Venezuela was once one of the world’s top five oil exporters, pumping 3.5 million barrels a day in 1998 when President Hugo Chavez was elected and launched Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution. Today, the state-run oil company PDVSA produces less than a third of that. Critics blame corruption and years of mismanagement by the socialist government.
Even worse, production is about to sink even further due to fresh sanctions by the Trump administration targeting PDVSA and its Houston-based subsidiary Citgo with the aim of depriving Maduro of more than $11 billion in exports this year.
Despite the short-term pain they will bring Venezuela, Guaido said the sanctions are a critical part of stopping Maduro from consolidating power in what he calls a “dictatorship.”
Venezuela’s oil workers began flooding out in 2003, shortly after Chavez fired thousands of them — many by name on national television — for launching a strike that paralyzed output. The oil workers accused Chavez of riding roughshod over the nation’s democratic institutions, while Chavez said the picketers were plotting a coup.
Tomas Paez, a professor at Central University of Venezuela who studies the Venezuelan exile community, estimates that 30,000 oil workers fled in the initial wave, many banned from working in the country’s oil industry.
He said it’s difficult to gauge how many more have left as Venezuela’s economic problems have worsened under Maduro, but from the tar sands of northern Canada to the deserts of Kuwait, Venezuelan roughnecks now live in more than 90 oil-producing countries.
“Let’s say, where there is oil, there is a Venezuelan,” Paez said.
Many have made new lives in their adopted countries with no plans to return to a gutted Venezuela. And with each new departure, fewer remain behind with the know-how to pump the world’s most abundant oil reserves, once the economic backbone of a thriving country.
“We are losing man hours, hours of training, millions and millions of hours that we can’t calculate,” said union leader Ivan Freites, secretary of the Federation of Professionals and Technicians of Oil Workers of Venezuela. “It’s impossible to recover our trained personnel working abroad.”
In a recent speech laying out the economic plan for his second six-year term, Maduro vowed to catapult Venezuela’s production to 5 million barrels a day. But he provided few details other than promising to take charge personally and root out corruption.
The embattled president retains support from powerful allies, including Russia and China, which are both heavily invested in Venezuela’s oilfields. Maduro’s hand-picked head of the PDVSA, Maj. Gen. Manuel Quevedo, did not respond to requests for comment by The Associated Press.
While the most-talented engineers left long ago — many contributing to a production boom in neighboring Colombia — there’s still demand for labor throughout the industry.
“We’re still in a talent-short market, especially with people willing to go into hardship locations — like Kurdistan,” said Dane Groeneveld, CEO at California-based PTS Advance, an oil industry recruiter. “It’s those people who are now getting picked up by national oil companies around the world.”
The 43-year-old Ribullen said he was thinking of his family when made the decision to go to Kurdistan, leaving them behind until he’s saved enough to send them to Chile or the United States. His youngest, 9-year-old Isaak, cuddled up next to him on the couch of their living room.
“He doesn’t want me to go,” said Ribullen. “It’s difficult for us.”
He recalled starting work at PDVSA 16 years ago, when he made enough money to buy a Toyota and take his family to the Caribbean island of Aruba on vacation every year. Now, the car is long gone and it’s been seven years since the last family vacation.
Sometimes after his night shift he’s forced to stand in line for hours at the market to buy food for his family. He blames Chavez and Maduro for destroying his country.
Conditions are dangerous at the refinery, where Ribullen says workers clock in every day with memories of a massive explosion that killed dozens of workers in 2012. Workers don’t have company-issued hardhats, boots or gloves.
In Kurdistan, a semi-autonomous region within Iraq, he’ll join dozens of other Venezuelan roughnecks who live and work on a remote compound.
“The situation forces me to look for opportunities somewhere else,” he said. “We’re leaving this in God’s hands, asking that he’ll protect us.”
Oil workers flee Venezuela’s crisis for a better life
Oil workers flee Venezuela’s crisis for a better life
- Venezuela was once one of the world’s top five oil exporters, pumping 3.5 million barrels a day in 1998
- Venezuela’s oil workers began flooding out in 2003, shortly after previous president Hugo Chavez fired thousands of them
First flight with Israelis evacuated from Amsterdam lands in Tel Aviv
- The plane that arrived in Tel Aviv had passengers evacuated from Amsterdam
TEL AVIV: The first flight carrying Israelis evacuated from Amsterdam after violent clashes following a football match there landed on Friday at Ben Gurion International Airport, the Israel Airports Authority said.
“The plane that arrived in Tel Aviv now has passengers evacuated from Amsterdam,” Liza Dvir, spokeswoman for the airport authority told AFP.
India’s Modi rejects calls to restore Kashmir’s partial autonomy
- Modi revoked partial autonomy in 2019 and split the state into the two federally administered territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh
- Jammu and Kashmir held its first local election in a decade this year, newly-elected lawmakers passed resolution this week seeking restoration
NEW DELHI: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi strongly backed his government’s contentious 2019 decision to revoke the partial autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir, days after the territory’s newly elected lawmakers sought its restoration.
“Only the constitution of Babasaheb Ambedkar will operate in Kashmir... No power in the world can restore Article 370 (partial autonomy) in Kashmir,” Modi said, referring to one of the founding fathers of the Indian constitution.
Modi was speaking at a state election rally in the western state of Maharashtra, where Ambedkar was from.
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government revoked partial autonomy in 2019 and split the state into the two federally administered territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh — a move that was opposed by many political groups in the Himalayan region.
Jammu and Kashmir held its first local election in a decade in September and October and the newly-elected lawmakers passed a resolution this week seeking the restoration.
Jammu and Kashmir’s ruling National Conference party had promised in its election manifesto that it would restore the partial autonomy, although the power to do so lies with Modi’s federal government.
Jammu and Kashmir’s new lawmakers can legislate on local issues like other Indian states, except matters regarding public order and policing. They will also need the approval of the federally-appointed administrator on all policy decisions that have financial implications.
Under the system of partial autonomy, Kashmir had its own constitution and the freedom to make laws on all issues except foreign affairs, defense and communications.
The troubled region, where separatist militants have fought security forces since 1989, is India’s only Muslim-majority territory.
It has been at the center of a territorial dispute with Pakistan since the neighbors gained independence from British colonial rule in 1947.
Kashmir is claimed in full but ruled in part by both India and Pakistan, which have fought two of their three wars over the region.
Kyiv says Russia has returned bodies of 563 soldiers
- The exchange of prisoners and bodies of killed military personnel remains one of the few areas of cooperation
- The announcement represents one of the largest repatriations of killed Ukrainian servicemen
KYIV: Ukraine said on Friday it had received the bodies of 563 soldiers from Russian authorities, mainly troops that had died in combat in the eastern Donetsk region.
The exchange of prisoners and bodies of killed military personnel remains one of the few areas of cooperation between Moscow and Kyiv since Russia invaded in 2022.
“The bodies of 563 fallen Ukrainian defenders were returned to Ukraine,” the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said in a statement on social media.
The announcement represents one of the largest repatriations of killed Ukrainian servicemen since the beginning of the war.
The statement said that 320 of the remains were returned from the Donetsk region and that 89 of the soldiers had been killed near Bakhmut, a town captured by Russia in May last year after a costly battle.
Another 154 of the bodies were returned from morgues inside Russia, the statement added.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine publicly disclose how many military personnel have been killed fighting.
Russia sentences soldiers who massacred Ukraine family to life in prison
- The court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced the two men to life in prison for mass murder “motivated by political, ideological, racial, national or religious hatred“
- The incident triggered uproar in Ukraine
MOSCOW: A Russian court sentenced two soldiers to life in prison for the massacre of a family of nine people in their home in occupied Ukraine, state media reported on Friday.
Russian prosecutors said in October 2023, the two Russian soldiers, Anton Sopov and Stanislav Rau, entered the home of the Kapkanets family in the city of Volnovakha with guns equipped with silencers.
They then shot all nine family members who lived there, including two children aged five and nine.
The southern district military court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced the two men to life in prison for mass murder “motivated by political, ideological, racial, national or religious hatred,” the state-run TASS news agency reported, citing an unnamed law enforcement source.
The incident triggered uproar in Ukraine.
Kyiv alleged at the time that the Russian soldiers had murdered the family in their sleep after they refused to move out of their home to allow Russian soldiers to live there.
“The occupiers killed the Kapkanets family, who were celebrating a birthday and refused to give up their home,” Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said a day after the murder.
Russian forces seized the city of Volnovakha in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region at the start of their full-scale military offensive.
It was virtually destroyed by Russian artillery strikes.
Russian soldiers have been accused of multiple instances of killing civilians in Ukrainian towns and cities they have occupied since February 2022.
Moscow has always denied targeting civilians and tried to claim reports of atrocities at places like Bucha were fake, despite widespread evidence from multiple independent sources.
The arrest and sentencing in this case is a rare example of Russia admitting to a crime committed by its troops in Ukraine.
State media did not say what prosecutors determined the reason for the attack was.
TASS suggested it could have been a “domestic dispute,” while both the independent Radio Free Europe and Kommersant business outlets said it could have been linked to a dispute over obtaining vodka.
The trial was held in secret.
The independent Radio Free Europe outlet reported the Rau, 28, and Sopov, 21 were mercenaries for the Wagner paramilitary before joining Russia’s official army.
They had both received state awards a few months before the mass murder, it said.
Saudi influencer shines spotlight on resilience, hard work of Filipino expats
- Riyadh-based health worker Ahmed Alruwaili has 1.7 million followers on Facebook
- He shot to social media fame thanking Filipino frontliners during COVID-19 pandemic
MANILA: Dressed in a white thobe, a traditional headdress, and a blue jersey of the Philippine national basketball team, Saudi influencer Ahmed Alruwaili appears in a viral video, distributing small gifts and snacks to Filipinos in Riyadh as a way to thank them for their hard work.
In another clip, he visits an elementary school for Filipino children, sharing jokes and laughter with them. In yet another, he hands out portable electric fans to Filipino expats braving the scorching heat of the Saudi capital.
These videos are just a few among the hundreds of Alruwaili posts, in which he uses his social media platform to celebrate over 1 million Filipino expats living and working in Saudi Arabia. Through his content, he highlights their resilience, traditions, and sense of humor, reaching 1.7 million Facebook followers.
It all began about six years ago when he joined a group of Filipino baristas playing street basketball in the mornings. Initially reluctant, they soon welcomed him into their circle. After each game, they would share their breakfasts with him before heading off to work.
“They used to bring pancit in the morning, at 5 a.m. Pancit and pan de sal, Alicafe,” Alruwaili recalled, referring to traditional Filipino noodles, bread rolls, and the popular instant coffee.
“I know it’s really weird, but that’s how it all started. It’s all with basketball. And till today, I still play with the same people. I did not change, I’m still visiting them. I’m the one now to bring them the food.”
Over time, he developed a basic understanding of Filipino culture and Tagalog — a language he had slowly become familiar with also through his work in a healthcare facility, where he had met many Filipino colleagues.
During basketball games, his friends would often record videos of him, which quickly garnered considerable attention and views. Encouraged by this, Alruwaili began sharing content regularly. While his posts were initially comedic, everything changed with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, as he witnessed the dedication and sacrifice of Filipino nurses working on the frontlines of the healthcare crisis.
Feeling the need to express recognition and gratitude, Alruwaili shifted the focus of his content. This became a turning point — one that would shape the direction of his online presence and influence in the years to come.
“It was purely comedy until the COVID time,” he said. “Working in a healthcare facility, I see the hard-working OFWs (overseas Filipino workers) here in Saudi. So, I thought I’d use it to give appreciation. Once I did that … it became different. All the things happened after that. This is how we started.”
In a video posted in March 2020, Alruwaili is seen buying flowers and food and distributing them to Filipino nurses at various locations in Riyadh.
“The reason why I made this is just to remind you about all the hard work that the nurses are doing all over the world, especially the OFW nurses against this coronavirus,” he says in the clip.
“We all need to pray and appreciate all the nurses for their hard work. The nurses now are the true heroes.”
The video received 3.5 million views. Another video, in which Alruwaili brings pillows, blankets, and food to pandemic-stranded Filipino workers waiting for their flights, has now reached 6 million views — and continues to grow.
Known as The Saudipinoy after the name of his Facebook account — with the word “Pinoy” meaning “Filipino” in Tagalog — the Saudi influencer has already visited the Philippines eight times since he started vlogging.
One of his most popular clips — which has 8 million views — was filmed on Siargao Island. It shows him conducting a social experiment, pretending that his motorcycle has run out of gas. The video captures how Filipinos would immediately offer help to a stranger in need.
Despite his social media fame, Alruwaili’s life remains centered around his full-time job in healthcare. Working as a medical professional, he devotes just one day a week to creating content.
“One day, I am just asleep … then the other day I will do the vlog, then I will prepare to go back to work. So, my life is really busy, I am really working hard to keep up with the vlog,” he said.
“(But) I am extremely happy with the impact (of what) I am doing.”
His social media work is appreciated not only by Filipinos, many of whom recognize him on the streets of Riyadh and approach him to thank him and hug him, but also by fellow Saudis.
“I want Saudis to notice the hard work of OFWs, and I want OFWs to know that Saudi people are nice,” he said.
“I am proud to be Saudi and representing Saudis. And, thank God, even big people here in Saudi … they said: ‘Keep going, you are representing the Saudi people and we are proud of you.’”
