VENEZUELA: The Busy Bs

One place where U.S. businessmen abroad can still flourish in a climate of high-riding free enterprise is the oil-booming republic of Venezuela, on the north coast of South America. Since 1948, when the government and the foreign-owned companies—notably Standard Oil Co. (N.J.), Shell, Gulf. Socony—worked out a mutually satisfactory deal that calls, in effect, for a 50-50 split of oil profits, production has shot up to 1,800,000 bbls. a day, flooding the sparsely populated country* with $700 million a year in oil income. The gratified government has thrown the door wide open to foreign enterprise, and the biggest colony of...