Delcy Rodríguez casts Venezuela as an emerging oil-and-gas power that must control its own resources and politics, free from U.S. interference and from domestic opponents she brands as traitors. Rodríguez says it is Venezuela’s task to become a true oil and gas “power,” boasting of the country’s huge reserves and insisting it should not fear engaging on energy “neither with the United States nor with the rest of the countries of the world,” because Venezuela has the right to diversify its international relations. She calls on the legislature to back changes around the Organic Hydrocarbons Law while keeping Hugo Chávez’s core principles “untouchable,” especially energy sovereignty and state ownership of underground resources, so they can be exploited for the “economic” and “social happiness” of the Venezuelan people.