But this needs a government less stubborn to let oil firms develop oil fields. And this will take quite some time.
And the problem is social idealism (or social fascism), not socialism... Firing thousands of qualified employees that were on strike was not a social action. This was probably the starting point of the ruin of the country. 15 years of mismanagement won't be recovered in just 1-2 years.
I remember the last time that Venezuela came back from a nationalized industry to being open to foreign participation. It was back in the late nineties and famously called Apertura Petrolera (petroleum opening). It was a crazed feeding frenzy. I didn't attend the bid round event in Caracas but several of my colleagues did. The bidding bonuses offered were so far beyond anything anyone had seen to that time as to be absurd (if I remember correctly Lasmo offered $450 MM as a signature bonus; needless to say they are no longer in business). Every oil company you could imagine participated in that bid round as there was a lot of prospectivity outside of the heavy oil. I point this out because after Chavez began to twist the arms of the foreign companies in the mid-2000's pretty much all new activity stopped. During the period of the "great opening" almost no new exploration was accomplished, companies who had gained concessions in the bid round were still doing the evaluation of these blocks when they were summarily dismissed. In the interim PDVSA has conducted almost zero exploration not having any budget as their cash flow was directed to fund Chavez' social programs. That means there is still a lot of conventional oil and gas opportunities available.
A lot of the PDVSA senior folks left the country when Chavez declared many of them traitors to the cause. A few of them had successful oil and gas businesses elsewhere (eg. Pacific Rubiales in Colombia was founded by several former PDVSA management). Having spoken with a few of these gentlemen over the years it was clear they were chomping at the bit for Chavez to leave so they could return and chase some of the opportunities that they were more than familiar with.
Given the above, my guess is once the industry is opened again it will be a mass migration of all the international oil and gas companies with any familiarity in the region.