of nationalization, PDVSA would become the largest company in Latin America and the tenth most profitable in the world. In that 25-year span they went from 18 billion barrels to over 80 billion barrels worth of oil reserves, with a similar increase in production capacity. 1980s–1990s: Apertura In the 1990s, Venezuela opened the company to global cooperation. The opening up of the Venezuelan oil industry, or Apertura, was initialized with a Venezuelan Supreme Court decision which removed older laws prohibiting cooperation with multi-national corporations on Venezuelan land. From 1993 through 1998, PDVSA split extraction rights with multiple multi-national companies in special arrangements called "strategic associations", in effect trading Venezuelan crude oil for the efficiency that came from outside expertise and technology. These "strategic associations" were controversial: Venezuela was able to maximize profits at the cost of lenient taxation on the multinational companies and the loss of control over domestic resources. With Chávez's election in 1998, Venezuela's attention became increasingly focused on complying with OPEC. As oil prices collapsed in the late 1990s, however, keeping the special arrangements while conforming to OPEC regulations became impossible, leading to an end of the Apertura arrangements for Venezuela. Before the election of Hugo Chávez, PDVSA ran autonomously, making oil decisions based on internal guidance to increase profits. Chávez, once he came to power, started directing PDVSA and effectively turned it into a direct government arm whose profits would be injected into social spending. The result of this was the creation of “Bolivarian Missions”, oil funded social programs targeting poverty, illiteracy, hunger, and more. With the Apertura, PDVSA many of its managers become active in Venezuelan politics and served as national representatives in economic summits. Chávez continued this trend, further incorporating PDVSA into the government's structure, but made social welfare the priority. During his campaign, Chávez repeatedly said that PDVSA was previously too autonomous and powerful, and that its managers acted subversively to Venezuela. Chávez turned the post-Apertura PDVSA into a political rallying point for his mostly lower-class supporters by associating its Apertura liberalization policies with the country's ruling groups, energizing his working class supporters against the companies former special arrangements. In 1998 PDVSA produced 3.4 million barrels of oil a day and had 40,000 employees. By law, it deposited its revenues in the sovereign fund accounts in the Central Bank of Venezuela. 2000s: Social spending In December 2002 the Venezuelan general strike of 2002-2003