LAKE MARACAIBO may have yielded up untold oil riches for Venezuela but this 12,870 square-kilometre inlet has paid a punishing price in terms of environmental damage, writes Gareth Chetwynd. Baked by an oppressive equatorial heat, inhabitants of the region have also had to suffer generations of contamination that have left a large expanse of water in the centre of the lake biologically dead with zero oxygen content.