Plunging oil prices are particularly threatening for one of the most dysfunctional petro states.

Oil prices are flirting with yet another five-year low, which is straining plenty of governments from Tripoli to Tehran. But few countries are as fundamentally threatened as Venezuela, where the sudden collapse in crude prices is making a dire economy downright dismal.

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“It’s more likely that this ends up like Libya” than a replay of orderly transitions, such as the one that led to the end of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, said Pedro Burelli, a former board member of state oil firm Petroleos de Venezuela, or PdVSA, and an outspoken critic of the Chavez and Maduro governments.