As the helicopter skims low over one of the largest undeveloped gold deposits in the world, just south of the ragtag mining town of El Dorado, the pilot shrugs bleakly.

“It’s a great shame,” he says, gesturing at the scar blighting the pristine forest in south-eastern Venezuela, cleared by thousands of small-scale, illegal miners in their hunt for gold.

But after a decades-long free-for-all in which prospectors have wreaked environmental havoc while private companies have failed to extract an ounce of gold from Las Cristinas, Hugo Chávez, the president, has said it may be exploited in a joint venture between the state and a Rusoro Mining, a Russian miner.

Since oil provides more than 90 per cent of export revenues and more than half of government spending, collapsing energy prices have ignited the government’s interest in the sizeable gold reserves in order to bolster its earnings, as well as in commodities such as coffee and cacao – once Venezuela’s biggest export.

The partnership between the socialist president and the Russian company is one of the fruits of a budding friendship between Caracas and Moscow – part of the strategy of Venezuela’s anti-imperialist president to challenge US influence in the region.

“The spirit of goodwill between the two governments has certainly helped us a lot,” says George Salamis, president of Rusoro, which has already acquired and turned round two struggling mining operations here in the past year.

Some foreign companies have had a rough ride in Venezuela in recent years as Mr Chávez sought to make an example of capitalist companies while deepening his socialist revolution.

As well as companies affected by the state’s drive to take over “strategic” industries during the past two years, one of the companies with the most disappointing performance has been Canada’s Crystallex, which has been waiting for a permit to develop Las Cristinas since it was granted the concession in 2002.

“My main concern is removing the perception that Venezuela is a risky place to do business, which has been exacerbated by what has happened at Las Cristinas over the last 15 years,” says Mr Salamis.

After buying the operations of US-based Hecla and South Africa’s Gold Fields in 2008, Rusoro is the only international company extracting gold in Venezuela. With control of Las Cristinas as well as the neighbouring Brisas project, which is controlled by US-based Gold Reserve, Rusoro would add to its 10m ounces of reserves a further 27m ounces of gold, accounting for the majority of Venezuela’s 50m ounces of deposits.

But there are significant hurdles. The unpredictability of doing business in Venezuela is exemplified by the insistence of Crystallex that it has not been notified of the government’s intention to work with Rusoro instead, despite “continual communication with senior Venezuelan officials”.

Rusoro’s attempt to take over Gold Reserve’s Brisas project has also not gone as smoothly as hoped, after a Canadian court derailed its all-stock offer, ruling that it had gained improper access to Gold Reserve’s confidential information.

“Ultimately, the writing is on the wall [for Crystallex and Gold Reserve],” says Mickey Fulp, a mining analyst based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. “What capitalist organisation do you know of in the world right now that would be willing to fund business in socialist Venezuela?”.

Although the gold deposits are barely worth six months of oil revenues, developing these resources would be a great boost for this remote area, providing thousands of jobs in the formal economy. It also fits part of a broader strategy to industrialise the economy, with plans to develop the diamond and uranium sectors.

Perhaps the biggest stumbling block for mining companies in the region has been the high level of social unrest and unemployment, which has been exacerbated by the inability of mining companies to win over the local communities. But Rusoro’s success in working with communities appears to have won it favour with the socialist government.

“The people here have lost all confidence and trust in international companies,” says Roger Flores, a local miner, explaining that a failure to reach an agreement with the government had caused hordes of illegal miners to take matters into their own hands at Las Cristinas, causing lasting ecological damage.