When President Pugsley of Venezuela engaged in a bit of thievery, he figured he'd get away with it. See, he was a
president, representing a
government, so what you and I call thievery, he calls "nationalization".
Unfortunately for Pugsley his victim didn't take it lying down, but went to the cops. Who promptly froze about twelve billion dollars of Pugsley's ill-gotten assets. (When you're picking victims for a mugging, avoid the world's largest publicly-traded oil company. They can afford good lawyers.)
Now Pugs is stomping his foot, threatening to hold his breath until he turns blue... and
threatening to cut off his own nose to spite his face the export of oil to the U.S.A. (despite most of the legal fun taking place in the UK and the Netherlands. Nobody ever said dictators were
sane.) No word yet if shadowy multinationals are threatening to cut off the export of coup agitators and assassins to Venezuela.
12 comments:
Oh, well, my Spanish is quite rusty, but sign my up for that assassin bit at the end. I'll even bring my own hardware.
oh geez... now all those poor people that Joe talks about on TV won't get their free oil...
bummer...
These banana republic dictators are so predictable that it's almost like they all went to the same finishing school.
"Cut off his nose to spite his face......"
It occurred to me that the part he's cutting off (his #1 customer for the only export product his country has, besides communist rhetoric) might be a little more necessary to the people of his country than the nose on his face.
ver word: bkavd
I certainly hope not!
It is about time our management finally took some action against the guy. All of this talking was going nowhere and he took our assets and our reserves. We paid billions for them, we spend millions on R&D to make them work and we produced them in good faith. Besides guys like me have worked down their slugging away in the jungles and we have personal "skin" in the game.
In a nutshell the issue is that the oil reserves Chavez took, can only be effectively produced with technology we possess and when he gave us the boot we were not idiots, we took it with us. Sure he can get some, but not at the efficiency we could with particular chemical additives and technology. And if he things the Chinese can get the field up and running at full efficiency, good luck. So in the end we will get the fields back because practically they are only really economic to us in the long run.
So in the mean time, by grabbing his assets and going through the BS with the "talking" we should be able to recoup our investment by basically taking Citgo over. Once we divvy up the worldwide assets between the two companies that did not capitulate we will then continue on and someday get our fields back. (And I say to our competitors "Suckers!")
Heavy crude like in the Orinoco is more like your asphalt road then oil. Just give it some time and it will seize up and Chavez (or his successor) will be begging for us to come back.
In the mean time our stock takes a hit and we let a bunch of other countries know not to mess with "Big Oil".
So maybe our execs are earning the big pay they get after all.
I am reminded that about 100 years ago a slightly simalar circumstance arose in another Central American country and some US owned fruit plantations. That country won an extended visit by the US Marines.
Ditto Panama, Dominimcan Republic, Grenda, etc.
crucis- Then vs. Now
The difference being that 100 years ago, the country was much younger, and had the stomach to fight for bananas (or pretty much anything else- hell, around that time, we'd fight just to be fighting!)
America today is much older, fatter, and lazier. We have gone from scrappy Horatio Alger to Mrs. Fauntelroy of the Unitarian Church's Society For The Preservation of Everything. Fighting for bananas, or oil, or any other national interest would not be NICE. Besides, spending money on the military might cut into Mrs. Fauntelroy's SSI, Medicare, MedicAid, Prescription Drug Benefits, and all the other NICE things Mrs. Fauntelroy has done with our money.
Y'know, someone should point Pugsley toward the textbook which defines 'self-fulfilling prophecy' a few minutes before someone pops a cap in his ass for real.
Regards,
Rabbit.
Now we get to find out if the oil bribes to the Campaign to Reelect Joe Kennedy actually work...
I was thinking more about how chavez treated my company and here is my analogy for you guys that think we bribe the world feel.
Suppose you were driving down the street on empty and decide to buy some gas. You look around and say, "hey, that's a cheap price, I will buy there". Now while pumping the gas the attendant comes out and raises the price not once but 3 times. What are you going to do? Get upset. Now you complain to the attendant and he says well if that is the way you feel, I am keeping my gas and your car because you put my gas in it. Its now mine!
So what do you do? You walk away and go to the court house and sue to get not only your car back but the gas that is now in it.
That is the way we feel about Chavez. Not only did he change the deal we had but he took our car at the same time now we want it back.
And no, the "bribes" did not work. Otherwise we would have Nuked Iran, Iraq and Venezuela on the opening day of the war.
I mean really, if we had half the power you guys think we had with the government do you think we would have slinked away to court to get our fields back? Heck no, the marines would be in the Orinoco right now protecting U.S. Oil Company assets. We have virtually no stroke at all in Congress, otherwise we would be drilling in ANWR, offshore California and Iraq would be the 51st state.
Venezuelan oil is 'almost asphalt', it's a specific, thick & sour crude. No one in the world BUT the US currently has refinery facilities to crack this grade of crude. He can sell it to anyone he pleases, but they'll either have to spend 4 years and mucho dinero building new facilities (and China, fer instance, might) or they'll have to bring it here and we'll crack it. End result - Pugsley takes it up 'el poopchute' and we continue to drive the kids to soccer practice.
I was talking about that oil that Chavez gave to the NorthEast, in sectors that would help certain politicians of a certain left persuasion.
I thought people knew about this. Joe Kennedy even run ads touting the oil he receives from Chavez.
That is the bribe.
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