With a slowing economy, rising inflation, the 'S' word, 'stagflation' is being bandied about. Now comes Hugo Chavez and threatens to cut off oil shipments to ExxonMobil in retaliation for Exxon's $12 billion court ordered freeze of Venezuelan assets for alleged breach of contract, and confiscatory actions against Exxon in Venezuela.
The imbroglio between Venezuela and Exxon (since last week Venezuela has actually begun cutting oil shipments to Exxon) is said to have helped oil prices bounce back from a low this year of $86.11/ barrel to near $96 today, a rise of over 10%, or in dollar terms a transfer of over $200 million a day from American consumers to oil interests around the world.
Now a question all Americans should be asking: "Where is our Department of Energy, where is the White House announcing that our Strategic Petroleum Reserve (currently holding some 700 million barrels of oil, bought and paid for out of our Treasury) is available and at the ready to make up for any of Hugo's extortionary tactics?"
One now has the feeling that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has been created as a boondoggle for the oil industry exclusively, whereby purchases for the Reserve help escalate prices as they are made. Yet releases from the Reserve that would help stabilize prices or even push prices down are anathema.
If the Venezuelan governments actions are not reason enough for our government to proclaim loudly and clearly that the STP is at the ready to iron out any supply discrepancies, then when, if ever.
It is high time Congress looked into this matter as the management of the SPR under this administration defies comprehension and raises the worst suspicions.
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Are you kidding, the Bush administration doesn't use the SPR to stabilize, or lower oil prices, it only uses it to maintain high prices. Kinda makes their oil patch benefactors really happy.
The U.S. government has just stolen $12 billion from Venezuela. Just like the U.S. is stealing Iraq's oil and giving it to the insider-connected oil corporations. Is there something about that -- the theft -- that's not clear? We have stolen someone else's money, and we need to give it back. The U.S. is an international criminal and mass murderer. Now add thief to the list.
And as an aside: it's not our oil. It's Venezuela's oil. If they don't want to send it to Exxon-Mobil, or if they don't want to sell it to the U.S., that's their right.
Maybe if that senile old man McCain would stop threatening to invade and attack Venezuela, maybe if our politicians would stop demeanonizing that country, we wouldn't have these problems.
Number of times Venezuela has attacked the U.S., threatened to attack it, declared war? None. Never happened. So maybe our politicians can stop playing tough guy and start acting nice to our neighbors. We don't want any more oil wars. Give Venezuela back its money.
"It's time for Congress to LOOK INTO THIS MATTER"??
What is this, COMEDY hour, Raymond?
What a joke. ALL Pelosi, Hoyer, Kerry, Rockefeller, Reid, and the other "inside the Beltway" Democrats care about is their CAMPAIGN DONATIONS - FROM K.-St. corporate lobbyists - for their next campaigns. Which, btw, make them (DLC inside-beltway Dem incumbents) the chairmen & CEOs of their own mulit-million dollar campaign companies.
HERE is NANCY PELOSI... GIVING Bush and Cheney a BLANK CHECK for the _IRAN_ war, at the behest of her AIPAC fund-raisers.
http://www.postchronicle.com/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi?archive=11&num=70952
And just to beat the point to death, here is the "BIPARTISAN" AIPAC annual conference in Washington DC in March of 2007... standing and cheering VP Cheney's most bombastic "BOMB IRAN NOW!" rhetoric.
I for one am tired of Pelosi and the Democrat "leadership's" repeated protestations of IGNORANCE, INCOMPETENCE, and/or FEAR as the excuse they CAN DO NOTHING as Bush and Cheney continue the bleed the US treasury dry...
"ENRON ACCOUNTING", thy new name is "STRATEGIC PETROLEUM RESERVE", and the stupid, cowering Dem "leadership" will ONCE AGAIN PRETEND NOT TO NOTICE....
Somewhere in the foggy reaches of my memory, I recall Ronald Reagan making much the same argument in 1980. Then as now, hostile oil states were raising prices, average Americans were feeling the effects, and the president would not use the SPR to mitigate them.
Of course, back then the SPR was a standby in case of nuclear holocaust. Nowadays it serves...what purpose, exactly?
I agree that Venezuela's oil belongs to Venezuela.
But anyone that has looked into Chavez's past can't be under the delusion that this man, democratically elected or not, is good for Venezuela. He is getting ready to turn Venezuela into the next Cuba. I lived in Venezuela as a child, and there were never milk and sugar shortages, as there are now. Crime was not rampant, as it is now. I love the country, but would not in a million years visit it right now.
So please, stop praising Chavez. He is a thug.
Calling Chavez a thug is the pot calling the kettle black. America could be almost free of imported oil if it would in fact, invest in solar, geothermal and wind. It would help if cars had to get really high mileages. I mean the technology is there but for reasons that seem evident, oil is making immense profits and Americans just want to carry on as if the war in Iraq were not over oil (count the costs of that into the price of a gallon of gas), and count the cost of lagging on solar and wind as a loss of revenue and leadership.
And for the record - Cubans may be poor but they are better off to-day than they were when Batista ran Cuba with the Mafia acting as his right hand and America backing both.
Fair enough. But ask yourself whether Cubans might be even better off today had Castro not taken over. I think the answer might be "yes." All the people that fled to the US might still be in their own country, working towards it's wellbeing.
And yes, I would love it if the US would invest in solar, wind, etc. I'm all for it.
Where would America be today if the reforms and subsidies instituted under Jimmy Carter had not been gutted by Saint Ronald Reagan.
Just asking, you know.
A simple question, but one the Corporate Media has somehow never been able to ask, let alone answer.
Could that be because it reflects badly on Saint Reagan?
Yes, the South American thug who has done so many outrageous things. He pushed land reform in Venezuela and put the people back on land to farm, he has thrown out the oil corporations bleeding the country of their national wealth. He has helped his neighboring SA countries to throw off the shackles of IMF and the world bank, parasites that have sucked the life blood out of countries the world over. He funded the Cuban doctor assist program, Cuba has more trained doctors helping other countries than we have. He has pushed socialism ahead of capitalism, not necessarily a bad thing when it puts people ahead of obscene profits of nameless, faceless reckless corporations. The world could use more thugs like this and less like our own home grown variety that seem to only know war.
Believe what you want. Chavez tried to oust a prior democratically elected president and served jail time. His first state visit after he was elected president: to visit Qaddafi. He has repeatedly attempted (and has partially succeeded) in changing the constitution. He's headed toward becoming the dictator of Venezuela. That's why I call him a thug.
Mark my words. Venezuela will not prosper with him in power. There is no doubt that he has helped the very poor, and you are right to give him credit for that. However, I don't think overall that he has the right approach. Maybe things will just get a lot worse before they get better. Right now, however, things are worse for the vast majority of Venezuelans. I have it first-hand from my aunts, uncles, and cousins who live there right now and have lived there during prior (better) presidential regimes. And, by the way, they are NOT members of the rich class. They are regular lower middle class folk.
The current Venezuelan government is more inclined to follow the Norwegian model rather than the preferred industry model followed in the US, which my partnership is compelled to follow and with which I have no real complains. Unfortunately, Venezuela is not in the position of Norway to follow a rational course of resource exploitation and regulation. It's general population is not as wealthy, as well educated, as industrious as Norway's is, and its society and population size are not as stable. One cannot expect as rational an approach to the development of the Venezuelan society and its resources as one encounters in Norway. Hugo Chavez may show signs of brashness and arrogance in his social and economic dealings with Venezuela and with other nations, but he is also addressing the issue of establishing the social and economic conditions in his country that benefit Norway.
Chavez is not extorting anything from the US, the oil belongs to Venezuela. If the US finds itself under pressure, that pressure is something of it's own making. Also, on your opinions regarding the US oil reserves, one of the chief consumers of oil in the US is its military. There is barely enough production in the territorial US to sustain it, and I was under the impression that the reserves were intended to support the military in times of war, not as a short lived means of bringing down the price of the comodity to apply another expedient stimulus to the lousy economy or placate an unhappy population of SUV owners in the US.
Finally, I understand the project valuation that is in dispute between Exxon and the Venezuelans is somewhere in the range of 250 million dollars. For British and US courts to freeze a sum somewhere in the amount of 12 billion dollars is completely unjustified. What it seems Exxon and those courts are trying to do is freeze the entire oil operations of Venezuela in the US and Britain (and all of Europe, if they have their way). What kind of response can one expect from Chavez ?
I own 2% of the production of a small well in Marshall, TX. It's nice side income, given the fact that I recovered my initial investment three years ago in its 3rd year of production. I know a little about petrogeology and oil financial practices. I also believe that all people living on this earth should have some say in the way its resources are exploited to sustains human life and have access to those resources to sustain their own. Due to my knowledge and convictions, I support the Norwegian model for exploiting petroleum resources (and water and other key resources for that matter). That nation owns the resource under the sea/ground and it contracts with the extractors (ConocoPhillips, etc) to share the wealth generated from extraction and sale through taxes and royalties. The nation also controls in a practical way the rate of extraction. That is a rational model. The fact that Norway is a small and stable nation politically, socially, and with respect to population, allows it the luxury of being able to take such a reasonable course.
That is not the standard model that is foisted on nations in which oil is found by the major oil corps (Exxon leading the list), but where such nations are politically or socially incapable to seeing to their own interests. It is in the self interest of the major oil corps to extract as much petro-resource as they can, as fast as they can, and squeeze as much profit as they can in the endeavor. They are not interested in the sustaining of a long and prosperous existence for humankind.
[ Continues here ]
The current Venezuelan government is more inclined to follow the Norwegian model rather than the preferred industry model followed in the US, which my partnership is compelled to follow and with which I have no real complains. Unfortunately, Venezuela is not in the position of Norway to follow a rational course of resource exploitation and regulation. It's general population is not as wealthy, as well educated, as industrious as Norway's is, and its society and population size are not as stable. One cannot expect as rational an approach to the development of the Venezuelan society and its resources as one encounters in Norway. Hugo Chavez may show signs of brashness and arrogance in his social and economic dealings with Venezuela and with other nations, but he is also addressing the issue of establishing the social and economic conditions in his country that benefit Norway.
Chavez is not extorting anything from the US, the oil belongs to Venezuela. If the US finds itself under pressure, that pressure is something of it's own making. Also, on your opinions regarding the US oil reserves, one of the chief consumers of oil in the US is its military. There is barely enough production in the territorial US to sustain it, and I was under the impression that the reserves were intended to support the military in times of war, not as a short lived means of bringing down the price of the comodity to apply another expedient stimulus to the lousy economy or placate an unhappy population of SUV owners in the US.
Finally, I understand the project valuation that is in dispute between Exxon and the Venezuelans is somewhere in the range of 250 million dollars. For British and US courts to freeze a sum somewhere in the amount of 12 billion dollars is completely unjustified. What it seems Exxon and those courts are trying to do is freeze the entire oil operations of Venezuela in the US and Britain (and all of Europe, if they have their way). What kind of response can one expect from Chavez ?
We don't need them.
"The U.S.-led invasion has resulted in the loss of an average of 2 million barrels a day of Iraqi oil from world markets. That is a significant number with huge consequences for economies around the globe."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2004-10-05-iraqi-oil_x.htm
"Iraq's oil production during the last quarter averaged 2.38 million barrels a day, the highest level since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion although still below prewar levels of 2.6 million, the report said"
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/01/29/iraq/main3767801.shtml?source=RSSattr=Business_3767801
"New Iraq Oil Law To Open Iraq"s Oil Reserves to Western Companies"
"Iraq will not be capable of controlling the levels"the limits of production, which means that Iraq cannot be a part of OPEC anymore. And Iraq will have this very complicated institution called the Federal Oil and Gas Council, that will have representatives from the foreign oil companies on the board of it, so representatives from, let"s say, ExxonMobil and Shell and British Petroleum will be on the federal board of Iraq approving their own contracts."
http://www.democracynow.org/2007/2/20/new_iraq_oil_law_to_open
The rest of the world knows where the oil is going, and that's why they are mobilizing against us.
In defense of President Bush and ExxonMobile I'd like to say...
Oh, forget it. They're indefensible.
"Where is our Department of Energy, where is the White House announcing that our Strategic Petroleum Reserve is available and at the ready to make up for any of Hugo's extortionary tactics?"
Where's the fun in that? Then we wouldn't get to invade Venezuela.
Venezuela is doing what the American people need to do about the drilling for oil in our National Parks. The oil taken form these parks belong to the American people not Exxon or any other damned oil company. They may build the derricks and own the equipment to retrieve the oil but it is still ours and it is still being sold to us at a insanely marked up price.
I applaud the Venezuelan president for what he has done. He has taken a stand against the thugs of the oil industry and in return been marked as a villain by their puppet government in America. Americans should all be in the streets about the actions by our government instead we get drivel like this.
One day the people will take back what is theirs. One day the sheep will awake from their coma and realize they have been lead astray. One day the money worshipers will be tarred, feathered and ran out of this country on a rail. One day the American government will belong to Americans and not big oil.
Actually, Energy Secretary Bodman did announce that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve would be available to ExxonMobil. (http://www.upstreamonline.com/live/article148915.ece) I interpreted that as the Bush misadministration offering to guarantee that ExxonMobil's profits would be protected while it sorted out its problems with Venezuela.
"My general understanding is we don't expect there to be a big problem, but we stand ready to make it (strategic reserve) available if it is required," Bodman told Reuters at a building industry convention in Orlando.
Chavez, although far from perfect, doesn't want to do "business as usual" with the greedy oil companies and instead wants to utilize the resources of his country to benefit his country . Exxon et al. have been ripping everyone off forever. They are the extortionists and pirates.
It is the typical oil company business as usual. Just look at what BP did to Iran in the 50 or so years leading up to 1953 and the ouster of Mossadegh, the duly elected Prime Minister of Iran. The rotten UK could not/ would not remove him so they conned the Dulles brothers of Eisenhowers administration to have the CIA fund, plan and execute the coup.
Exactly, the royalties that they agree to pay are a pittance of the profits and then they screw them out of that.
Remember the royalties for the American Indians for the oil in the Caribean. If we, the strong and powerful and smart USA, cannot get a fair royalty accounting from these greedy SOBs, why in the sam hill would we think that these greedy SOBs are not screwing Venezuala also???
Who's the real extortionist here? In fact, Chavez offered to stabilize oil prices at 50$ if the US stopped trying to overthrown the legitimate government of Venezuela.
Exxon-Mobil has made record breaking profits last year, pushing past WalMart as the world's most profitable corporation. Its shameful record of using its money and clout to stall any meaningful action on climate change, while refusing to even countenance discount prices for Americans in need (only Venezuela's CITGO answered the call) reveals it for what it is -- Connex-Killeen indeed. All sympathy should be with Venezuela as they wrestle this monster, while helping average Americans, from Native Americans in the Dakotas and Maine, to the streets of Harlem and the Bronx to the towns of Massachusetts.
Wait right there!
Exxon is oppressing people and ruining our environment and you are blaming Chavez? Chavez is standing up to their bully-ing tacticts. The CEO of Exxon made record profits this year.
Who's side are you on? Oil's or the people of Venezuela who need those profits to continue their revovlution in which they have already improved health care and education.
Get your facts straight! Exxon is screwing Venezuela by demanding way more than they deserve.
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Posted February 18, 2008 | 07:17 AM (EST)