Venezuela - Basket Case of S.America.

[Piltdown Man]

The Socialist tossers who wrote that piece forget to say that the economy has ceased to function entirely due to the "socialist" agenda of that delusional Chavez idiot. As a result, there are now no more workers. Therefore there is no working class. Or should they be called the non-working class? But the knob who wrote it does deserve a medal; not once did he use the word "aspire" or any of its derivations. For a looney lefty that takes some doing.

PM

[ORAC]

Government paramilitary executing opponents in the street. Corbyn still finds himself unable to express any condemnation....



https://order-order.com/2017/08/08/m...ing-opponents/

[charliegolf]

I'm no Corby fan, but isn't St Theresa just the same over the Saudis? Now why wouldn't she want to condemn them? Oh yeah...

From a recent Foreign Office report...

"There were some signs of modest progress in certain areas such as women’s rights in Saudi Arabia in 2016, but we continue to have concerns about gender discrimination, the death penalty, freedom of religion or belief and freedom of expression. We also remain deeply concerned about the application of the death penalty."

Or has she done so (condemnation, not weasel-words, I mean)? If so, I apologise.

CG

[ORAC]

But nobody holds Saudi up as a role model we should emulate - as opposed to Corbyn and his acolytes who hold Venezuela up as the glorious socialist model they wish to bring to the UK.....

[charliegolf]

Originally Posted by ORAC

But nobody holds Saudi up as a role model we should emulate - as opposed to Corbyn and his acolytes who hold Venezuela up as the glorious socialist model they wish to bring to the UK.....

But your original post (with the vid) was about the lack of condemnation of abuse...

CG

[meadowrun]

Maduro has won again in these trying times for Venezuela. 48% voter turn out.
Inflation running at 13,000%. Rising. Little food, medicines, petrol, toilet paper, jobs, oil exports miniscule and dropping and new sanctions apparently on the way and on and on.
The people (was it a fair one? dunno.) have spoken and selected the best team to lead them out of the current quagmire then.

[Sallyann1234]

OK then, I'll ask.
Venezuela is alleged to be sitting on the world's largest oil reserves, so why isn't it being pumped out to earn tons of cash?
Even if they aren’t capable of operating oil wells themselves, there must be foreign companies banging on the door. AIUI, there are no sanctions on oil yet.

[ImageGear]

OK - then I'll surmise that the other nations capable of extracting and processing oil are satisfied to keep the price per barrel high. Less competition, more profit.

You can thank OPEC and their respective governments for manipulating prices this way. Cartel?, not me guv!.

IG

[Sallyann1234]

If OPEC keeps the price high, all the more incentive for Venezuela to produce it for five cents less.

[meadowrun]

First you nationalize the oil industry and then proceed to mismanage and let deteriorate.

All foreign oil companies that once did business in Venezuela were replaced by Venezuelan companies. Each of the former concessionaires was simply substituted by a new 'national' oil company, which maintained the structures and functions of its multi-national corporation (MNC)-predecessor.
Continue mis-management through Chavez and Maduro regimes and....

By 2017, PDVSA could not even afford to export oil through international water, which requires safety inspections and cleaning under maritime law, with a fleet of tankers stranded in the Caribbean Sea due to the issue. In July 2017, this arrangement was extended from just the first half of 2017 to continue until March 2018. This continued depression in income from oil has led Maduro to pressure the OPEC to raise the falling oil prices to help the Venezuelan economy In April 2017, a controversial Venezuelan Supreme Court ruling granted Maduro executive powers over PDVSA, which allow him act autonomously in selling shares or make international agreements of the oil company In October 2017, Venezuela had its lowest oil output in 28 years, with only 1.863 million bpd being pumped that month. By late-2017, the PDVSA struggled to repay $725 million of debt, part of a total $5 billion owed, despite the fact Venezuelan citizens are experiencing ongoing famine.

Into 2018 as a result of shortages in Venezuela, malnourished oil workers were too weak to perform their daily tasks, with many beginning to collapse on the job.

mostly Wiki.

[Andy_S]

Originally Posted by Sallyann1234

Even if they aren’t capable of operating oil wells themselves, there must be foreign companies banging on the door.

Why? The investment needed to bring the production facilities back up to an acceptable standard would be significant. With the risk that the Venezuelan government could seize back control.

[Heathrow Harry]

No maintenance, no investment, no training

All the best guys have left the country to work elsewhere - Venezuelan oil field workers have a good reputation in the oil business

Could take 10 years to recover the situation

" here must be foreign companies banging on the door. "

The first question any oil company asks is "is there any oil there" and the second is "what is the political risk...."

[whale1776]

Originally Posted by Sallyann1234

OK then, I'll ask.
Venezuela is alleged to be sitting on the world's largest oil reserves, so why isn't it being pumped out to earn tons of cash?
Even if they aren’t capable of operating oil wells themselves, there must be foreign companies banging on the door. AIUI, there are no sanctions on oil yet.

Why would any company make a significant investment in a country that will likely nationalise your company and take it from you? No one in their right mind would invest in Venezuela in its current state.

[Fareastdriver]

They've had all the assets 'nationalised' once, they're not going to risk it again.

[sitigeltfel]

Fourteen South American countries of the Lima Group, and Canada, have recalled their Ambassadors from Venezuela in protest at the way the election was run.

[Lonewolf_50]

Originally Posted by Sallyann1234

OK then, I'll ask. Venezuela is alleged to be sitting on the world's largest oil reserves, so why isn't it being pumped out to earn tons of cash?
Even if they aren’t capable of operating oil wells themselves, there must be foreign companies banging on the door. AIUI, there are no sanctions on oil yet.

I'll answer. Look up the company CITGO, which is now under the umbrella of PDVSA. Rather than reinvesting in their infrastructure and their refineries, in Venezuela where they can increase Venezuelan jobs, they do other things with the money. Look also at how governmental ownership of an enterprise can lead to skimming revenues which don't all go into the public coffers. To put it succinctly, there are a few folks who tap into that revenue stream, and a great many who do not benefit from it. (I have enough friends who have worked at the CITGO refineries here in the US to get some eye opening stories on the alleged "corporate governance" model ...)

Some of my oil industry friends advise me that most Venezuelan crude is of a lower quality standard than, for example, the light crude that came from Iraq for a lot of years. It takes a more capital-intensive refining effort to get the goodies out of a given barrel. But that doesn't explain all of the problems. There are probably a few people who post on PPRuNe who can explain that a bit more clearly than I. My cousin's last trip to Venezuela for BP was decades ago; his concerns in re Venezuela were considerable well before the 2002 failed coup: I don't know when BP left Venezuela, but I seem to recall that one day BP packed up their kit and left. (Memory might be off there ....)

Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez has railed against the Global North, arguing that affluent nations should scrap the capitalist model in favor of socialism in order to save the environment. Yet Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA has hardly been free of environmental problems. In fact, PDVSA, which was born from nationalization of foreign oil companies in the 1970s, inherited many of the same technical and logistical difficulties which had plagued the petroleum industry from the outset. Recently, a U.S. District Court fined PDVSA subsidiary Citgo $13 million for spilling 53,000 barrels of oil in two Louisiana rivers back in 2006. Citgo pleaded guilty in a Lake Charles district court for “negligently failing to maintain storm water tanks and failing to maintain adequate storm water storage capacity” at a local petroleum refinery. The $13 million fine was the largest ever handed down for a criminal misdemeanor violation of the federal Clean Water Act. (source)

[cavortingcheetah]

The story here, not fifteen minutes by Lear from Caracas, is that a British company is responsible for counting up the Maduro votes. That company would presumably be Smartmatic, the CEO of which is Lord Malloch Brown, a serious heavyweight Labour cross bencher in the House of Lords. He is one of the very leading lights in the campaign to Remain in the EU, the one that is funded in part by George Soros and dedicated to the overthrow of Brexit, Teresa May and the Conservatives, even at the consequence of a Corbyn Marxist government.
Smartmatic have denied that they would play a part in yesterday's election counting having previously encountered anomalies in Maduro's past victory.
John McDonnell said the other day that Venezuela was a bad example of what Britain might become under a Corbyn government because Venezuela was not a true socialisyt country.
There is a magnificent conspiracy theory entwined in this that should make even Owen Jones gabble a little.

[Jack D]

Siti wrote in 2017

"Thanks Hugo Chavez for showing the world that the poor matter and that wealth can be shared.
He made massive contributions to Venezuela and a very wide world."

Jeremy Corbyn
UK Labour Party leader.

Corbyn & co are truly detached from reality .. it’s alarming how much total nonsense he spouts .
Nothing more than a below average student protester who never really grew up

[tdracer]

Originally Posted by Fareastdriver

They've had all the assets 'nationalised' once, they're not going to risk it again.

That's the problem in a nutshell - no one is willing to risk investing when they know the probability is 99.99% that if it's successful and makes money, the Venezuelan government will simply seize it - without compensation. Chavez seized the private oil companies, then rather than re-invest as needed used them as a cash cow to line his cronies pockets and buy votes to insure his hold on power. That worked for a while, but eventually stuff wears out and you pay the price for lack of re-investment.
As the old saying goes "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me".
There are precious few fools with large amounts of capital to invest.
Lonewolf, the Venezuelan crude is a heavier oil and requires specific refining capability that isn't commonly available - except in the US Gulf Coast area.

[Andy_S]

Originally Posted by tdracer

Lonewolf, the Venezuelan crude is a heavier oil and requires specific refining capability that isn't commonly available - except in the US Gulf Coast area.

Heavy Crude also has issues around transportation. Basically, it has to be diluted with a lighter hydrocarbon in order to shift it from A to B. Venezuela needs to import these dilutents which need to be paid for in hard currency. I'm sure you see the problem here........

Switching tack, I see Vladimir Putin has endorsed Maduro's 're-election'. I assume PPRuNe's resident gang of Putin loyalists will therefore be similarly approving.