Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Despite oil accounting for a whopping 90% of Venezuela’s export earnings, President Maduro, a fervent supporter of the Paris Agreement, has courageously put principle before profits by implementing his version of a new green deal. Maduro has eliminated the capitalist exploiters from his nation’s oil industry, and replaced them with loyal army officers who are rapidly dismantling the infrastructure left behind by the capitalists.
Soldiers are taking over Venezuela’s oil industry, and the country with the world’s biggest oil reserves is falling further behind
Reuters Dec. 26, 2018, 5:55 PM
CARACAS (Reuters) – Last July 6, Major General Manuel Quevedo joined his wife, a Catholic priest and a gathering of oil workers in prayer in a conference room at the headquarters of Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA.
The career military officer, who for the past year has been boss at the troubled state-owned oil company, was at no ordinary mass. The gathering, rather, was a ceremony at which he and other senior oil ministry officials asked God to boost oil output.
“This place of peace and spirituality,” read a release by the Oil Ministry that was later scrubbed from its web site, “was the site of prayer by workers for the recovery of production of the industry.”
President Nicolas Maduro turned heads in November 2017 whenhe named a National Guard general with no oil experience to lead PDVSA.
Quevedo’s actions since have raised even more doubts that he and the other military brass now running the company have a viable plan to rescue it from crushing debt, an exodus of workers and withering production now at its lowest in almost seven decades.
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Workers who make mistakes operating increasingly dilapidated PDVSA equipment now face the risk of arrest and charges of sabotage or corruption. Military chieftains, moonlighting in the private sector, are elbowing past other contractors for lucrative service and supply business with PDVSA.
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Maduro defends the military managers, arguing they are more in synch with his Socialist worldview than capitalist industry professionals who exploit the country for personal profit.
“I want a Socialist PDVSA,” the president told allied legislators earlier this year. “An ethical, sovereign and productive PDVSA. We must break this model of the rentier oil company.”
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The sheer genius of President Maduro’s green plan will no doubt be appreciated by future generations of Venezuelans.
Unlike President Macron, whose politically clumsy attempt to ween his nation off oil led to the yellow vest riots and a humiliating backdown, President Maduro has successfully maintained the fiction of attempting to revive his nation’s oil industry, while secretly mounting an unprecedented effort to deindustrialise and dismantle the entire Venezuelan petro-economy.
President Maduro’s loyal army officers are on track to eliminate Venezuelan fossil fuel exports, shut down industry and are also busy quietly liberating the people from the trappings of capitalist materialism, fostering a return to a simpler age when the Venezuelan people lived more in harmony with nature.
The sarcasm is strong with this one.
May the farce be with you…
Stop it you’ve made me rick my side.
Maduro forgets that he is mortal, and no longer young.
He will live forever in the Pantheon of Communist tyrants, along with Mao, Stalin, Honecker, and Castro.
Trump should invade Venezuela, fully ramp up oil production and keep half. Instead, the Chinese will get control and keep 90%.
There is now a bloke next door called Jair Bolsonaro who might be more than happy to do it (see my comment below) on the Trump’s nod.
Sadly not invited to today’s the next door celebrations for the inauguration of the Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro, another S.American character, one of a kind, man of memorable quotes:
“I never beat my ex-wife, but I thought of shooting her various times.”
apparently advocating the sterilisation of poor people, while the rest of his sayings turns political correctness on its head.
South America ain’t going to be the same again with Nicolas Maduro and Jair Bolsonaro next door to each other.
No Griff? I always do a Griff-walk looking for the loony light behind the dark clouds. Venezuela should be in his wheelhouse.
The reason Griff is absent is because he’s already in Venezuela’s wheelhouse!
Venezuela is starting to look like a rerun of the Great Leap Forward. One can only hope someone organizes a coup before it runs the same course.
The only people in a position to make such a coup are busy getting rich off of the corruption.
“Fostering a Return”??? What absolute glurgy bunk.
It’s weird, but I keep pronouncing “Maduro” as *******-****.
Witty but the f-word is not appropriate in Spanish or any other language on this website! Those who wish to do so can Google translate ‘duro’ as an adjective/adverb and the f-word as a noun/verb. Mod
Good sarcasm, missed by a number of readers.
Right, Kevin. Tongue-in-cheek humour is one of the things that makes WUWT stand out from the crowd and be so popular. It’s apparently not appreciated, or possibly not even noticed by quite a few commenters.
Whether humour, or even humor does any good in the long-running battle against those who want to separate us from out CO2 emissions, is doubtful. But it makes it a lot easier to face another day of green nonsense.
Thanks Eric for that.
One of the greatest weapons against tyranny is humor. Would-be tyrants are almost exclusively self-important and have a chronic inability to laugh at themselves.
They shoot people who laugh at them and by extension realize suicide isn’t acceptable.
If you wanted to create a toxin that makes lots of people die in agony, you would call it Socialism.
Look, we found the uneducated imbecile!
Socialism tries to keep everybody alive and out of pain immaterial of their value to society.
Communism lets the people of no value to society starve to death.
Stalinism is neither.
Socialism claims to do that, however the reality is that socialism is just communism in slow motion.
Socialism is socialism in name only. The results of socialism are always the same, destruction of property and people, and the removal of incentive (and rewards) to work.
I lived through a lot of the 20th century when Socialism, Communism and Marxism of various stripes were killing a hundred million people. Now it seems humanity still hasn’t learned its lesson.
If Socialism “tries” to do something good, then it is an utter failure. More likely the mass graves are the real object, and the professed good intentions are a smokescreen intended to fool “uneducated imbeciles.”
Prjindigo said;
“Socialism tries to…”
Important word there being ‘tries’.
Words missing being ‘…and fails.’
The moral and ethical concepts of socialism have some merit. You have lots. You don’t need all. Spread the excess. Everyone succeeds.
The practical results of socialism are that the community organisers cast themselves into admin roles, demand the successful give up what is theirs in order to support the lazy and without the incentive to better yourself that capitalist type cultures provide the entire system slowly collapses into apathy.
Then the community organisers decide that harsh steps need to be put in place and, since most of these people lack STEM, real world experience, or both, they reform the society into an unfixable farce where the top is corrupt, the bottom is oppressed and anyone who might have the skills to fix the problem are removed before they become political dangerous.
Play with names all you want, but Socialism is the good intended paving that leads to all the graves.
“The moral and ethical concepts of socialism have some merit. You have lots. You don’t need all. Spread the excess. Everyone succeeds.”
Except, Craig from Oz, in order to “spread the excess” we have to violate a fundamental human right: the right to property. When people can’t own what they earn, no one succeeds – except the few who get to determine who gets what.
Once we start thinking that everyone’s stuff is “our stuff” (as in, “Here in the richest country on earth, we should be able to [insert utopian goal here]), we’re on that road you mentioned.
The one that the Venezuelan government is no longer in control of as the military is pumping it to be shipped by Russia directly to North Korea?
Why would Russia do that? N. Korea is China’s vassal.
If you want to destroy something, the quickest way is to have government take over.
With “wins” like that, who need losses?
Another large problem with oil production is massive theft of vital oil production equipment. When the New York Times starts documenting problems in a socialist paradise, it must be bad.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/14/world/americas/venezuela-oil-economy.html
“fostering a return to a simpler age when the Venezuelan people lived more in harmony with nature.” Read a return to death and starvation. In nature it is eat or be eaten depending where you are on the food ladder.
October 2018
Countries With The Largest Proven Oil Reserves
Rank Country Billions of Barrels
1 Venezuela …………. 300,878
2 Saudi Arabia …………. 266,455
3 Canada …………. 169,709
4 Iran …………. 158,400
5 Iraq …………. 142,503
6 Kuwait …………. 101,500
7 United Arab Emirates …………. 97,800
8 Russia …………. 80,000
9 Libya …………. 48,363
10 United States …………. 39,230
11 Nigeria …………. 37,062
12 Kazakhstan …………. 30,000
13 China …………. 25,620
14 Qatar …………. 25,244
15 Brazil …………. 12,999
16 Algeria …………. 12,200
17 Angola …………. 8,273
18 Ecuador …………. 8,273
19 Mexico …………. 7,640
20 Azerbaijan …………. 7,000
vukcevic
Proven oil reserves? If you were right , I would agree with you but…
Oil Reserves by Country
Most likely estimate for existing fields, discoveries and yet undiscovered fields
United States 264
Russia 256
Saudi Arabia 212
Canada 167
Iran 143
Brazil 120
Iraq 117
Venezula 95
Mexico 72
China 59
billions of barrels of oil
Source: Rystad Energy
Yes there is plenty of oil in Venezuela but my understanding is none of it is sweet.
…it coincides with their political ideology.
Now that was crude…
True but crude
The Venezuela oil production story is similar, but on a grander scale, to the “Obamacare Website” fiasco. One look at this and it is obvious what government control to any “profitable industry” does. It does not just destroy the profit, it destroys the operational efficiency and competence.
This is the future for any system that allows for legally sanctioned, politically driven, bureaucratic control. It is always sold as “free stuff for you, paid for by benevolent government”. But the benevolent government turns into a “profitable industry” for the ones in power, with the scraps going to the enforcers. The people get photo ops and propaganda, instead of a useful product or service.
And the appetite for it is voracious within the modern US Democratic party. We look at this and see human tragedy and suffering. The “Medicare for All” promoters look at this and they see a good plan with a poor execution. And all they would need is the right people to make the right decisions, and it magically turns to Nirvana. And the world is still waiting on the first Socialist Nirvana. And all signs point to a long wait.
I viewed Tony Heller’s site some five hours ago and he had a video of about 25 minutes.
Longer than usual, but a V. good condemnation of the CAGW fraud.
R Shearer noted this above, some 4 hours ago.
His site is still blocked or whatever it is.
“… Workers who make mistakes operating increasingly dilapidated PDVSA equipment now face the risk of arrest and charges of sabotage or corruption …’.
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History repeats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrecking_(Soviet_Union)
We cry for thee, Venezuela.
Oil production is a difficult endeavor. It requires capital, enormous technical expertise, experience, good judgement, and so on. Anyone who thinks you just drill a hole in the ground and wait for the riches to come pouring out is in for a rude awakening.
The land of opportunities in the 1950s: Venezuela:
Was that a ‘smart’ comment? Or simply an unthinking one?
Nice work of satire,damn shame you are talking about Canada’s future.