Tyrrany for Oil

[Mr.Vicchio]

CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez said Thursday that soldiers will accompany government officials when they take over oil projects in the Orinoco River basin next month. ADVERTISEMENT Chavez has decreed that Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, will take a minimum 60 percent stake in four heavy-oil projects in the Orinoco River region and invited the six private companies operating there to stay on as minority partners.

Chavez: Troops to escort oil takeovers - Yahoo! News

This is real tyranny over oil. Perhaps some notes should be taken by Bush, this is the way a REAL dictator bent on enriching him and his buddies acts and gets away with it...

::rollseyes::

[Technosoul]

The webpage used as a source did not give a lot of details but it mentioned that their congress gave him, thier president the authorty to take such actions. Not sure if that sound much like a "dictatorship" system of government to me.

Now the oilfields are not in another country like Iraq but are all inside of the country that he is managing as it's leader. He is re-claiming those resources in the name of his own country and it's peoples, no doubt because some other more greedy leader "sold out" to the international oil companies listed, in the past.

However the poltical happenings down in that Sourth American country have been bouncing around during that last year or so and for me the confusion is hard to keep track of, mainly due to my lack of interest in that country, so I am not sure if my opinons are correct. The country also produces some crops but needless to say the oil resources are an important source of money for that country and it's people, many of whom are poor and that is partly due to past governmental leaders who gave into fancy bribes offered by outside businesses interested in controlling those resources such that the monies went bye bye to other nations, not to the people living there.

By taking back control he can force oil companies to make a new deal that will favor the economy of that country and those who live there. I think?

[Technosoul]

In addition I would remark that their leader is standing up to the big oil companies where as Bush is not, the V.P. earned well over one million bucks last year according to his income tax report. How can tricky Dick earn over a One Million dollars in a year as a Vice President? While I am pinching pennies to buy gasoline for my car.. you tell me? The South American leadership is not nor has not been connected with their own oil business. Our leader have ( are? ). Big difference,

[Slevin57]

Yes, and Castro was just reelected.

The Venezuelan Congress are puppets, just like the Cuban Parliament.


Do I need to point out the fact that the state owned oil company in Venezual is Citgo..

You can't stand up to oil companies when you ARE an oil company.

[The Decider]

Quote by: Mr.Vicchio Chavez: Troops to escort oil takeovers - Yahoo! News This is real tyranny over oil. Perhaps some notes should be taken by Bush, this is the way a REAL dictator bent on enriching him and his buddies acts and gets away with it... ::rollseyes::

Oh yes, and our friends in Saudi Arabia--the guys Bush held hands with recently--are lovers of democracy and enemies of tyranny!

Oil corrupts most nations that own it--and their leaders too. Sometimes their citizens board planes and fly them into skyscrapers. But those weren't Venezuelans.

[PatrickHenry]

Quote by: Mr.Vicchio Chavez: Troops to escort oil takeovers - Yahoo! News This is real tyranny over oil. Perhaps some notes should be taken by Bush, this is the way a REAL dictator bent on enriching him and his buddies acts and gets away with it... ::rollseyes::

Negotiations over the takeover have yet to yield an agreement and are expected to be difficult as the companies seek a deal that takes into account more than $17 billion in investments and loans related to the projects. Chavez has been given special powers by congress for 18 months to issue laws by decree in energy and other areas, which he has also used to nationalize the country's biggest telecommunications company and electricity company. Chavez has justified the nationalizations as necessary to give the government control of sectors strategic to Venezuela's interests.

Hmm...nationalizing oil industries isn't the way I would go, but I can understand the sentiment. Venezuela has been exploited for decades. A period of special powers from the legislature is a classical Roman dictatorship.

I am sure you are aware, Vicchio, that Bush actually has these powers too, since September 11, 2001.
Here's that declaration: Notice: Continuation of the National Emergency with Respect to Persons Who Commit, Threaten to Commit, or Support Terrorism

There are also quite a few other Declared States of Emergency in the US just now. All of these give the President extraordinary powers. The US has its own dictator, as little as you wish to admit it. There are greater pressures here against such radical actions as those Chavez is undertaking, but the powers the White House currently possesses are fully as dictatorial as those of brother Hugo.

I notice that there are some financial negotiations underway regarding the nationalization of those assets in Venezuela.

Question for you, Vicchio...who owns the oil under Venezuela's landscape???:eek:

[Slevin57]

I don't think people flew into buildings for Oil or because of oil.

They flew into buildings because they felt there very way of life was being threatened. So they decided to do something about it. I don't really know how they could have expected us to not do anything about it.

Relatively speaking, I think there way of life is being threatened now more than ever. In that sense they have lost their battle. Ultimately it will not be the military that wins this "war" decisively. It will be a sweeping change among the people of the middle east. Westernization.

They opened the flood gates. I respect people's way of life, and I don't want to Westernize every person in the middle east. But as history has shown, long drawn out wars have a tendency to do just that. Turn enemy into citizen.

[Technosoul]

Quote by: Slevin57 Yes, and Castro was just reelected. The Venezuelan Congress are puppets, just like the Cuban Parliament. Do I need to point out the fact that the state owned oil company in Venezual is Citgo.. You can't stand up to oil companies when you ARE an oil company.

I would agree that they had some violent activities in that country which led to it's present leadership, which involved mass protesting by the people there.
It was a result of a revoluton. Just because a country holds elections does ot mean that they are democratic otherwise, as in cuba or as it once was in Iraq. The kind of a government that is established does not insure what kind of leader will emerge, good or bad, as each kind of government can have ether a good leader or a bad leader. Did you review the link provided? It noted that the oil in Venezual was controlled by contracts with a lot of companies such as Chevron, Mobel, and others. Citgo was perhaps a sub-division of that collective which hired a few native locals folks who took orders from the other outside companies. Which was in the hands of a former leader or poltical party, now that is being changed.

It is their country, their poltical party, and their oil. So what is the complaint?

[Technosoul]

Quote by: PatrickHenry Hmm...nationalizing oil industries isn't the way I would go, but I can understand the sentiment. Venezuela has been exploited for decades. A period of special powers from the legislature is a classical Roman dictatorship. I am sure you are aware, Vicchio, that Bush actually has these powers too, since September 11, 2001. Here's that declaration: Notice: Continuation of the National Emergency with Respect to Persons Who Commit, Threaten to Commit, or Support Terrorism There are also quite a few other Declared States of Emergency in the US just now. All of these give the President extraordinary powers. The US has its own dictator, as little as you wish to admit it. There are greater pressures here against such radical actions as those Chavez is undertaking, but the powers the White House currently possesses are fully as dictatorial as those of brother Hugo. I notice that there are some financial negotiations underway regarding the nationalization of those assets in Venezuela. Question for you, Vicchio...who owns the oil under Venezuela's landscape???:eek:

I agree with this logic. And I would note that I doubt if Chavez has the people or the knowledge to operate those oil businesses nor does he have the network needed to export the products to buyers eslewhere in the world. Otherwise he would just take it over compeletly, He knows he needs outside help from the big guys in the oil world to remain productive. This is more like a Union stike for more money for the homeboys he represents. A way to effect new contracts that will profit his government better which in turn gives him more money to effect needed projects for the people in that country if that is his objective..? I do not know the answer to that question.

A while back I heard about a news story where Venezuela wanted to offer states in the USA a cheap price for oil because they were concerned that some poor people here might not be able to afford the price for heating their houses during the winter "price hikes" imposed on us by our regular supply sources. Under pricing the Arab oil sources, but their offer never materialized because they wanted it earmarked only for low-income people and not for the rich. That offfer upset people who believe that helping poor people smacks of socialism which is an idealogy that the right wing has on their "hit list" if you know what I mean. It sounded to "leftist".

And so in my reasoning we should perhaps "wait and watch" this happening in Venezuela before rushing to judgement. He might be a hero rather then just another mean dictator. He is taking along his army... wonder if those oil companies noted in that link have hired Blackwater or some other private military "security" company? Would a private company like Blackwater that is stationed out of the USA fight back in a war with an established governement on behalf of a business operating in that country that is controlled by that established government? Hmm? This could get interesting.

[Athena]

Quote by: Mr.Vicchio Chavez: Troops to escort oil takeovers - Yahoo! News This is real tyranny over oil. Perhaps some notes should be taken by Bush, this is the way a REAL dictator bent on enriching him and his buddies acts and gets away with it... ::rollseyes::

I am not sure you are correct. From my point of view, tyranny is private ownership of what should be a shared resource. If the money for such resources is not used to build a secondary economic base that will out last the resource, all benefits of having a resource are lost in a very short time.
Just look at the ghost towns that were once great centers of wealth.

Great wealth has came from forest, and much of our land was deforested, because we allowed private individuals to take without giving back, and future generations pay for the wealth of those who got to the resource first. Great wealth came from gold mines and silver mines, and these once boom towns are now ghost towns that cannot support even small populations. Those who got to there first, became wealthy, directly from exploiting mineral resources, or the businesses that grow around logging operations and mines. A few years down the road, the businesses go belly up and the real estate looses all its value. All the people who made a good live possible, loose everything. In my book this is short sighted and wrong. It is the height of human stupidity to be so short sighted and self absorbed.

If a government does not protect community, or national wealth, for the people, they will not be protected. They serve and then end up in poverty, possibly starving to death, and suffering all the problems of destroyed environment. I think you are wrong to believe Chavez is self absorbed and that he is wrong to claim a limited resource for the people and their future, because this is what should be done. What he is doing is so much better than a handful of people exploiting the land and the people and leaving with all the profits. Tyranny doesn't give back and if you knew the history, you would know the people were not getting their fair share and oil feilds were nationalized around the world. The wrong is how much oil was taken, and how much environments were damaged, and how badly the people were exploited, before their governments acted in their favor.

[Athena]

I posted a thread about oil and the importance of democracy, that was pretty ignored.

It seems the majority of posters are against democracy and are in favor autocracy and private ownership. So it is confusing when they object to a dictator. What is the objection? How is it right to have an industrial dictator exploiting resources and people for personal wealth, and wrong if this person rules a nation instead of a privately owned company?

In a democracy, the people elect those who sit in the seats of power, and they have a degree of control over them. While a dictator may grant the people some voting rights, they can not remove the dictator from power, so like in Saudi Arabia, the ruling class inherits their position of wealth and power, and they control the wealth coming from oil wells as though they privately have this right. These rulers enjoy great wealth, simplely as a right of birth. I think it is argued that Chavez has this undemocratic privilege of wealth and power. However, he was elected by the people and can be removed by the people. Nationalized oil is not his private source of wealth, as it is for Saudi Arabian rulers. If Chavez is preceieved by the people as mismanaging the nation's oil feilds and revenue, can be removed from the seat of power. That is what makes democracy important.

The US has a federal government that claims a right to all land, and allows private use of land, only so long as a private party pays property taxes and obeys laws. It has way under charged for the right of extracting mineral resources from the soil for private wealth. It has sadly mismanaged its responsibility over the national wealth, allowing private parties to exploit resources and people. We would not have an oil crisis if our national supply oil reserves had not been consumed so carelessly as though there is no tomorrow and finite doesn't mean finite. We could transition from a monetary system based on gold, to one based on gold and silver, to one based on our imagination, but we can not do the same with our fossil fuel. We can run an economy an abstract concept of the value of money, but we can't run our transportation system on an abstract concept of fuel.

[Athena]

Here is an extract from excellent source of information about the very difficult balancing act that the government of Venezuela must achive. Privately owned industry can not achieve what the government must achieve for the good of all people. Maybe Chavez isn't doing everything exactly right, but he isn't the cause of the problems, and government is how we resolve such problems, not private industry focused on its own profit. I am not sure those who are criticizing Chavez, understand the problems this government faces.

Venezuela: Participatory Democracy or Government as Usual? One can trace the effect of the relatively sudden dominance of oil on the country along two dimensions, the economic and the cultural. In economic terms the dominance of oil meant first of all the emergence of a problem known as the “Dutch disease.”[1] A country catches this economic disease whenever a commodity brings an increase of income in one sector of the economy, which is not matched by increased revenues in other sectors of the economy. What happens is that the increase in income rapidly raises the demand for imports, since domestic production cannot meet demand quickly enough, and also raises the demand for services, which the domestic market has to supply because services cannot be imported as easily as tradables can. That is, the oil income causes a distorted growth in services and other non-tradables, while discouraging the production of tradables, such as industrial and agricultural products. The increased demand for imported goods and domestic services, in turn, causes an increase in prices, which ought to cause domestic production to increase, but doesn’t because the flow of foreign exchange into the economy has caused a general inflation of wages and prices. One can observe the symptoms of the Dutch disease in the Venezuelan economy quite clearly when one looks at the extent to which the increase in oil production and income was followed by a corresponding decrease in agricultural production and delays in industrialization. While agricultural production made up about one third of Venezuela’s GDP in the 1920s, it shrank to less than one tenth by the 1950s. Currently agriculture makes up about 6% of GDP. In addition to the typical Dutch Disease problem, the sudden increase of oil revenues in the 1970s caused a serious problem in the government’s fiscal policies. That is, the new revenues created the illusion that oil income could be used to industrialize the country via massive infrastructure projects, to “sow the oil,” as the president at the time of the oil boom, Carlos Andres Perez, used to say. What happened is that the quadrupled government income caused government spending to quickly increase and even surpass the newfound revenues. When the oil income began to decline, it was not as easy to reduce government spending as it had been to increase it. Over a period of two decades, between 1982 and 1998, the price of oil began a steady decline, going from $15.93 per barrel (in 1973 dollars) in 1982, to $3.19 per barrel in 1998.[2] The result was that the government gradually went deeper and deeper into debt. A combination of factors thus came together in Venezuela over the course of the last twenty years or so: Declining per capita oil revenue (47% drop from 1963 to 1997) Doubling of the population (from 12 million in 1975 to 24 million in 2000) The “Dutch Disease” (declining industrial and agricultural sectors) Increasing state indebtedness (from 9% of GNP in 1970 to 53% in 1994)

[xyzer]

Techno posts?

In addition I would remark that their leader is standing up to the big oil companies where as Bush is not, the V.P. earned well over one million bucks last year according to his income tax report. How can tricky Dick earn over a One Million dollars in a year as a Vice President? While I am pinching pennies to buy gasoline for my car.. you tell me? The South American leadership is not nor has not been connected with their own oil business. Our leader have ( are? ). Big difference

What has Cheney got to do with a South American dictator? What does Cheney have to do with the oil business? He worked for Haliburton which is not in the oil business or an oil company? Suggest you stop listening to such untrue opinions and familiarize yourself with the truth. You been listening to the DNC political smut game too much!

Roughly 60% of your oil prices are paid to the cartel and oil producers and for transportation. Some 20% is reflected in taxes, and another 18% in production costs.
If you can't see the danger in Chavez taking over control of production and being able to dictate to whom it will be sold and how much it will be sold for, you are naive.
You bitch about oil prices yet ignore the take over which may raise them for you. To blubber about the eaarnigs of those who have invested wisely or made profits for a billion dollar enterprise is nonsense. If you want to go down that road what do you think of Bill Clinton clearing over 40 million in 6 years just for making speeches? Is that of more value than the efforts of a business executive who manages billions of dollars worth of industrial business!

[xyzer]

Athena..I don't know what you have been reading but...

That is, the oil income causes a distorted growth in services and other non-tradables, while discouraging the production of tradables, such as industrial and agricultural products.

I consider it a faulty analysis.
Venezuels had no real trade goods before oil was discovered. Forest products, coffee, cocoa, bauxite, and some others. Your source ignores the fact that the revenues from oil stimulated the economy and gave the country the money to achieve a favorable trade balance and create infrastucture. It also upped employment opportunity and made the country much wealthier. It takes an availability of capital for an entreprnuer to start a business. Oil revenues give that country the cash to make the advances in industrial production it needs then service should follow.
The declines may just involve poor managemment and the influence of dictatorial government control plus a staggering increase in population.

In an equation where we add a valuable product and a large share of the profits of private entraprenuers that drill for it and produce it, to a country that needs money to import the products it can't manufacture you have a good potential. Chaves wants more, however. He will keep the big oil companies as minority partners and scrape the lions share of the profit for his government. All the while he will be in a better position to dictate prices.