When almost all your electrical power is based on dams, in a drought you lose power. This was true in the days before Chavez as it is today. We in the US did NOT hear of it for unless it lead to a riot, it was not reported by the US media. Venezuela is having a massive drought and dealing with it the same as they did it pre -Chavez. Venezuela has other problems related to hke the government is running the economy but this is not one of them.

As to the low price of gasoline ib Venezuela, that was a battle Chavez decided NOT to fight. When he first was elected the Company Union for the refineries in Venezuela were one of his oppornets. It took Chavez a couple of years to get the workers to pick nee union leadership, but in thst time period you had massive shortages of gasoline. Most gasoline in Venezuela are produced in Texas from Venezuelan oil and shipped back to Venezuela. The Venezuelan refineries produced some gasoline but no where near the demand for gasoline in Venezuela.

It took Chavez a few years to solved that problem for he refused to use force. One of the cost was the decision NOT to leave the price of gasoline reach world price levels. Chavez decided it was a right he did not need to get into. I agree with you it is necessary to do so, but even the opposition is refusing to endorse that position. It is a fight no one even close a position of power in Venezuela wants to take on. The primary reason is the middle class of Venezuela sees that low price as they right.

As to burning off methane, that has been common practice for decades in the oil fields. Unless you have a pipeline from the oil fields to a place it can be either compressed or used, it is cheapervyo burn it off. Methane is not only a greenhouse gas, it can be helded next to the ground by inversions and other weather situations and cause massive fires in the oil fields. Thus you have to pipe it away OR burn it for safety reasons.

To my knowledge the methane is not used in the area of oil production, thus is will be burned off. Thus is the practice even in the US where no natural gas pipeline is near the oil fields. Thus to blame Chavez for such burning is ignore that it is common practice world wide.

If you want to attack the present government of Venezuela, do so on something it is doing, not things beyound its control or items the opposition would do what the present government is doing.

For 20 years their response to low power output because of possible drought has been to hope that there's no drought and, if there is, restrict power.

In the US, there's this funny thing that happens with oil production. A lot of natural gas is burned off. It's been a big deal in the news because it's responsible for a lot of methane, a potent green-house gas, because not all is burned off; and what's burned off provides heat and CO2, a rather less potent green-house gas.

For all their oil production, for all the flare off, their response has been to hope and reserve all the oil output they can for (a) keeping gasoline at absurdly, green-house-warming subsidizing low levels and (b) for foreign exchange currency that is helping but never finishes helping the portion of the economy politically, the one and only true "the people," favored at the time. The flare off and gas-consumption encouragement has simply been ignored because Chavismo.

When the old government did it, they screwed up. But ideology doesn't provide a state of grace for a government, esp. a government with pretensions of omniscience in increasingly planning and controlling an entire economy. In the last 16 years there were lots of times when the Chavez, and then the Maduro, government could have ensured an electrical supply sufficient to avoid having the electrical grid near collapse as an excuse for shortages of so crucial a commodity as beer.

As to the low price of gasoline ib Venezuela, that was a battle Chavez decided NOT to fight. When he first was elected the Company Union for the refineries in Venezuela were one of his oppornets. It took Chavez a couple of years to get the workers to pick nee union leadership, but in thst time period you had massive shortages of gasoline. Most gasoline in Venezuela are produced in Texas from Venezuelan oil and shipped back to Venezuela. The Venezuelan refineries produced some gasoline but no where near the demand for gasoline in Venezuela.

It took Chavez a few years to solved that problem for he refused to use force. One of the cost was the decision NOT to leave the price of gasoline reach world price levels. Chavez decided it was a right he did not need to get into. I agree with you it is necessary to do so, but even the opposition is refusing to endorse that position. It is a fight no one even close a position of power in Venezuela wants to take on. The primary reason is the middle class of Venezuela sees that low price as they right.

As to burning off methane, that has been common practice for decades in the oil fields. Unless you have a pipeline from the oil fields to a place it can be either compressed or used, it is cheapervyo burn it off. Methane is not only a greenhouse gas, it can be helded next to the ground by inversions and other weather situations and cause massive fires in the oil fields. Thus you have to pipe it away OR burn it for safety reasons.

To my knowledge the methane is not used in the area of oil production, thus is will be burned off. Thus is the practice even in the US where no natural gas pipeline is near the oil fields. Thus to blame Chavez for such burning is ignore that it is common practice world wide.

If you want to attack the present government of Venezuela, do so on something it is doing, not things beyond its control or items the opposition would do what the present government is doing.

Otherwise he would have turned things around years ago!

The Fucking West!

land terrace farming to conserve water runoff? how about moonshine instead of import grain beer?

People have to adapt to climate change.

The last thing we need is to burn more oil, because of climate change.

The drought will continue and the water turbines will stop.

They're going to have to adapt or their society will degrade in one short generation to a small group of 'haves' and a huge population of 'have nots'.

The Venezuelan people get to keep the lights on another generation by burning their oil, while a few million Bangladeshis get to see their homes go underwater and their farmlands flooded with saltwater.

Short term solutions will be the death of us all.

hostages from the US. But I wouldn't put it past them.
I wouldn't recommend going there for vacation.

Even in the 90s ours wasn't that high in the US.

and the public would never believe it.