(Maduro groupies incoming in 3-2-1...)

All hail the bloviating Bolivarian bozo that is Maduro! I'm amazed that moron remembers to breathe!

Let's see how long it takes before they break the frigging things--they're like the gang that couldn't shoot straight, or pump oil, or keep toilet paper on the shelves, or frozen chickens, or arepa flour...

The Chinese will buy up still more of their assets to keep the wheels turning for a while longer, I'm sure. Pretty soon, Maduro won't even own those silk skivvies he's farting through, if he keeps this up. And if he tries to stiff or rip off the Chinese, I doubt they'll react quite so calmly.

get into personal cars. Drive away. Let the cops do it themselves.

I got the world's smallest violin playing for you,two world wars countless Bush wars,untold millions dead and billions of tax payer dollars frittered away on subsidies?
Fuck all of you parasites!

After all, all justice, rewards, and punishment are ultimately collective and your country's honor and word are only as good as your emotions.

Reduces us all to the level of 2-year-old brats, all emotion and neither understanding nor forgiveness to be found, lacking all sense of proportion.

He always said to folks; "you want to get back on your feet? just miss 3 payments." OOOPS!

confiscate is too nice a word.
I feel this is a situation where two thieves meet and rob each other.

I wonder if the current administration will send operatives to depose Maduro like the Bush administration half-hardheartedly tried with Chavez.
You can bank on the Petro-chemical lobbyists trying to gin up support for this with any friendly ear.

Both sides are wrong and i just cannot find it within myself to feel pity for either of them.
I do feel sorry for everyone who has to pay the price for the Venezuelan government incompetence and for the rest of the world at large for suffering past,present and future because of the oil industrie's rapacious greed.
That is my position.

.....as an oilfield products manufacturing firm and eventually branching out into services guilty of "thievery"?

Are they evil and guilty because they work in the oil industry?

Which they do because WE ALL USE OIL and would be in a very bad place right now with out it...if ships and trucks and trains ran out of fuel, most of would be starving within a month tops.
The users of said product are as "guilty" as the producers, can't have one with out the other.

I got the world's smallest violin playing for you,two world wars countless Bush wars,untold millions dead and billions of tax payer dollars frittered away on subsidies?
Fuck all of you parasites!

How does any of that have anything to do with Ven. seizing a companies specialized equipment to repair damaged casings?
How are they responsible for anything you wrote?

Since the oil companies have been involved in countless wars, are partly responsible for millions of dead people, and have been receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies. I agree, no sympathy for these parasites.

My loyalties lie with the welfare of the people who have and will(to)suffer.

a pox on all their heads.

Sympathy for their victims.

Even a company that only traces its roots back two decades, beginning as an oilfield products manufacturing firm and eventually branching out into services. What makes you think they receive subsidies?

since the oil companies have been involved in countless wars

Just how many wars since 1900 do you think we fought for oil?
I'll list the wars the USA was involved in since then and you tell me which ones were about oil:

Philippine–American War
The Boxer Uprising
Nicaraguan Campaign
Pancho Villa Expedition
Haitian Campaign
Dominican Campaign
First World War
Russian Civil War
Second World War
Cold War
Korean Conflict
Merklín Incident
French Indochina War
Bay of Pigs Invasion
Vietnam Conflict
Laotian Civil War
Cambodian Civil War
Congo Crisis
Invasion of the Dominican Republic
Soviet-Afghan War
Invasion of Grenada
Colombian Conflict
Gulf of Sidra incident
Lebanese Civil War
Bombing of Libya
Iran-Iraq War
Tanker War
Second Gulf of Sidra Incident
Invasion of Panama
1st Gulf War-Operation Desert Storm
Iraqi no-fly zones
Somali Civil War
Bosnian War
Kosovo War
War on Terror
War in Afghanistan
Iraq War
War in North-West Pakistan
Yemeni al-Qaeda crackdown
Second Liberian Civil War
Lord's Resistance Army insurgency
Libyan civil war

I'll give you the Tanker War WAS about oil.

Or some other corporate interest that was being threatened by the indigenous people not wanting their resources to be syphoned away for private profits. Most US wars are waged specifically to protect US corporate interests, and the case could be made that every US war is ultimately about protecting corporate interests.

Caribbean wars were to help corporate interest but most of the rest were more about the Cold War then anything else.


every US war is ultimately about protecting corporate interests.

Really?
Which Corp. were responsible for:
Bosnia?
Serbia?
Korea?
WWI and II?
Afghanistan?

The reason the Cold War started was because business leaders were scared of communism spreading to countries where they had vested financial interests.

Basically oil makes the world go around and they have every man,woman and child on the planet by the short curly hairs.
The company in Houston may or may not have been directly responsible for the crimes against humanity that i listed,depends on who owns them and how far back the company goes.

I have no sympathy for either regime,my sympathy lies with every day people.

Aren't American's who risk everything to start a company and build it up and hire other American's to work for them and go public and raise the millions needed to buy specialized equipment to fix oil rigs also every day people or are they now evil cartoon characters out to get us all?

I would be curious to hear what "crimes against humanity" you think a 2 decade old company that services oils wells could have committed?

....and all who produce it and all who USE it are too....or it's not........but it seems many who feel that way, feel the evil in oil extends all the way to the corner gas station but then magically becomes a good thing when they fill up their car and make it to work every week.

If you want to get rid of oil you start with the users. not the producers.

You are mighty right.

Good excuse for another phase of the Eternal War On Everybody.

It's easier to dehumanize & demonize the people, as well as to hide all the squandered wealth and the mess there.

If not, please PM me with your contact information,

I have a few very exciting oil rig investment opportunities located in unstable regions you might be interested in.

Since they've managed to wreck the rest of the economy there, they gotta start somewhere

they have to be some right wing sock puppets like foxnews was using to pollute conversations.

"Maduro and his cronies can do NOOOO wrong, while the companies they steal from are just EEEEEE-VIL!"

Face it, Maduro IS a corrupt bastard.

But, here we have a reversal of the old Cold War foreign policy, "Sure he's a Nazi corrupt bastard, but he's OUR Nazi corrupt bastard!"

Fighting for the "nation's development and welfare" is the exact opposite of corruption. If you wanted to make a case that this action was contrary to Venezuela's "development and welfare" you could go ahead and try, but it would be a difficult case to make as the Chavista policies now have a very well documented track record of dramatically reducing inequality in Venezuela (and broader South America). See, for instance, here. By contrast, the Washington Consensus policies that Venezuela was following prior to Chavez (and that nearly the entire third world has been coerced into following since the end of the cold war) have been a complete disaster for poor people throughout the global south.

It actually worked out just as they had planned. That country, rich with oil, has been on a downward slide ever since Chavez took over. When you cannot keep the basic everyday items in supply, you have failed. To deny THAT is simply ignoring the truth.
But you're right, inequality WAS reduced. More people have been drug down into poverty or have fled the country for the US. More and more of the middle class and upper class have just left; taking their business resources with them.
The grand revolution is a failure.

basic necessities scarce or non existent, about half the number of private businesses in just a few years, murder rate nearly doubled since Chavez took office, etc etc. Meanwhile the ruling class live like our Wall Streeters.
You may point out that the poverty rate has dropped, but it has similarly dropped all over Latin America.
Let's see how the NEXT 10 yrs go for the citizens.

You would expect a country that rich in oil that has a government that is supposedly determined to be egalitarian would have wiped out poverty and crime and would have a vibrant economy that is the envy of Latin America.

Every citizen gets a check every year of some sort

Now I linked to this article from the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and in your response you recited a bunch of standard half-truth and anecdotes from the capitalist press. Do you really think that a credible progressive organization like the CEPR would be defending the policies of the Chavistas if the reduction of inequality were a mere statistical illusion caused by the flight of rich people? Under Chavez, there was a tremendous increase in state spending on poor people (no one denies this), and it would be absolutely shocking if those programs did not improve the lives of many people living at the margins (which is what you are basically denying right now without a shred of hard evidence to support your position). There is room for substantive criticism of some of the features of those policies (Venezuela's failure to diversify its economy, corruption within the registration of worker cooperatives, corruption within the police department (a long-standing problem in Venezuela that precedes Chavez) etc.) But you are not making those criticisms. Instead you are simply repeating hackish right-wing slurs that could just as well be leveled against progressive agenda in the US.

My mistake was not pointing out that poverty has dropped all over Latin America by rates comparable to Venezuela. But I'm pretty sure the rest of the continent is able to wipe themselves at any given time. Meanwhile the rulers of Venezuela live like banksters.
The "capitalist press" also shows many other bleak figures facing the country, like the doubling of the murder rate, 40% inflation, etc. But I guess those figures are "half truths" too.
As I've said elsewhere, lets just see what the country looks like in ANOTHER 10 yrs

When Chavez took over oil prices started a very steep climb. The structural changes he introduced were inefficient but he got away with them because oil prices kept climbing. He also took on a huge amount of debt. But the price paid by Venezuela was very steep, because as price stalled, production dropped, corruption increased and national production died, inflation climbed and food shortages became common place. Today inflation which runs near 50 % is destroying purchasing power in many sectors, so poverty is increasing fast. Food shortages are a reality, economic activity is slowing down, and the government is mismanaged horribly. I've found CEPR to be mostly the cheerleader section for the government. Thus in a sense they helped kill the Bolivarian Revolution, because instead of giving honest feedback, they hid the awful truth and thus helped destroy Chavez's dream.

as most of the citizens are, then you're right, of course the elite, (Maduro and cronies) don't suffer from "equality", they've got theirs.

You obviously know nothing about the country or its history. There were poor people in Venezuela long before Chavez was elected. In fact, his first election was brought about in large part due to riots against International Monetary Fund structural adjustment policies. Do you even know what the International Monetary Fund is? The government started massacring people in the streets for protesting, and there are still mass graves being uncovered in Venezuela. Since Chavez was first elected, there has been a massive increase in the amount of federal money that has been spent on programs designed to help poor people. This is not even remotely debatable. If you wanted to claim that those programs were ineffective, or that they were funded in ways that were unsustainable in the long run, those could be responsible criticisms (though they would probably wrong). But since you are obviously incapable of making (or supporting) those kind of points, it is irresponsible for you to even speak about this topic.

Why do you feel you're entitled to comment on my comment?
The Chavez and now the Maduro Govts. have so screwed up the only resource they have that Ven. is in real danger of going bankrupt, that's not in dispute.

And I'll keep on commenting on what ever I feel like, despite your disapproval.

The truth is that both if you are right and wrong. Poverty dropped a lot under Chavez. It's increasing under Maduro. The upper Chavista ranks live very well. They tend to be quite corrupt. And a lot of what was achieved was due to the oil price boom. Which when it happened in the past was also terribly mismanaged.

Regarding the core subject in this post, it was a terrible mistake to nationalize those two oil rigs. PDVSA will pay a terrible price for this action, because foreign contractors will start an exodus.

and thank you for the info.

Now I hope they seize some more things for the Venezuelan people. Those rigs were owned by capitalists, not American workers; there is thus no reason why any American progressive should be upset by this. Instead, we should be trying to understand how the Venezuelan people created a government that actually fights for the people's interest so that we can build a functioning Left in this country. There are a lot of things that we too should be taking away from the capitalists.

And welcome to DU!

expropriation is that Venezuela's economy is totally dependent on its petroleum sector. And its petroleum sector has been, is now and will for the forseeable future be dependent on foreign capital investment in order to keep the oil flowing and the dollars coming in. What effect on foreign investment do you imagine will occur when a government not only fails to pay its bills but then adds insult to injury by instead expropriating the assets of the company to which it owes money?

Even a citizen would have second thoughts about trying to build a business or any kind. I the back of their mind they know the govt could just take it away from them if it desired.

My problem with Chavez was always that he didn't go far enough to nationalize and expropriate the "commanding heights of the economy" to throw a little Marx in there. He left the capitalists in place and of course, being capitalists, they attempted to undermine him every way they could, overtly and covertly, economically and militarily, with the enthusiastic support of the USA.

This should have been done a decade or more ago. Fuck a bunch of oil companies. I wonder how many taxes this particular privately owned oil company paid to ANYBODY, either Venezuela or the USA. Probably about as much as Exxon paid, that is ZERO.

within 2 years of taking office. One of the first was the nationalization of the Electric Generation and Distribution for Margarita Island, one of the first privatizations in that sector carried out the year before Chavez was elected. Maduro is just trying to copy Chavez.

when it happens to them. Somehow I dont think China will take too kindly to being ripped off.

Voyska spetsialnogo naznacheniya also known as Spetsnaz troops would have already retaken the two rigs by force.

I wonder what the reactions of some here would have been to all of that.

So Venezuela can shaft them once I'd reckon, then they'd call it even.

http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/americas/china-resold-5-a-barrel-venezuelan-oil-at-a-profit

But yeah, that'd be a pickle.

http://superiorenergy.com/about/news/third-quarter-2013-results/

My problem with Maduro is he's still not focusing on infrastructure, who cares about expropriations, just get shit done and get it done right. Venezuela is resource rich with a resource that is in high demand. Caracas should look like Dubai.

The sad fact is there is a high likelihood these expropriated rigs get chopped up and sold off and are unable to work in a few months. That story, few will hear about, because it'll be in a blurb somewhere with a PDVSA official making some glib remark. And it'll be in Spanish.

When a couple of kids in their twenties can open up a corporation and magically, overnight, get no-bid contracts on billions of dollars worth of transmitting equipment, making themselves millionaires overnight, you know something is seriously seriously wrong.

How many people could've been fed and clothed and educated if the Aban Pearl wasn't being funded via a ghost shell corporation by a Venezuelan and some other conspirators in the UK and Singapore (to the tune of $370,000 a day over paid!)?

LOL

I get the impression someone is trying to lead me to certain conclusions about Venezuela, without providing any real information.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/venezuelas-government-seizes-us-owned-oil-rigs-20761636

Pretty much says the same thing. Do you doubt the accuracy of the story? Similar things have happened many times in the past, so it shouldnt be a shocker

when reporting on politically charged issues, especially when one source like the AP, has the only information yet available. I understand how news can be infused with a biased narrative.

They'll whine about the poor oil companies in Venezuela, but not a peep about the countless atrocities committed next store by the Colombian government over the past couple of decades. Priorities, I suppose...

Most of this thread sounds like a Fox roundtable.

Last edited Mon Nov 4, 2013, 10:17 AM - Edit history (1)

And is dependent on foreign capital and expertise to run their oil industry. This will hurt them badly in the long run.

Except in this case they aren't national resources but foreign owned machinery. Sounds more like theft to me.

Last edited Sat Nov 2, 2013, 05:13 PM - Edit history (1)

Venezuela hires a foreign company who has special equipment for repairing damaged casings and agrees to and signs a contract, falls behind on agreed payment and then seizes the equipment when pressed for payment. Sounds like theft to me. By Ven.

And seeing how they depend on these foreign companies to keep the oil flowing probably a bad move in the long run.

Yes, well Venezuela may be down to that soon the way they are going.

You get a loan for a car. You miss 3 payments. The tow driver shows up to repossess. You pull a gun on the driver and force him to lower the car. You get in the car and drive off, saying the car is necessary for the continued health of your family. Then 2 years later you wonder why no one else will give you an auto loan.

The ownership change would trigger millions of dollars of golden parachute payments. And then they would probably be hired right back by the government to run the newly state-owned oil companies.

Also, you would need to raise billions to compensate the shareholders (that's in the Constitution). So you would probably need to raise taxes.

And we wouldn't be paying those guys 20,000X what normal workers make.

Last edited Sun Nov 3, 2013, 02:01 AM - Edit history (1)

Edited because I read it wrong.

So Houston-based Superior Energy Services is "the US?"

Okay...

Venezuela is dependent on foreign companies for oil production. Run them off and jeopardize their main source of income? Sounds like a great idea.

if they are making a profit they are a private sector corporation, as soon as they need to be bailed out they instantly turn into an 'American Interest'.

These morons whining like two year old babies with a terminal case of diaper rash about the existence of 'big government' and at the drop of a hat they start whining like two year old babies with a terminal case of diaper rash about 'big government' not coming to their rescue.

You know things are going bad when a country can't pay their bills - especially when it involves the one industry that fuels their entire economy.

Record crime, record inflation, declining oil production, food and power shortages - not the signs of a healthy country.

Seems backwards to me, but I obviously have no clue how these energy business deals work.

but they didn't have the equipment or know-how to extract it. This company had both. VZ hired them to bring in their stuff, didn't pay for it, then stole it.
Anyone that does business with VZ is stupid at this point. Not worth the risk. I think Superior Energy Services should sue in a US court and sieze Citgo assets here in the US.

Makes sense now.

venezuela's oil industry structure

At the current time, Venezuela has a single large state oil company, PDVSA. This company has subsidiaries, some of them are wholly owned. It also has "joint venture companies". These are corporations which issue shares, and usually 40 % of the shares are owned by foreign corporations. These include ChevronTexaco, Total, China National, Rosneft (which in turn is partially owned by BP), Repsol, and quite a few others.

These joint ventures own licenses for oil fields which produce about 35 % of the total oil being produced. PDVSA produces the other 65% on their own. This structure is new, and it's the result of the Chavez "nationalization of the oil industry" (which never really took place, they just changed the legal structure).

Both PDVSA and the joint venture companies use contractors. The government has occasionally nationalized some of these companies, but when they do the workers insist on becoming PDVSA employees who enjoy very good benefits, so the government slowed down the move to nationalize because they just couldn't afford the expenses.

The contractors are owed by PDVSA and the joint venture companies in excess of $5 billion dollars. This coupled to a lot of corruption within PDVSA has led to a significant drop in oil production. And the lack of oil production (and the poor quality of the oil being sold, which is increasingly looking like the Alberta tar sands oil blend), has led to a serious drop in cash flow.

The drop in cash flow makes the government print money to cover the gap, leads to 50 % inflation, causes food shortages...and precludes PDVSA payments. And this leads to desperation on both sides, so PDVSA asks for equipment to be nationalized, and the contractors refuse to work anymore unless they get paid.

Thus they are in a vicious circle, and it is causing more oil production losses, which reduce cash flow and increase the food shortages. This death spiral could eventually lead the country into serious civil unrest, and possibly civil war. And because private companies see the risk is exploding, they will refuse to deal with PDVSA which will make the social explosion happen sooner. It's not a pretty picture.

We should do the same here. It would go a long way to solving our money problems providing the revenues are used for social programs for the people and not to feather the already well feathered nests of the 1%.

The Venezulan government hired that company to work for the Venezulan national oil company. The oil revenue was going to the people.

The nature of the comments being made on this thread tells me there are quite a few who don't understand basic economic structures nor do they realize the way the oil industry happens to work in the 21st century. Our friend seems to have in mind a structure closer to North Korea, I guess.

Most rigs operating in Venezuela are owned by private contractors. There are different types of rigs, which range from large drilling rigs used to drill 5000 meter wells, to small rigs used to replace equipment in shallow wells. The contractors also provide many specialized services. One contractor, Schlumberger, is critical for PDVSA to maintain, but they are owed nearly one billion USD.

The operating environment in Venezuela is increasingly difficult, so even Chinese and Russian contractors, which are privately owned but protected by their governments are increasingly objecting to taking on more contracts...after all why should they do it when PDVSA doesn't pay it's bills and Venezuela looks close to bankruptcy?