Venezuelan Oil Losing Share of Key U.S. Market

Source: Washington Post

Venezuelan Oil Losing Share of Key U.S. Market

By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, May 12, 2007; D01



CARACAS, Venezuela -- When the state oil company recently took over the last privately run oil fields in Venezuela, President Hugo Chávez declared it a victory against Washington and a giant leap toward a new energy policy that would diversify the market for Venezuelan crude to include rising powers like China.

"Down with the American Empire!" shouted Chávez, who often warns that he'll shut off the oil spigot to the United States if the Bush administration invades Venezuela or hatches an assassination plot against him.

But new study of trade and oil consumption data shows that Venezuela appears ever more dependent on selling its oil to the country Chávez calls "the cruelest, most terrible, most cynical, most murderous empire that has existed." And U.S. government energy trade data show the United States is slightly less dependent on Venezuela, which at one time challenged Canada, Mexico and Saudi Arabia as the No. 1 provider of foreign oil but now tussles with up-and-coming Nigeria for the fourth spot....The world's fourth-largest oil exporter a decade ago, Venezuela is now seventh, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. The 1.1 million barrels of crude that Venezuela exports to the United States every day amount to less than 11 percent of American imports, down from 17.3 percent in 1996. By contrast, the No. 1 supplier to the American market, Canada, is now sending more than 1.8 million barrels a day and topped 2 million barrels daily in November.

During most of Chávez's eight years in office, more than 60 percent of the country's total crude exports have gone to the United States, up from 50 percent throughout much of the 1990s, according to Ramón Espinasa, a former chief economist at PDVSA who is now a consultant in Washington. The trend is due to growing U.S. demand, Venezuela's rising consumption and what oil analysts say is the state's inability to diversify its base of clients to include big consumers.



Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/11/AR2007051102166.html?referrer=email

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Chavez calls Bush's ethanol dreams crazy, too.

I think the WaPo is blowing smoke here.

Venezuela's threats to limit oil exports to the United States just give the repugs more ammunition to drill for oil off the coast of Florida. Jeb bush is working to get oil drilling off the Florida coast.

Since it takes 3 to 4 barrels of water to get 1 barrel of oil out of the Canadian tar sands, it seems that water will become the more expensive item. Plus the fact that Canada needs to import Venezuelan oil to keep afloat, I don't see what is being gained here?

I think that the global economy is based on fraud, deception, theft and cheating only. There is no honor, no fair trade, let alone free trade, and this government is the leader of the pack, spreading its criminal proclivities to the ends of the earth. teaching everyone else how to gull the public, the other nations, and the governments.

Water is a staple for life.

Read this article. Recent reports have indicated that the Athabasca flow, which feeds Ft. Mc Murray has decreased significantly. So the article is a bit old.


An impending water crisis in Canada’s western
prairie provinces
http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~als/Courses/ESE148c-2007/pdf%20files/Shindler%20&%20Donahue%20(2006).pdf

The price of oil is the main factor with the tar sands. If the price rises past a certain point, than it would be worth the costs of water to extract the oil.

For reports from Reuters and the BBC in the next few weeks for the impact on the environment.

There is also blowback to consider in the future. So things are not always what they seem.

You can live without oil.

You can't live without water.

I don't think we can live without oil with our society either.

Imagine life without cars, trucks, and tractors.

logistics. If we consume less Ven. oil, they will just ship it someplace else since we will be using the supply that would have gone elsewhere.

Venezuela has little influence over the oil coming into our country as long as it exports oil somewhere else in the world.

That is why we invaded Iraq. To keep the oil for ourselves.

But they don't get it's a global market. As long as it's going to market, we'll get it. The fact that Iran does not sell oil to us means nothing except that we'll import a little more oil from the Saudies, Kuwait, etc.

War in the Middle East is dangerous because it runs the thread of taking the oil off the market permenately. If we bombed flat Iranian ports and oil infrastructure, if the Iranians returned the favor on Kuwait and Oman and Qatar and Saudi Arabia, if the Strait of Hormuz is mined or closed by submarines and anti-ship missiles, the oil is off the market for everybody.

Rhandi Rhodes thinks that one of the reasons that the insurgency in Iraq was allowed by BushCo was to keep the Iraqi oil off the market to keep the price artificially high.

Before if we would have bought oil from Iraq, we wouldn't have been paying Iraq, instead of paying the American oil companies.

We would have still been using the same amount of oil, but we would just be paying someone else for it.

really castro jr is in power and doing every thing he does with petro dollars from his biggest customer...

tacked on sure. gotta get through the canal or run the cape...

Havn't L.A. economies been growing since they rejected neoliberalism? Hasn't Chavez been signing lots of deals with L.A. countries?

petro states have benefited from poor policy.

and everyone everywhere benefits from less polarization of wealth and power within and across borders.

at 1.50. I would pay 3 for biodiesel to pump cash into the economy here. I would choose to keep the wealth here rather than pay it to saudi's and strongmen.

Petro is funny, look at a developed states economy and then that of a petro state. An parasite state. It will collapse when the petro fluctuates, it has no industrial capability.

Then everyone does not benefit.

Animal farm is being run on our dime, given the choice my dime will go to the midwest farmer.

Venezuela has a far better democracy than we do. They have a president who was actually elected, the last time (last year) with 60% of the vote, in the most highly monitored elections on earth--by the OAS, the Carter Center and EU election monitoring groups, all of whom have certified Venezuelan elections as open and aboveboard. Can we say the same? Our elections are a farce by comparison. Four million black voters unfairly struck off the voting rolls (according to investigative reporter Greg Palast and other analysts). Our votes are "counted" with "trade secret," proprietary programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations, and with virtually no audit/recount controls--a gift of the Anthrax Congress (along with the Iraq War). In Venezuela, they vote electronically, but with an open source code system--anyone may review the code by which the votes are tabulated--and they handcount FIFTY-FIVE PERCENT of the ballots, as a check on machine fraud. Know how much we handcount? ZERO percent in many states, cuz they don't even have a ballot. 1% in the best states. 0% to 1% vs. 55%! We furthermore have a White House political "czar," Karl Rove, conspiring to force U.S. attorneys to further suppress the vote, and to initiate (or stop) other prosecutions for political purposes.

WE are the ones with Stalinist elections. WE are "Animal Farm," where the fascist pigs rule. WE are the ones whose treasury is being looted decades into the future, instead of our tax revenue being used to help the poor and the jobless, as it is in Venezuela. WE are the ones whose soldiers are being used as cannon fodder for a corporate resource war--whatever its purpose, to profit from Iraq's oil, or to suppress its production to drive up the price. WE are the ones who have no control over our government any more. WE are the ones with a government that is torturing prisoners. WE are the ones whose government considers its citizens to be serfs and peons. WE are the ones whose Constitution is being shredded.

In Venezuela, ordinary people READ their Constitution. And they came into the streets by the tens of thousands to defend their Constitution, when an attempted violent military coup kidnapped their elected president, and shut down the National Assembly (Congress) and the courts. They braved tanks and guns to demand that Constitutional government be restored!

Sadly, few of our people have read our Constitution, and many are unaware that they can now be picked up off the street, or dragged out of their homes in the middle of the night, and spirited away to prison without trial, on orders of George Bush.

You have swallowed the Bush Junta State Department line that Chavez is a tyrant. When was the last time they told us the truth about ANYTHING? Who is the tyrant, Pavulon? Who is the "Animal Farm" fascist?

And speaking of "petro states" with "no industrial capacity," haven't you heard that giant sucking sound of U.S. industry getting outsourced to cheap labor markets and unregulated environments all over the world? Wake up! You are living in IllusonLand. At least Venezuela is USING its main resource well, to educate and empower people, and improve their lives. If people have food on the table, and a solid roof over their heads, and an education, and hope, they can plan; they can innovate; they can create; they can engage in enterprise. They are also using oil profits to create new markets and healthy trading partners in neighbor countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador), by creation of the Bank of the South, to help bail their neighbors out of World Bank/IMF debt, and the creation of other institutions, such as Mercosur, the South American trade group. Talk about far-thinking policy! They know that Venezuela cannot prosper, unless their neighbors are prospering. They know that South American countries will always get the short end of the stick from the U.S. and its corporate predators, so they are creating alternatives that encourage Latin American self-determination and regional cooperation. What is the U.S. government doing to plan for OUR future? Hm-m? What is our government creating for us except a future of endless war, increasing poverty, government bankruptcy and fatcat billionaires!

If YOU headed a "petro state," what would YOU be doing with the oil profits? Giving them all away to global corporate predators and the selfish rich? That's what was happening BEFORE the people of Venezuela created a good government for themselves. And it is THEIR creation, not just Chavez's. Venezuela has one of the highest levels of citizen participation in government and politics in the entire western hemisphere. They put us to shame! They take nothing for granted, the way many of our people do. They have the grief of US-backed fascist government in living memory. We are only just experiencing what it is like to be a "Banana Republic," looted and destroyed by the rich and the corporate. And they are bound and determined that that will never happen to them again!

So, please educate yourself and stop inflicting people with your uninformed Bushite opinions!

A good place to start: www.venezuelanalysis.com.

:applause:

for everyone, whether it's within or between countries.

Do you not agree with that second part?

Do you think wealth polarization is a good and stabilizing thing for society?

my understanding is China wants the good stuff,
not Hugo's difficult to use tar.

and OPEC countries were pumping as much oil as they could and the price of oil was tanking.

One of the first things Chavez did after becoming president in Jan '99 was go around to all the OPEC countries and he got them to adhere to OPEC limitations because they wanted to keep oil in a band (I think it was 30 to 40 dollars pb).

He was very successful. Almost all OPEC countries will be exporting less oil now than in '96 and that's why Canada is trying to make up the difference.

and its not screwed in any way. Oil that is not sold can be stored, and sold later when the price is even higher. This is much better than seeing your oil go away for NO money at all like in Iraq.