Posted on 09/08/2014 5:30:51 AM PDT by thackney
The management acumen of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro continues to amaze. Reuters:
Algeria is in talks to export crude oil to fellow OPEC member Venezuela, Algerian Energy Minister Youcef Yousfi said on Tuesday, confirming a Reuters report.
Last week, a document from Venezuela’s state-run energy company PDVSA seen by Reuters showed Venezuela was considering importing crude oil for the first time and could use Algerian light crude as blending stock to boost sales of its own extra-heavy oil.
“Yes, we are in talks,” Yousfi told Reuters when asked whether Algeria was planning to export crude oil to Venezuela. He declined to provide details.
More details come care of the Miami Herald:
It turns out that Venezuela’s own production of light crudes has plummeted since the late President Hugo Chávez took office in 1999, and the country desperately needs light crudes to blend with its Orinoco Basin extra heavy crude oils. Without such a blend, the Orinoco Basin’s extra heavy crude is too dense to be transported through pipelines to Venezuelan ports and exported abroad.
Venezuela’s oil production, which accounts for 95 percent of the country’s export earnings, should be used in world classrooms as a textbook case of what happens when a populist government starts distributing a country’s wealth in cash subsidies, without investing in maintenance and innovation. Much like happened with Cuba’s once flourishing sugar industry, Venezuela’s Chávez-inspired populism has destroyed the goose that laid the golden eggs.
In 1999, when Chávez took office, PDVSA had 51,000 employees and produced 63 barrels of crude a day per employee. Fifteen years later, PDVSA had 140,000 employees, and produced 20 barrels of crude a day per employee, according to an Aug. 14 report by the France Press news agency.
Venezuela’s net oil exports have plummeted from 3.1 million barrels a day in 1997 to 1.7 million barrels a day in 2013, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates.
There was a popular riddle bandied about the Soviet Union back in communist days that went something like this: Question: if the Soviet Union conquered the Sahara, what would happen? Answer: nothing for 50 years, then a shortage of sand.
Well, it certainly didn’t take Venezuela 50 years to develop a shortage of oil under the inspired economic leadership of the socialist apparatchiks who have wrecked the economy in the name of helping the poor.
Further proof that socialism can cause a shortage of sand in the Sahara Desert.
Ronald Reagan famously once said that if you put the socialists in charge of the Sahara Desert, it is only a matter of time before they’ll produce a shortage of sand.
Wow! You beat me by a whole second! Is that uncanny, or what?
Venezuela is in trouble. Such trouble, in fact, that the central bank (BCV) has not published GDP figures since the beginning of the year and is two months behind with inflation figures. Leaks from inside the BCV suggest annual inflation is now well over 60% and that GDP fell by almost 5% in the first half of 2014. Shortages of food, medicines and other basic goods, including spare parts and tyres for vehicles, have reached critical levels. Representatives of private health clinics say more than half have suspended elective surgery for lack of crucial supplies and parts for medical equipment. The government plans to address shortages by fingerprinting customers to prevent them from buying extra goods to sell on the black market.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/americasview/2014/09/venezuelas-economy
Countries such as Venezuela will go under when all the U.S. shale oil and natural gas are unleashed on the global markets. They should have saved their oil income all these years for a rainy day, but Socialists always buy votes from the underclass with such income. When that dries up, they whine about social injustice.
Argentina’s Government Is Considering Price Controls
http://online.wsj.com/articles/argentinas-government-is-considering-price-controls-1409873401
Another “share the wealth” scheme that will only share the poverty.
Come on Commies, at least stick to your decaying ideals!
I was wondering what they would use as payment. If they had cash, they would use it to buy toilet paper.
OOps! Probably shouldn't have incurred that wrath of God by praying to the corpse of a demon-posessed Communist that resides in Hell.
I have a fast router on my network.
CITGO has bought a majority of BP gas stations in USA...that is VENZUELA OIL....so if you are buying at Citgo you are supporting tyranny and oppression.
Look under ‘Adding it up’ headline with sentence beginning “In the email” explains Citgo and Venzuela oil.
http://www.factcheck.org/2011/03/who-sells-american-gasoline/
Any country sending oil or any other commodity to VA better get their payments in cash before delivery, not credit.
N.B.: the difference between light and heavy crude oil is in its constituents. Heavy oil contains mostly tars and other low value petroleum products. Light oil has more of those hydrocarbons that make gasoline, home heating oil and jet fuel. So everybody prefers light oil.
“Sweet” and “Sour” just mean the amount of sulfur in the crude. Sour crude is more expensive to refine, because sulfur is hard to get out.
Venezuela . . . desperately needs light crudes to blend with its Orinoco Basin extra heavy crude oils. Without such a blend, the Orinoco Basin’s extra heavy crude is too dense to be transported through pipelines to Venezuelan ports and exported abroad.The USA, OTOH, has very light oil from its fracked wells. Since we are (for the nonce) net importers anyway, maybe we could profitably trade x barrels of light crude for x+y barrels of blend.Of course it’s illegal to export American crude, but . . .
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