Posted on 01/15/2007 5:26:19 PM PST by FLOutdoorsman
Tegucigalpa, Honduras - Honduras will take temporary control of foreign-owned oil storage terminals as part of a government import program meant to drive down fuel prices, President Manuel Zelaya said late on Saturday. Honduras will take temporary control of foreign-owned oil storage terminals as part of a government import program meant to drive down fuel prices, President Manuel Zelaya said late on Saturday.
Zelaya ordered the move after failing to reach a deal with big oil companies Exxon Mobil and Chevron, as well as local company DIPPSA, to rent the terminals.
"It is not a nationalization, it's a temporary use of the storage tanks through a lease and payment of a reasonable price," he said.
Honduras produces no crude of its own and no longer has a refinery. Its fuel market, like that of most Central American countries, is dominated by Shell, Exxon Mobil and Chevron.
The government program takes control of imports away from the small group of oil companies that operate service stations in the Central American nation. Those companies have opposed the new system, saying it is anti-competitive.
A congressional commission set up to study the new system has said it could save Honduras -- one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere -- about $66 million a year.
Zelaya, a logging magnate, said the decree will allow the government to go ahead with a deal reached in November with Conoco Phillips to import at least 8.4 million barrels of gasoline and diesel a year.
Exxon Mobil and Chevron could not immediately be reached for comment.
A spokesman for an oil companies group in Honduras, Mario del Cid, warned on Sunday the imposition would hurt the country's reputation among investors.
"Investment is based on clear rules, and decisions of this kind are not a good message," he told Reuters.
Oil companies in Honduras imported some $900 million worth of fuel in 2005.
Foreign oil companies' operations in Honduras are much smaller than in Venezuela, where President Hugo Chavez said on Saturday the country's entire energy sector had to be nationalized, reinforcing his socialist revolution.
He said Venezuela was "almost ready" to take over the foreign-run oil projects of the Orinoco Belt run by heavyweights such as Chevron, Conoco Phillips and Exxon Mobil, that produce about 600,000 barrels per day.
There ain't no way this is good.
Uh oh. Chavez groupies?
I don't think this will go as smoothly as Zelaya thinks it will.
When we leave set them on fire.
Amazing.
Combined with Amadinejad groupies. He's touring Latin America right now and telling them to strike the Great Satan, etc. He and Hugo are setting up a sort of anti-American trust fund with their oil moneys, and he has made a visit to almost all the newly left-wing LatAm countries.
Exactly. Short-term benefit for the country, long-term pain for the populace. Let's see how all future contracts turn out, eh? But hey, don't let me spoil their chest-thumping fun.
Temporary communism.
What a nightmare in the making. We could very well end up with troops deployed on Mexico's southern border.
Honestly, it appears the White House has totally dropped the ball on Latin and South America these past years.
Exxon should stop bringing in finished products to Honduras.
They should, for their own sake. But, that would just open the door further for Venezuela.
What sort of military capability does Venezuela actually possess?
Latin America has been going completely to the dogs during President Bush's watch, and he has never even commented on it. Decades of democratization are being undone, populations are being impoverished, socialism and communism are spreading from one country to the next, and not one thing has been done about it.
This could have been cut off at the pass if Bush had taken action when Chavez was first deposed temporarily in a coup. But he sat and did nothing while Chavez came back, and it's been downhill ever since.
Certainly part of the problem is that the CIA is broken. But Bush did little or nothing about that, either. He finally fired Tenet and put in Porter Goss, but then failed to follow through.
This is a serious dereliction of responsibility. The last thing we need is to add Latin America to our worldwide list of problems.
It seems some south american "politician" must not have recieved his bribe payment or thought he/she was worth more in bribe money.
Just for the next 75 years or so.
Agreed. The current administration's policy has been a disaster.
They could probably match anyone in the Western Hemisphere except the US.
Mexico formally complained (twice, I believe) last year about VZ infiltration on its southern border, and also about the interference by VZ agents in southern Mexican political processes.
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