Posted on 08/28/2012 7:35:05 AM PDT by IBD editorial writer
Energy: Oil is rising sharply from two disasters in the Caribbean region — one, a fierce storm, and the other a massive blast at the world's second-largest refinery in Hugo Chavez's Venezuela. Only one was perfectly preventable.
When the strongman cracked the whip on Venezuela's oil industry in 2003, firing 20,000 experienced oil managers from state-owned Petroleo de Venezuela (PDVSA) to break a strike he admitted he had provoked, he insisted that merit didn't matter anymore, only political loyalty. "There will be no more meritocracy," he told his cheering red-shirts.
That philosophy has been laid out in all its glory with Saturday's massive explosion, at the Amuay refinery, part of a 955,000-barrel-a-day complex, that has become the second deadliest in the history of the oil industry and the worst ever in the Western Hemisphere.
As of Monday, the complex is shut down. The death toll is as high as 48,
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
This is bad news for Obama who is counting on lower gas prices.
And to think Porky has an election right around the corner.
Yeah, but by tomorrow the Caracas papers will report that the explosion was caused by an imperialist running dog conspiracy.
Also bad news because people know that Hugo endorsed Barry. And that Barry has these socialist leanings very similar to old Hugo.
Collectivism. It’s so efficient.
From the article:
As of Monday, the complex is shut down. The death toll is as high as 48, with more than 150 injured, and the numbers are expected to rise. Twenty square kilometers have been left blackened with a devastation that can be topped only by a nuclear bomb, and fires are still not out. As Venezuelan officials assured everyone that all was under control Monday, a third storage tank caught fire. There is still no foam to fight the fire and no ambulances to transport the wounded, let alone hearses for the dead. Pickup trucks full of charred bodies and looters descending upon the infernal scene complete the tropical vision of Hell.
Oh please, spare me. I'm really getting tired of journalistic hyperbole.
It's a run of the mill tropical storm, nothing more. It MIGHT become a minimal hurricane before landfall - maybe.
the effects of communism on a 21st century industrial scale - Hell indeed.
I always thought it was just another way for greedy and unscrupulous people to hide behind just the same kind of authoritarian and totalitarian systems that Socialists perpetually oppose.
It attracts (ends up being administered by) the most thuggish and ham-fisted brutes who could not ‘make it’ or otherwise succeed in properly set up Capitalist systems. “Liberalism is nothing more than the ideological disguise of the will-to-power of some people, who could not themselves be LESS liberal.Albert Camus ’
I think that any low level Mafioso you can name in this country is a much better businessman and certainly MUCH MORE pro-American than a Socialist leader on his best day!
Chavez, Obama’s brother from another mother.
Socialism always gets mismanaged. Hugo is no different than any fool who thinks he can make himself a god through the misuse of government. Meanwhile, we have our own fool here, doing what he can to assure decades of energy crisis, if we don’t get rid of him.
Mr. Lucky-U talkin’ bout Hershey squirts?
Idi Amin’s got nothing on Chavez - what a no-class fool. Destroying a country I have loved since I went to high school there. A real shame.
What is breathtaking about this statement, is that there are so many in Government in general, and the White House in particular to whom this is entirely laudable.
You just cannot make this stuff up.
Amuay sounds like amway. lol
Is this refinery one of the recently “nationalized” properties that once belonged to Exxon?
It was nationalized from Exxon in the seventies.
Yes. Exactly how the Soviets explained their inefficiencies. We know that it was not the U.S., not with Big O in charge.
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