Posted on 07/24/2006 10:05:47 AM PDT by jmc1969
I don't know.
It has its positive aspects. We have a damn long seacoast altready..
With Mexico in our pockets, maybe we could turn the entire Gulf and Pacific coastline of that place into tourist meccas.
The European would flock there for upscale, safe, trendy resorts and empoy the Mexicans.
I don't know.
It has its positive aspects. We have a damn long seacoast already..
With Mexico in our pockets, maybe we could turn the entire Gulf and Pacific coastline of that place into tourist meccas.
The Europeans would flock there for upscale, safe, trendy resorts, and they would employ the Mexicans at better jobs. Mexico has oil, minerals and a lot of women who look like Jennifer Lopez.
All it needs is some good American capitalism to make the economy there hum and flush out the crooks.
Its a thought anyway and better than what we're getting. We don't have the cake and we can't eat it either.
23 billion? Out of an 11-trillion-dollar economy??? We'll barely blink, and Mr. Chavez's ignorant move will only hurt him and, unfortunately, his people (lost oil revenues) while helping our oil companies (higher price/bbl) and our shift toward biofuels (ethanol, methanol, butanol, etc.). If he shuts Citgo refineries down in the US, we could interpret it as an act of war and seize the refineries and transfer them to American oil companies for them to use. We will be the ones laughing all the way to the bank.
You can probably find out by going to the nearest Sierra Club office. Damn hippies and envirowhackos!
Our government could do well to seize the closed properties (remember, act of economic war being committed against us) and auction them off to interested oil companies other than Petroleos de Venezuela. The loser: Hugo School-bully Fathead.
In addition to Venezuela owned Citgo, we also import distillates from Venezuela. Additionally, the HOVENSA refinery in the Virgin Islands is co-owned by Venesuela. This refinery, is dedicated to US demand.
The cost difference between transshipment of crude 3,000 miles by sea and 12,000 miles by sea works out to about 6.8 cents per gallon of cost by the standard projection, or up to 9.98 cents per gallon by a more conservatie estimate.
In other words, it would still cost less than a dime a gallon to move crude to China by sea, as opposed to moving it to the US.
That's exacly opposite. That nut job Chavez is sitting on georgeously clean crude. The dirtier stuff from Venezuela is still comparable to the better crude from Iran (Which is why we don't import Iranian crude.
The refineries in the West Indies are there because of more relaxed environmental laws.
Bias note: Citgo charters one of my company's ships at c.a. $40,000/day.
Fun fact: 2 weeks after hurricane Katrina, I was working on a Shell (owned by the Dutch Gov, btb)-chartered ship. We took 150,000 bbl of diesel and 90,000bbl of regular unleaded from Delaware to the mouth of the mississippi, then were ordered to anchor, where we sat for 2 weeks. Then we brought everything back up to NJ.
My point is that at least a mad dog like Chavez will have the decency to stab one in the FRONT. It's dirty Europeans like the Dutch that will throw us under the bus.
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&rls=GGLG%2CGGLG%3A2006-09%2CGGLG%3Aen&q=venezuelan+crude++sour
I get conflicting information about Venezuelan crude
Would you happen to know how many refineries are located there? Or capacity there compared to capacity in the 48 states?
This is an interesting one! I've moved a lot of finished (refined) products for Citgo. Along the way I've become friendly with the lead petroleum engineer at one of their refineries in the southern US- that was the source of my info about the crude quality. Perhaps he was mistaken- a thought which is compeling and somewhat scary, too! The thing is, Citgo IS the Venezuelan government. Perhaps the crude that goes to his refinery tends to be sweeter than the stuff that's sold to other refiners in the US? I'll do a little homework via some better people and try to get back to you with an up or down answer.
Offhand, Ben, I'm not sure how many refineries there are... I only backload (bring stuff from the US to the refineries) to the West Indies on occasion.
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