Having fired over 700 of PDVSA's top executives and most of its middle managers, PDVSA is a company without a brain. With the upper level management removed, PDVSA headquarters in Caracas, in La Campina, has been taken over by the Minister of Energy and Mines, now in place to execute government orders. The new Petroleos de Chavez will try to raise production using foreign companies, whose workers do not strike!
Which foreign companies are willing to come into Venezuela, under the new currency and price controls, unattractive royalties and tax regime, and a country full of potholes and beggars? Will these companies be from the United States, Europe, China, Nigeria or Russia?
The Chavez government is rumored to be preparing an attractive offer to present to foreign companies to come in and restart Venezuela's oil and gas production - using foreign companies' financial strength and technology.
Gustavo Coronel, former PDVSA Board member, wrote the following in a January 28, 2003 article: "With the collapse of PDVSA, we are witnessing the collapse of the country . . . when the time comes, if I am still around, I hope to be a witness for the prosecution. Why? Because when I was building pipelines for a better PDVSA, Ali Rodriguez, the current President of the "revolutionary" PDVSA, was blowing them up, as the main dynamite expert of the Cuban-supported guerrillas which failed in Venezuela during the 1960s." (VHeadline.com)
It is Ali Rodriguez who now has complete control of PDVSA: financially and contractually. Ali Rodriguez Araque not only fires and hires, moves PDVSA funds around, but also can sign contracts like the one with Pepex.com (Herb Goodman, CEO) to take over PDVSA's oil trading. There is no longer any transparency. Those who work for PDVSA now work for Petroleos de Chavez, the fully credentialed People of Petroleum having been replaced by the mediocre, and now led by an "Oil Commander-in-Chief" (Chavez), with no auditing, or transparency.
Venezuelans are living in a war economy - in an internal war - a civil war, which could last a long time. Over 12,000 commercial establishments have closed, and 5,000 businesses are bankrupted. The Chavez government is now using currency controls and price controls to attack the only remaining productive sector remaining.
The Opposition, led by Carlos Ortega, the brave President of the CTV (Confederation of Venezuelan Workers), is going to continue to march, by the hundreds of thousands of families, demanding that Chavez resign. But he will not resign. These millions of brave Venezuelans refuse to live under a corrupt, Cuban dictatorship, and refuse to give up their country to a man who intentionally is destroying Venezuela.***
Military seizes heavy arms from Caracas police-Officers left with pistols as Chávez tightens control ***The intense rivalry between Chávez and the Metropolitan Police began shortly after the president's 1998 election, when he began making changes to consolidate his power. Through a constituent assembly's new constitution, Chávez abolished Congress, creating a single-chamber legislature that he controlled. But before that new assembly got to work, an interim Congress appointed a new public prosecutor, comptroller, Supreme Court, and elections council, which until then had functioned as independent powers. ''When all you want is one political party, one newspaper, one radio station, and control over police and banks,'' Peña said, ``you are instituting a totalitarian regime.''***
Chavez gunmen kill policeman wound five more at funeral
Soldiers and woman who opposed Chavez found bound and shot in Venezuela town*** CARACAS, Venezuela -- The bodies of three soldiers who had called for "civic disobedience" against President Hugo Chavez's government have been found with their hands tied and faces wrapped with tape, forensic police said Tuesday No arrests had been made, and authorities were trying to determine a motive behind the killings of the three soldiers: Erwin Arguello, Angel Salas and Felix Pinto. The bodies were found in Guarenas, 18 miles from Caracas, said Cesar Hernandez, chief of the forensic police's homicide division. Two of the bodies were found with multiple bullet wounds, Hernandez said, refusing to explain further. He said autopsies on the three bodies were pending.***
Anti-Chavez student tortured by police, says head of Venezuela's central university
What's the matter Chavez? Worried your "new nieghbors" may stop by for a visit?
Notice the benign description of this communist demagogue given by Reuters.
Good, general advice. Unfortunately it seems to be impossible: as we mature we cease making infantile mistakes and instead make mistakes of a higher order.