Naast
een paar grote supermarktketens uit de VS, zijn er nog 2
oliemaatschappijen uit de VS werkzaam in Venezuela, Halliburton en
Chevron, beiden hebben groot belang bij een verandering van regering, waar het gewenste regime er een moet zijn met een neoliberaal fascistische inslag….. Echter ook andere maatschappijen in
de olie-industrie, hebben grote belangen bij een
verandering van regime in Venezuela, waar de olie-industrie nu nog is genationaliseerd…..
Citgo staat ook achter de coup die de VS middels Guaidó bezig is te plegen in Venezuela, terwijl dat bedrijf een
dochter is van de Venezolaanse oliemaatschappij Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), een
staatsbedrijf…… Te gek voor woorden natuurlijk dat deze firma achter
de wil tot verandering van regeringsideologie staat, zelfs als dit
bedrijf zich niet op Venezolaanse bodem bevindt….. Je snapt dat deze steun vooral is ingegeven om de olie-industrie in Venezuela te privatiseren, zodat de bedrijven weer met megawinsten naar huis kunnen…..
Bij
zo ongeveer alle directe acties van de VS die erop gericht zijn hen
niet welgevallige regeringen ten val te brengen, dus militair
ingrijpen, worden smerig valse verklaringen afgelegd dat men
democratie en vrijheid wil brengen….. Niet nodig uit te leggen dat
dit eigenlijk nooit lukt, wat wel lukt is het vermoorden van grote aantallen burgers, een land in puin leggen en veelal een land in chaos dompelen (als de VS vertrekt en zelfs als de VS blijft, zie Afghanistan en Irak…..)……
Als
de chaos niet al te groot is, zoals wel het geval met de illegale
oorlog tegen Libië, dus landen als Afghanistan en Irak, beiden
illegaal aangevallen door de VS, hebben bedrijven van de VS voorrang
bij het herstel van de infrastructuur, gebouwen en bij hervatting van de oliewinning….
Zo verdiende Halliburton maar liefst 39.5 miljard dollar aan de
illegale oorlog tegen Irak……
Het
voorgaande, dus de valse grond voor het aanvallen van een land, geldt niet voor Venezuela, openlijk stellen figuren als
Bolton (die eerder achter de couppoging van 2002 tegen Chavez stond)
dat de enorme olievoorraad van dit land een reden is voor militair
ingrijpen door de VS, wat niet wil zeggen dat e.e.a. niet gepaard
gaat met valse aantijgingen aan het adres van de regering die moet
wijken, zoals vermeende mensenrechtenschendingen door dit land, ‘onvrijheid’ en economisch
wanbeleid…..* Terwijl de VS voldoende goede banden onderhoudt met
landen die openlijk schijt hebben aan deze zaken, neem Saoedi-Arabië,
de Golfstaten, Egypte en andere landen die met dictatoriale hand
worden bestuurd…..
De
couppleger die de VS kocht, Guaidó heeft al voor zijn couppoging aangegeven dat hij
de olie-industrie wil privatiseren……
Overigens heeft de VS nog een andere belangrijke grondstof van Venezuela op het oog: coltan, dat wordt gebruikt bij de vervaardiging van smartphones…….
Lees
het volgende uitgebreide artikel van Whitney Webb, eerder
gepubliceerd op Mintpress News en door mij overgenomen van Anti-Media, waarin hij dieper op deze zaak
ingaat en onder meer aangeeft dat de CIA de partij van Guaidó heeft gesubsidieerd…… Voorts het bericht dat Chevron met de door Trump
ingestelde sancties tegen Iran een extra winst behaalde van meer dan
4 miljard dollar……. Moet toegeven dat me dit onwaarschijnlijk
lijkt, immers de sancties tegen Iran, die ook de olie-export van dat
land treft, is iets te kort van kracht om een dergelijke megawinst te
behalen, het lijkt me dan ook eerder een winst die behaald werd met
de eerdere sancties van de VS tegen Iran. Maakt niet uit: het
artikel verliest daarmee niets aan waarde:
These
Are the US Companies Backing the Venezuelan Coup Attempt
February
4, 2019 at 1:09 pm
Written
by Whitney
Webb
(MPN) — For
much of the past twenty years, critics of U.S. foreign policy have
noted that it is often countries with sizeable oil reserves that most
often find themselves the targets of U.S.-backed “humanitarian”
interventions aimed at “restoring democracy.” Analysis of the
nearly two-decades-long U.S. effort aimed at regime change and
“democracy promotion” in Venezuela has long linked such efforts
to the fact that the South American country has the world’s largest
proven oil reserves.
However,
the current U.S. effort to topple the government led by Chavista
politician Nicolás Maduro has become notable for the openness of the
“coup architects” in admitting that putting American corporations
– Chevron and Halliburton chief among them — in charge of
Venezuelan oil resources is the driving factor behind this aggressive
policy.
Last
week, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) – a key player in the Trump
administration’s push for regime change in Caracas – tweeted:
“Biggest
[American] buyers of Venezuelan oil are Valero Energy & Chevron.
Refining heavy crude from Venezuela supports great jobs in Gulf
Coast. For the sake of these U.S. workers I hope they will begin
working with administration of President [Juan] Guaidó & cut off
illegitimate Maduro regime.”
In
January, the U.S. government recognized Juan Guaidó of
the U.S.-funded
and CIA-linked Popular
Will Party as the “legitimate” president of the country.
For the sake of these U.S. workers I hope they will begin working with administration of President Guaido & cut off illegitimate Maduro regime.
A
few hours after Rubio’s tweet, National Security Adviser John
Bolton — who actively
supported the
U.S.-backed failed Venezuela coup in 2002 — appeared
on Fox
News and
told host Trish Regan the following: “We’re looking at the oil
assets. That’s the single most important income stream to the
government of Venezuela. We’re looking at what to do to that.”
Though
that was a stunning admission in and of itself, Bolton didn’t stop
there. He continued:
“We’re
in conversation with major American companies now that are either in
Venezuela, or in the case of Citgo here in the United States. I think
we’re trying to get to the same end result here…. It will make a
big difference to the United States economically if we could have
American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil
capabilities in Venezuela.”
Bolton’s
statements have garnered considerable attention in the alternative
media community for their boldness, since leaked cables and documents
have traditionally been the means through which the actual
motivations of U.S. wars have been revealed. Largely overlooked,
however, is the fact that Bolton stated that the Trump administration
is working closely “with major American companies now that are
either in Venezuela, or in the case of Citgo, here in the United
States.”
Given
that Citgo is largely owned by Venezuela’s state oil company
Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), Bolton’s statement reveals that
the corporations backing Washington’s regime-change push are those
currently operating in Venezuela.
At
present, there are only two American major oil and oil service
companies with a significant presence in Venezuela – Chevron and
Halliburton. However, Chevron is by far the leading American investor
in Venezuelan oil projects, with Halliburton having written
off much
of its remaining business interests in the country just last year —
losing hundreds of millions of dollars as a result.
These
two companies have long been “historic
partners”
and have had a solid business relationship between them for decades.
In addition, both have reaped the benefits of past U.S. interventions
abroad — such as the Iraq War, where the U.S. government “opened”
that country’s nationalized oil industry to American oil companies
with military force.
Now
with Venezuela’s nationalized oil industry in the crosshairs,
Chevron and Halliburton are again set to benefit from Washington’s
regime-change policies abroad. Furthermore, as Bolton’s recent
statements suggest, these companies are also the top corporate
sponsors of the current U.S.-backed coup to topple the government in
Caracas.
Profitable
but not Rockefeller-profitable
Chevron’s
history in Venezuela is long and storied, as its presence in the
country dates back more than a century. Over that time, Chevron’s
presence in Venezuela has remained a constant despite the rule of
drastically different governments, from military dictatorships to the
socialist Chavista movement.
For
much of its history in Venezuela, Chevron has had to deal with the
Venezuelan government’s laws regarding oil production,
particularly a
1943 law that
held that foreign companies could not make greater profits from oil
than they paid to the Venezuelan state. A few decades later in the
1960s, foreign corporations were made to manage their oil extraction
projects in Venezuela by working closely with the Venezuelan Oil
corporation, which later gave way to the current state oil company
PDVSA, created in 1976. It was around this period that Halliburton
first began work in Venezuela.
However,
foreign corporations — particularly American ones — disliked
having to settle for minority stakes in PDVSA projects and longed for
the early days of Venezuela oil extraction when companies like
Rockefeller-owned Standard Oil made wild profits off their Venezuelan
oil assets.
After
the “apertura petrolera” (or “oil opening” to foreign
investment) in the early 1990s — and especially under the
U.S.-backed government of Rafael Caldera, the president who
immediately preceded Hugo Chávez — it seemed that the
privatization of PDVSA was soon to become a reality and companies
like Chevron, ExxonMobil and Halliburton enjoyed the “golden age”
of American oil interests in Venezuela. However, Caldera’s fall
from grace and the rise of Chavismo quickly shattered this
decades-long dream of U.S. corporations and politicians.
Not
only did Chávez end any possibility of PDVSA’s privatization,
he also
weakened what
remaining influence transnational oil companies had over the state
oil company. For instance, he appointed independent oil experts to
PDVSA’s board of directors, upending years of precedent where PDVSA
managers with close ties to international companies had been
responsible for controlling the board’s membership.
Chávez
further restricted corporate ownership on some oil projects to 49
percent and fired PDVSA’s then-president, replacing him with a
political ally. These drastic changes, among others, led to a strike
among many long-time PDVSA workers, a strike that immediately
preceded the failed U.S.-backed coup attempt in April 2002.
Following
the coup, Chávez dismantled a joint venture originally established
in 1996 between PDVSA and the Venezuelan subsidiary of the U.S.-based
company SAIC, known as INTESA.
INTESA,
per the agreement, had controlled all of PDVSA’s company data (and
its secrets), which it then
fed to
the U.S. government and U.S. oil corporations until Chávez destroyed
it. This is hardly surprising given that the managers of SAIC at the
time included two former U.S. secretaries of defense and two former
CIA directors. Though obviously a smart move for Chávez, it weakened
an advantage of U.S. corporations who had inside information on PDVSA
while INTESA was operational.
The
tensions between the Chavista government and the U.S. government
along with U.S. corporations only grew from there before reaching a
crescendo in 2007. That year, Chávez announced
a decree that
would nationalize the remaining oil extraction sites under foreign
company control, giving PDVSA a minimum 60 percent stake in all of
those ventures. U.S. oil companies ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips left
their Venezuelan operations behind as a result, losing billions in
the process. The president of ExxonMobil at the time was Rex
Tillerson — who would later become President Donald Trump’s first
secretary of state.
Yet,
during this time, Chevron, unique among American oil companies, saw
an opportunity and spent the next several years cultivating close
ties to the Chavista government and Chávez himself.
Through
the efforts of Chevron executive Ali Moshiri, Chevron blazed a new
trail that would later serve as a model for foreign oil companies
seeking to do business in Chavista-led Venezuela. Halliburton and
another U.S.-based oil services company, Schlumberger, also decided
to continue business in Venezuela.
During
this time, the Venezuelan government through PDVSA and
Chevron entered
into several
joint ventures,
one of the most important of which became known as Petropiar, which
blends Venezuela’s heavy crude oil with other substances to make it
more easily transportable. However, Chevron — due to Chávez’s
reforms of the oil sector — was forced to settle for minority
stakes in all of these ventures.
Halliburton,
which has historically been a main operator for Chevron-owned oil
fields, again partnered with Chevron’s post-2007 ventures in
Venezuela and operates the
Petropiar and Petroboscan oil fields that both have minority Chevron
ownership.
For
years, Chevron’s bet on Chavismo paid off and the profits rolled
in. Moshiri even appeared in public on several occasions with Chávez,
who once even called the Chevron executive “a
dear friend.”
However, following Chávez’s death in 2013 and the beginning of the
U.S-backed economic siege of Venezuela soon after — first through
joint oil-price manipulation in cooperation with Saudi Arabia and
then through sanctions — the profits of PDVSA, and thus Chevron,
have fallen dramatically. During this time, Houston-based
Schlumberger drastically scaled
back its
operations in Venezuela.
Since
then, relations between the Maduro-led government and Chevron have
deteriorated precipitously and now, with the current U.S. coup in
motion, Chevron is poised to turn on the Chavista government with the
hopes that profits will not only improve but exceed what they were
during the heights of the Chevron-Chávez partnership.
Betting
on regime change
As
oil production has lagged and profits have continued to slide,
tensions between Chevron and the Maduro government have grown
dramatically since 2017, when the Maduro-led government began
arresting employees
of Petropiar — the joint venture between Chevron and PDVSA —
during a controversial corruption probe. For Chevron, the issue
exploded after the Venezuelan government last April arrested two
Chevron employees working at Petropiar, who were detained for seven
weeks for their alleged role in fraud. Those tensions — in
combination with worries that Chevron’s Venezuela operations could
become unprofitable in less than five years — resulted in a
report published
by the Wall
Street Journal claiming
that Chevron was considering leaving Venezuela entirely.
However,
despite media speculation in the U.S., Chevron denied that it was
planning to leave Venezuela anytime soon, with Clay Neff, Chevron’s
president for Africa and Latin America, telling Bloomberg,
“we’re committed to Venezuela and we plan to be there for many
years to come,” and adding that reports that Chevron would soon
leave the country were “not accurate.” “We’ve been in the
country for almost 100 years, we know how to operate, we’re a very
experienced operator and we’re committed to our partner PDVSA,”
Neff declared.
Halliburton’s
activities in Venezuela have also taken a hard hit in recent years,
with the company losing over $1 billion in investments since 2017. In
2017, Halliburton was forced to write off $647 million in Venezuelan
investments and then was forced to sell $312 million more last year —
its last remaining investments. Halliburton’s chief financial
officer, Christopher Weber, told
the New
York Times last
year that “the collapse of the Venezuelan currency and the
worsening political climate,” as well as U.S. sanctions, were
responsible for the decision. Halliburton later said in
a statement that
it planned on “maintaining its presence in Venezuela and is
carefully managing its go-forward exposure.”
Since
both Halliburton and Chevron announced their plans to “weather the
storm” despite growing tensions, it has become more and more
evident that both companies have found the U.S. government’s
promise of increased control over Venezuela’s oil sector through
privatization much more appealing than facing the prospect of
maneuvering around recently imposed U.S. sanctions on PDVSA — which
have been in the works for months — as well as the prospect of
dwindling profits stemming from the continued decline of the
Venezuelan economy and the degradation of its oil-sector
infrastructure.
This
raises the possibility that Chevron and Halliburton had decided to
ride out the Venezuelan economic crisis and growing tensions with
Maduro because it was betting on an aggressive regime-change policy
toward the country. Indeed, some analysts have
stated that
planning on the current iteration of regime-change policy in
Venezuela only began this past November, around the same time that
Chevron decided to stick it out despite falling profits.
The
fact that Chevron’s operations in Venezuela are expected
to collapse in
less than five years, as a result of the country’s oil sector and
larger economic woes, lends further support to the possibility that
Chevron sought to back a Washington-based effort to dramatically
alter the Venezuelan government.
In
Halliburton’s case, the fact that the company has already lost over
a billion dollars in its Venezuelan investments since 2017 offers a
different motive, one that involves not only recouping those losses
but also gaining increased contracts in a post-coup Venezuela.
Halliburton
executives surely remember the $39.5
billion in
profits they made following the U.S. invasion of Iraq. It is worth
pointing out that, in media reports, Halliburton has stated its
commitment “to
the market in Venezuela,”
signaling that it is interested in retaining a role in the country’s
oil sector regardless of who governs it.
It
should then come as no surprise that recent U.S. government sanctions
on Venezuela’s oil sectors included exemptions for both Halliburton
and Chevron. Equally unsurprising is the fact that the U.S.-backed
“president” of Venezuela — Juan Guaidó — has already
signaled his plans to open up Venezuela’s state oil assets to
foreign corporations if he succeeds in ousting Maduro.
According
to oil
rating agency S&P Global Platts,
Guaidó has already made “plans to introduce a new national
hydrocarbons law that establishes flexible fiscal and contractual
terms for projects adapted to oil prices and the oil investment
cycle.” This plan would also create a “new hydrocarbons agency”
that will “offer bidding rounds for projects in natural gas and
conventional, heavy and extra-heavy crude” to international oil
corporations.
The
clear message here is that the U.S.-backed “president” of
Venezuela is already signaling to his Washington backers that he will
quickly privatize Venezuela’s state oil company if he succeeds in
taking power, a move that has long been a
key component of
the platform of Venezuela’s U.S.-funded opposition, of which Guaidó
is part.
Bolton’s
recent statements have made it clear that Chevron and Halliburton are
set to be the main benefactors of this privatization effort, as both
are heavily invested in Venezuela and Chevron the only U.S. oil
company still active in the country. The historically close
relationship of both companies to the U.S. government, and covert
coordination with the U.S. government in undermining or overthrowing
governments in the recent past, also hint at their likely role in the
current U.S. “meddling” in Venezuela.
Boosting
profits through foreign intervention
If
the U.S. succeeds in ousting Maduro and putting Guaidó in his place,
it will only be the latest example of U.S. government policy that
directly benefits the bottom lines of Chevron and Halliburton. In
Chevron’s case, the company’s growth to become one of the largest
oil companies in the world has consistently been aided by the U.S.
establishment, regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans held
the presidency. Indeed, as Seeking
Alpha noted:
Chevron’s
stocks gained a combined 247% under Presidents Reagan and George HW
Bush. Under President George W Bush, its shares rose by 157%.
Meanwhile, Chevron’s shares picked up 222% and 112% under
Presidents Clinton and Obama, respectively.”
Notably,
Chevron has also worked with past U.S. presidents in undermining
democratically-elected governments in order to advance its business
interests, with the most recent example taking place in Haiti. Cables
published by WikiLeaks showed
that Chevron, in 2006 and 2007, partnered with ExxonMobil and the
U.S. government to undermine the presidency of former Haitian
president René Préval after he forged a deal with Chávez’s
PetroCaribe alliance that allowed Haiti to buy subsidized Venezuelan
oil.
Furthermore,
Chevron also benefited
greatly from
the U.S. invasion of Iraq and its representatives were among those
who met with then-Vice President Dick Cheney in 2003 to plan Iraq’s
“postwar” — i.e., post-invasion — industry that led Chevron
to acquire ownership of several Iraqi oil fields. Notably, the family
of then-President George W. Bush is one of Chevron’s largest
shareholders.
In addition, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was a
Chevron executive throughout
the 1990s, and was in charge of public policy for its board of
directors immediately prior to joining the Bush administration. Rice
even had a Chevron oil tanker named in her honor in 1993.
Though
Chevron greatly benefited from the Bush administration’s
destruction of Iraq, Halliburton came away the biggest winner from
the Iraq war, making $39.5
billion off
the conflict and its aftermath after being awarded numerous,
lucrative contracts to “rebuild” the country. This outcome is
unsurprising given that Cheney served as the company’s CEO for
decades and retained $34 million in company stock throughout his
tenure as U.S. vice president.
Iraq
had been targeted by the Bush administration soon after Bush came to
power, particularly following the formation of Cheney’s 2001 Energy
Task Force, which called for the privatization of Iraq’s
then-nationalized oil resources and reviewed maps of Iraq’s oil
fields and lists of companies seeking contracts with Baghdad years
before the war officially began.
Investing
in a gung-ho president
Chevron’s
hopes for a continued U.S. government policy that favors its growth
domestically and globally have continued under the Trump
administration and have been visible for some time, as evidenced by
its $500,000
donation to
Trump’s inaugural committee and their top executive’s praise for
the “pro-business environment” cultivated by the Trump
administration. Indeed, in March 2017, then-Chevron CEO John
Watson told CNBC that
he had already met with White House staff on “multiple occasions”
in just the first three months of the administration and had been
“encouraged by those meetings.” “We’ve seen a more
pro-business environment … I think the approach they’re taking
toward business — toward enabling our economy to grow again — is
a real positive,” Watson added.
Halliburton
too has long had high hopes for Trump given that the president held
between $50,000 and $100,000 in
company stock up until December 2016, when he sold his personal
stocks to avoid “conflicts of interest” during his presidency.
However, some of Trump’s earliest policy proposals were described
by the media as directly
benefiting Halliburton,
including his administration’s push to open more publicly-held
lands in the U.S. to oil drilling.
Furthermore,
the recent scandal that forced Trump’s secretary of the interior,
Ryan Zinke, to
resign involved
Zinke’s alleged
corrupt dealings with
Halliburton chairman David Lesar, suggesting that the Trump
administration’s potential for a conflict of interest with
Halliburton did not magically dissipate following Trump’s sale of
his personal investments.
Since
the early days of the administration, both Halliburton and Chevron
have benefited directly from several Trump administration policies,
both foreign and domestic. For instance, Chevron and
Halliburton benefited
substantially from
the Trump administration’s tax cuts, which were recently
found to
have had “no major impact” on economic growth or company hiring
practices but instead enabled mega-corporations to buy
back stocks en masse in
order to increase their companies’ stock prices. After the passage
of those tax cuts, Chevron executives urged
governments around
the world to implement similar legislation.
In
addition, consider Trump’s 2017 decision to withdraw from the
Extractive Industries
Transparency
Initiative (EITI), which Reuters explained
as “a
global standard for governments to disclose their revenues from oil,
gas, and mining assets, and for companies to report payments made to
obtain access to publicly owned resources, as well as other
donations.” Bloomberg noted at
the time that the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw had
followed “a long lobbying battle waged by the American Petroleum
Institute, Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp.”
The
involvement of top U.S. oil corporations like Chevron in the
administration’s decision to withdraw from the EITI led Corinna
Gilfillan, head of the U.S. Office at NGO Global Witness, to state
that it was “Exxon and Chevron’s preference for secrecy that
[had] made it impossible for the U.S. to comply.” Gilfillan
then told Common
Dreams:
When
major Russian and Chinese oil companies are disclosing more
information about their deals around the world than their
U.S. counterparts, you have got to ask: what are Exxon and
Chevron so desperate to hide?”
However,
Chevron, for its part, has not agreed with every Trump policy, as the
company did lob considerable
criticism at
the Trump administration last June over his imposition of steel
tariffs during the first phase of the ongoing “trade war” with
China. Yet, that criticism disappeared a few months later, when
another Trump policy – his draconian sanctions targeting Iran’s
oil sector – took effect. As the Washington
Examiner noted this
past November, Trump’s sanction policy targeting Iranian oil “has
proved a lucrative one for the shareholders who own oil companies
such as ExxonMobil and Chevron,” resulting in a jump for those
companies’ third-quarter earnings “that topped Wall Street
expectations by wide margins.”
The Examiner went
onto note that Trump’s sanctions on Iranian oil exports led
Chevron’s net income to more than double to $4.1 billion, with cash
from operations reaching “the highest it has been in nearly five
years.”
However,
Halliburton’s reaction to Trump’s Iran policy is more mixed,
given its considerable business interests in Iran and the fact that
it had
benefited from
the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA) approved by the previous administration of
Barack Obama. Yet, if the Trump administration’s regime-change
policy targeting Iran succeeds, Halliburton will be among the top
beneficiaries of that policy as well, given its already established
presence in the country.
Now,
with Venezuela’s massive oil resources in the Trump
administration’s crosshairs, Chevron stands to gain once again from
Trump’s foreign policy, which has been guided by oil politics in
several instances.
Trump
ready to test out his “Take the Oil” intervention policy
Though
Trump has yet to make bold, Boltonesque public statements regarding
the clear link between Venezuelan oil and his administration’s
regime-change policy, his past statements regarding U.S.
interventions in oil-rich nations elsewhere show that Trump has long
backed U.S. intervention in foreign nations if it meant that the U.S.
could secure that country’s natural resources, namely oil.
For
instance, in 2011, Trump told
the Wall
Street Journal that
he would support U.S.-backed intervention in Libya if the U.S. could
“take the oil.” In the eight years since the U.S.-backed
intervention, Libya remains without a central government and is now
the site of rampant terrorist activity, a massive illegal arms trade,
and a booming slave trade.
Then,
in 2016, candidate Trump again asserted that the U.S. should “take
the oil” when intervening or invading foreign nations.
Trump told NBC
News in
September 2016 that the terror group Daesh (ISIS) emerged only
because the U.S. had not taken Iraq’s oil after the 2003 invasion.
Trump
also stated, with regard to Iraq, that:
We
go in, we spent $3 trillion. We lose thousands and thousands of
lives, and then look, what happens is we get nothing. You know, it
used to be the victor belong the spoils. Now, there was no victor
there, believe me. There was no victory. But I always said, take the
oil.”
While
Trump has not publicly touted his “take the oil” policy in
relation to the current situation in Venezuela, he has done so
privately during several White House meetings early on in his
presidency. According to the Wall
Street Journal:
Mr.
Trump requested a briefing on Venezuela in his second day in office,
often speaking to his team about the suffering of Venezuelan people
and the country’s immense potential to become a rich nation
through its oil reserves.”
Thus,
Bolton’s as well as Senator Rubio’s frank admissions that the
Trump administration’s Venezuela regime-change policy is about the
oil and giving that oil to American companies, are clearly aligned
with a policy that the president himself has long supported.
Washington’s
gift to Big Oil: privatize PDVSA, no matter the human cost
As
with Iraq, Libya and other U.S. oil-motivated interventions of the
past, the destruction of Venezuela’s nationalized oil industry and
its privatization to American oil companies — especially Chevron
and Halliburton — is the guiding factor behind the U.S.’ current
regime-change policy targeting Caracas. While past administrations
attempted to obfuscate their “wars for oil” as “restoring
democracy,” Trump administration officials and other “coup
architects” have recently “gone off script” and overtly stated
the guiding principle behind its Venezuela policy.
However,
the timing of the Trump administration’s regime-change push in
Venezuela is key. While companies like Chevron and Halliburton have
been hemorrhaging profits in recent years, they have so far withstood
the fallout due to the record high production of U.S. shale oil. Yet,
the “golden age” of U.S. shale is quickly disappearing, with top
industry insiders like
Harold Hamm along with Halliburton’s
rival company,
Schlumberger, expecting shale output growth to slow by as much as 50
percent this
year.
Hamm is a
close confidant of
President Trump.
If
this comes to pass, American oil companies will be in a bad way. Yet,
if Guaidó comes to power and privatizes PDVSA, U.S. oil companies —
with Chevron and Halliburton leading the pack — stand to make
record profits in the world’s most oil rich nation, as they did in
Iraq following the privatization of its national oil industry after
U.S. intervention.
Worst
of all, as the U.S.’ past interventions in Iraq and Libya and
elsewhere have shown, Washington stands willing to kill untold
thousands of innocent people in Venezuela — either through direct
military intervention or a
proxy war —
to benefit American oil companies. Will the American people let yet
another presidential administration destroy an entire nation for
Chevron, Halliburton and other powerful American corporations?
==================================
* Het gaat hier niet om economisch wanbeleid. De deplorabele toestand van de economie is één op één te danken aan de eerst stiekeme economische oorlogsvoering van de VS tegen Venezuela, die intussen is veranderd in een openlijke economische oorlogsvoering middels sancties, een oorlog waar ook Canada en de EU zich bij hebben aangesloten, naast fascistisch geregeerde landen als Brazilië, Colombia, Guatemala en Honduras…… (ja ook Nederland bevindt zich weer in ‘goed gezelschap…’)
Zie ook:
‘Joel Voordewind (CU 2de Kamer) bakt de ‘Venezolaanse vluchtelingencrisis’ op Curaçao wel erg bruin en van Ojik (GL 2de Kamer) schiet een Venezolaanse bok‘
‘BBC World Service radio >> fake news and other lies about Venezuela‘ (bericht van dit blog)
‘Venezolaanse verandering van regime bekokstoofd door VS en massamedia‘
‘Venezuela zou humanitaire hulp weigeren, het echte verhaal ziet er ‘iets anders’ uit‘
‘Guaidó is een ordinaire couppleger van de VS, e.e.a. gaat volledig in tegen de Venezolaanse constitutie‘
‘Venezuela >> regime change: ‘de 12 stappen methode’ die de VS gebruikt‘
‘Venezuela >> VS economische oorlogsvoering met gebruikmaking van o.a. IMF en Wereldbank‘
‘VS couppleger in Venezuela belooft VS Venezolaanse olie als hij de macht heeft overgenomen‘
(de opgeblazen oorlogshitser en oorlogsmisdadiger Pompeo beweert dat Hezbollah werkzaam is in Venezuela en daar een leger heeft dat gezien zijn woorden amper onder doet voor de gezamenlijke NAVO troepen… ha! ha! ha! Ook hier is totaal geen bewijs voor deze belachelijke beschuldiging…)
‘Mike Pence (vicepresident VS) gaf Guaidó, de door de VS gewenste leider, groen licht voor de coup in Venezuela‘
‘VS coup tegen Maduro in volle gang……..‘
‘Antiwar Hero Medea Benjamin Disrupts Pompeo Speech on Venezuela‘
‘Venezuela’s Military Chief, Foreign Allies Back Maduro‘
‘Als de VS stopt met spelen van ‘politieagent’ en het vernielen van de wereld, zullen de slechte krachten winnen……‘
‘VS weer op oorlogspad in Latijns-Amerika: Venezuela het volgende slachtoffer…….‘
‘Venezuela: VS verandering van regime mislukt >> de Venezolanen wacht een VS invasie‘
‘Trump wilde naast de economische oorlogsvoering tegen Venezuela dat land daadwerkelijk militair aanvallen……‘
‘Venezolaanse regionale verkiezingen gehekeld door westen, terwijl internationale waarnemers deze als eerlijk beoordeelden……….‘
‘Venezuela: Target of Economic Warfare‘
‘Venezuela: de anti-propaganda van John Oliver (en het grootste deel westerse massamedia) feilloos doorgeprikt‘
‘Venezuela: ‘studentenprotest’ wordt uitgevoerd door ingehuurde troepen………‘
‘Abby Martin Busts Open Myths on Venezuela’s Food Crisis: ‘Shelves Fully Stocked’‘ (zie ook de video in dat artikel!)
‘Rex Tillerson waarschuwt Venezuela voor een coup en beschuldigt China van imperialisme…….. ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!‘
‘Edwin Koopman (VPRO Bureau Buitenland) over Venezolaanse verkiezingen met anti-Maduro propaganda bij de ‘onafhankelijke NOS…..‘
‘EU neemt uiterst hypocriet sancties tegen de Venezolaanse regering Maduro………‘
‘Venezuela ontwricht, wat de reguliere media u niet vertellen……..‘
‘VS steunt rechtse coalitie (MUD) in Venezuela………‘
‘Venezuela’s US-Backed Opposition Turns Up The Violence Following Assembly Vote‘
‘10 Things You Need to Know About the Terrorist Attack in Venezuela‘
‘Venezuelans in the Streets to Support Constituent Assembly‘
‘What Mainstream Media Got Wrong About Venezuela’s Constituent Assembly Vote‘ (met mogelijkheid tot directe vertaling)
‘The Left and Venezuela‘ (met mogelijkheid tot directe vertaling)
‘Rondje Venezuela schoppen op Radio1………‘
‘Karabulut (SP) blij dat ze Maduro eindelijk ook kan schoppen………‘
‘Venezuela moet en zal ‘verlost’ worden van Maduro, met ‘oh wonder’ een dikke rol van de VS en de reguliere westerse media‘
‘Venezolaanse regering treedt terecht op tegen de uiterst gewelddadige oppositie!!‘
Voor VS terreur tegen Bolivia:
‘NOS met fake news over Bolivia‘
‘Bolivianen eisen hun president terug‘
‘Bolivia: staatsgreep maakt eind aan succesvol presidentschap Evo Morales‘
‘Bolivia: bewijs op tafel dat VS aanstuurt op een coup”
Bolivia’s Evo Morales ‘unhurt’ after helicopter emergency landing
The US EMBASSY in Bolivia continues carrying out covert actions to support the coup d’état against President Evo Morales.
Bolivia Closes 2018 Among The Highest Economic Growth Rates
Bolivia’s Remarkable Socialist Success Story: President Evo Morales has transformed his country’s economy with an unapologetically left-wing agenda.
