caseydog wrote:George Kraus wrote:Venezuela has assumed control (nationalized) of the last major oil field in their country, the oil companies who were the owners are now minority owners with Venezuela being the majority owner.
Venezuela is number 9 on the oil producing countries list and 10 percent of U.S. imports come from there.
I would guess this is the reason for the recent spike. I would have to guess the question now is, who will they sell their oil to? Any guesses?
Most of our foreign oil comes from countries where the industry is government controled, so the Venezuela situation is not new to the oil industry. Chavez is a blowhard, but he's pretty pragmatic, so I would imagine the oil companies will be able to do a deal with him. Most already have deals pretty much worked out. A few companies are still negotiating.
The recent spike seems to have more to do with lower than expected inventories of finished produt (ie: gasoline) as we are heading into summer, the peak driving season.
Yeah--the Chavez factor has nothing to do with this. These price increases have been going on way before he even announced he was nationalizing the oil industry.
Also, I don't know where you get the fact that we get 10% of our oil from Venezuela, may be true, but they ARE this country's 4th biggest supplier. So I thought it was more than 10%, but 10% is still a lot.
Venezuela is the only non-Arab member of OPEC, and a Venezuelan actually heads OPEC now. (They each take turns, and now it's Venezuela's turn.) This is a guy Chavez appointed, and believe me, Chavez wants to do ANYTHING to hurt this country wherever he can, even if it means really hurting HIS country.
In fact, the "Chavez" Venezuela and its head of OPEC have been screaming for quite awhile to lower production to drive prices up. Not even because it will benefit OPEC members or help the world's economy. It's for the exact OPPOSITE reason--to screw everyone and bring Castro's Cuba to the rest of the world.
And wouldn't THAT be a wonderful place to live?
Thankfully, all of the other OPEC members recognize this bunch of idiots for who they truly are, and ignore them at every turn.
And one more thing:
Venezuela pulled this same crap in the 70s, kicking out the American oil companies, and BEGGED them to come back later. PDVSA (Venezuela's nationalized oil company) is very big and fairly efficient, but they don't know sh** from shine-ola when it comes to getting truly maximum return from existing wells.
Yeah, they know how to get to the easy-to-find stuff, but they don't have the technology, investment dollars or dedicated personnel to make it really profitable.
No offense--but this is Venezuela. Been there 20 times, and it's still a third world country in a million ways. And everyone with brains LEFT the country when Chavez was elected.
