venezuela

www.rt.com/news/436526-venezuela-coast-powerful-earthquake/

Venezuela’s oil production is about to hit a thirty-year low! That means even less money for Maduro’s Socialist experiments. That means he can either back off or double down. Lefties, of course, never back off, they always double down. That means that Maduro will expand government police powers, expand control of the economy, and drive even more sectors of the Venezuelan economy into the ground. What a totally unnecessary disaster!

Yet it will be one obvious lesson that the Left in the United States will ignore.

The oil headlines this week have all been about Iran, but the slowly unfolding disaster in Venezuela may be even more significant.

Less than two weeks before a controversial snap presidential election that would almost certainly give incumbent Nicolás Maduro a six-year term, the country’s main source of export revenue could take another drastic tumble. S&P Global Platts estimates the country’s recent crude production was 1.41 million barrels a day, at least a 30-year low except for a crippling 2002-2003 strike. And over half a million barrels below what it was a year ago.

Venezuela faces two risks that, if both come to pass, could cut its oil output by more than the biggest estimates of what could happen to Iran if sanctions were reimposed. The risks stem from Venezuela’s dependence on importing lighter varieties of crude to mix with the heavy oil it produces, and its need for products imported from the U.S. to enable its thick oil to be transported.

The first situation is playing out in the Dutch-administered islands of Curaçao and Bonaire, where Venezuela’s state oil company owns refining and storage facilities. U.S. producer ConocoPhillips is attempting to take physical control of those facilities after winning an arbitration award against Venezuela for seizing its assets in 2007. Venezuela appears to be telling its suppliers not to ship oil to these facilities for fear ConocoPhillips will seize that too, potentially shutting down refining.

The second situation would play out if the U.S. halts exports to Venezuela of a product called diluent, which allows the thick oil to be transported. Such a move would imperil half or more of the country’s remaining production. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence has already called the presidential election a sham.

Energy economist Philip Verleger estimates the Conoco spat could cost Venezuela as much as 500,000 barrels a day in exports, which is the upper end of the estimated impact of reimposed Iranian sanctions. An embargo could hurt even more. Don’t look east for oil’s next wild card, look south.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/venezuelas-brewing-oil-shock-may-be-bigger-than-irans-1525944601

The population of Venezuela was thirty-one million. And there are tens of thousands fleeing to Brazil, as well. An resource-rich country now imports oil and coffee, products it once exported.

Let’s be honest. People like Senator Bernie Sanders, who openly proclaims has socialism, and who once praised Chavez’s effort, would do the same damned thing here if given the chance.

At least one million people have entered Colombia from Venezuela since President Nicolas Maduro’s government descended into crisis last year, a senior Red Cross official told AFP Wednesday.

The health director at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), Emanuele Capobianco, said that not all have stayed in Colombia as displaced people, with some moving on to other countries in the region.

“To date we know that approximately one million people have entered Colombia through official migration points, and we don’t know how many have entered Colombia through unofficial migration points,” he said in a phone interview in Geneva, specifying that this movement had occurred “since mid-2017.”

With the economic crisis in Venezuela intensifying, an estimated 37,000 people were now moving across the Colombian border each day, he added.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/1-mln-people-enter-colombia-amid-venezuela-crisis-155732459.html

The man who ran Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA for a decade after 2004 says that the country’s oil firm is on the cusp of total collapse and expects oil production to drop by 600,000 bpd each year amid lack of investment.
— Read on www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-05-07/ex-venezuela-oil-boss-pdvsa-collapsing

Since Hugo Chavez gained power in Venezuela, the government has taken over industry after industry, with catastrophic results! Now it’s the turn of the biggest bank. Each industry was taken over in the name of “the people.” But each take over has made things worse for “the people.” This is an oil-rich country that now has to import petroleum! It also went from a coffee exporter to a coffee importer. And as things continue to deteriorate, the Chavezists, as is true of all socialists and Progressives, simply double down. Whenever reality demonstrates that a socialist program doens’t work, the response is never to eliminate it. The response is always to double-down, to throw more money at it, or to expand the police powers of the state to try to force people to make it work.

The government of Venezuela announced on Thursday the arrest of 11 executives of the nation’s leading private bank, Banesco, for alleged “attacks” against the country’s struggling currency.

Shortly after the arrests, the government announced that the state would intervene in the bank’s activities for a period of 90 days, in order to “guarantee the full functioning and continuation of its services.”

Maduro’s government explained that the takeover was necessary to “protect the people” and “clean up” all the illicit activity that was taking place in the bank.

The arrests are the latest strike by Nicolas Maduro’s government against the private sector, as the country endures a continuing economic crisis, crippling hyper-inflation and the steady collapse of the national currency,the Bolivar.

http://www.dw.com/en/venezuela-seizes-control-of-private-bank-banesco-arrests-top-executives/a-43647802