Chavez steals millions from foreign companies.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

I think that difference is that the ton of oil out there left (like in canada) is only profitable above what? $50 a barril?

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
I think that difference is that the ton of oil out there left (like in canada) is only profitable above what? $50 a barril?

While oil companies are coy about their projections and assumptions sometimes, most of the oilsands projects being done now are projected to have acceptable rates of return if oil stays in the $35-40 range.

The projects that need a long-term $50 oil are not being done right now since they are not willing to place a $10 billion dollar bet that oil will stay QUITE that high

[Flubber]

Oh and isn't time that this OTBOT thing is given the boot. Maybe it was funny or something originally but it just seems rather lame right now

[Velociryx]

Arrian:

I agree on all counts. Two hour commutes BLOW CHUNKS, and this bet prolly ain't gonna happen, because Kid started out strong, but keeps backpedling so as to avoid getting locked down to anything in particular.

*shrug*

This comes as no surprise. Everyone who's participated in any of the Cap/Com debates knows that debating with the Kid is prolly the closest thing we'll ever come to having a real-life conversation with a Babel-Fish....

-=Vel=-

[techumseh]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Another interesting quote from the same source.

quote:

Stratfor.com estimates that since Chavez became president, starting in 1998, "PDVSA has lost about 1.5 million bpd of its net crude oil production."

The main reasons have been the replacement of capable engineers and workers who disagreed with Chavez's revolutionary views, with inexperienced, and in many cases incapable replacements, and the lack of attention to infrastructure maintenance and improvement.

The result of the bad management and neglect, has been the steady erosion and near incapacitation of a major oil-producing region of Venezuela, the Western portion of the country, where as many as 10,000 wells have been estimated to have been rendered mostly useless. Venezuela is nominally the world's fifth largest oil producer.

Stratfor? That's your source? Here's a few words on Stratfor:

Stratfor - which is also known as Strategic Forecasting, Inc. - is a private company that provides strategic and issues management intelligence anlaysis to corporations and governments.

The company, founded in 1996, is based in Austin, Texas and boasts that it has "an intelligence network located throughout the world."

"Stratfor is the world's leading private intelligence firm providing corporations, governments and individuals with geopolitical analysis and forecasts that enable them to manage risk and to anticipate political, economic and security issues vital to their interests," it states on its website. [1] (http://stratfor.com/corp/Corporate.neo?s=ABO)

Al Giordano [2] (http://www.bigleftoutside.com/archiv...hp?theme=white), details what he calls "20 Stratfor Lies about Latin America":

Stratfor is one of these snake-oil disinfo sales firms that traffics in "intelligence briefings" for people gullible enough to pay for them. Imagine that: you can get lied to for free all over this great land, but some people actually pay to be deceived!
Stratfor's track record in Latin America is abhorrent (how many years in a row did it predict that Hugo Chavez would not survive that year as Venezuela's president?). It's "spin" is ideological: pro-corporate, which is no surprise, given that it's undisclosed clientele purchases something called "Business Intelligence Services."
In my opinion, Stratfor engages in circulating disinformation into the datasphere through its free and paid email memos in ways that seem aimed to help the agendas of that very same corporate world that contracts its services.
In March 2004, Bart Mongoven from Stratfor's Washington D.C. office appeared on a panel - Strategies for Dealing with Environmental Litigation - at the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association annual meeting in San Antonio, Texas. (Also appearing on the panel were Marc Sisk, Dorsey & Whitney, Washington, DC and Stephen Brown from The Dutko Group LLC). [3] (http://www.npradc.org/meetings/annual/Tuesdayam.pdf)

Mongoven warned industry leaders about the increasing collaboration between environmental groups and patients groups on the issue of exposure to chemicals. Washington D.C. trade magazine, Inside EPA, reported Mongoven told the NPRA that "in five years, the environmental community would like to see all debates [be about] the environment and health." Mongoven nominated Collaborative on Health and the Environment as an example of the new approach.[4] (http://www.insideepa.com/)

According to Inside EPA, Mongoven said that the collaboration was broadening the debate beyond exposure to pesticides to the health impacts of industrial emissions. According to Inside EPA, he suggested that one option for industry to counter this development was to dismiss advocates stated public health goal and instead portray them as being "anti-chemical".

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by lord of the mark

The working class is always brown.

So youre admitting you really meant working class, and threw in the racial stuff to get a rise out of people?

Nope. We were talking about Venezuela and then the third world in general. Lots of brown people there. You threw in Ireland and eastern Europe, but get down to it, if you consider the common "first world" view of those areas, they're pretty "brown" too.

It was to make a profit. Who said they invest out of altruism?

The issue is how much it benefits the average peasant, not the purpose of the investments.

not for domestic infrastructure or manufacturing base to serve the host country's consumer markets.

Cause in general these countries consumer markets are small. But where theyre large, they do invest for local consumer markets - for example western automakers assembling vehicles in China, largely for local markets.

Their consumer markets in durable goods and luxury items are small - their consumer markets for the common necessities of life are pretty robust, unless you're talking someplace like Haiti or Niger.

So we get TVs in Mexico and Barbie dolls and just about everything else in China, all sold at WalMart. Big whoop for the leetle brown people as a whole.

Big whoop indeed - rising wages, rising living standards,which go on to create domestic markets.

Carajo. Rising wages and living standards for a few, with exploitation of lax labor laws and even laxer enforcement for the majority of employees (particularly in China), exploitation of lax or non-existent environmental regulation and enforcement, etc.
And you don't get squat for the vast majority of leetle brown people who don't actually work for these foreign owned enterprises or their direct suppliers. In fact, consequences for them can be negative (pollution, diversion of resources for infrastructure improvement and maintenance to the benefit of the foreign investment facilities, etc.)

Venezuela has been around for a while. What has the average Jose gotten out of foreign investment so far?

Oil, which doesnt have huge demand for labor, and tends to create corruption, often concentrates wealth. Latin American countries in general tend to have concentrated wealth patterns. But again, what LDC has achieved rapid economic growth without FDI?

Concentrated wealth patterns which are also and still a legacy of colonialism and subsequent (often European and Yanqui supported) thugocracy. The question of rapid economic growth as commonly defined is irrelevant. How about rapid growth of standard of living for the average peasant, i.e. the bottom four quintiles of income or asset distribution? The whole reason for the popularity of Chavez and the general leftward shift in Latin America is the continued shafting of the common man. Until the peasants see some of the benefits of capitalism reaching them (as opposed to watching it from a distance), they're not going to embrace it. Chavez plays to the masses, and he knows right now, there won't be any significant consequences.

[techumseh]

Originally posted by Oerdin
BTW before Tecu-whatever comes in and spews more lies here is a nice link on Venezuela's national oil production figures from Jan. 1973 until Nov. 2005.

http://www.economagic.com/em-cgi/data.exe/doeme/paprpve

As you can see oil production was at its peak in Sep 1973 at 3406k barrels per day (bpd), declined to just 1503k bpd in May 1982, recovered to 2390k bpd by Jan of 1992, and then in 1993 the law was changed to allow foreign oil companies to invest. What happened?

Oil production climbed almost continously and by Dec 1997, the year before Chavez took office, oil production had reached 3453k bpd. Then Chavez happened and oil production has been steadily declining ever since. By last Nov (the last statistic I could be bothered to find) production was at 2540k bpd. A decline of about 27% since Chavez took office. That's hugely important since oil makes up the bulk of Venezuela's economy.

Those are the official statistics of the Venezuelan government and, as the previous article posted, the official statistics are questionable. In fact many oil analists don't even use them because they're off by so much.

Another curious source, o venomous one. What the hell is economagic? When I tried the link for the source of all those numbers, it said "If you were a paying Level I Subscriber, you would have access to this source information." So are you a paying Level I Subscriber? Can you find out for us poor proles?

BTW, my source was the official OPEC site.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Oerdin


I recall that people said similiar things about high oil prices in the 1970's however the high prices brought a lot of new production on line which caused prices to fall to record lows in the 1980's. I see no reason why similiar conditions could not happen again. There is a ton of oil left out there to be found (abet mostly in hard to reach places like oceans and other remote areas) and high prices mainly depend on demand in Asia continuing to outpace supply growth.

Which it's likely to do. Mexico's largest oilfield is declining in productivity, the East Texas-Lousiana offshore basin has had declining oil and gas production and is fairly close to played out, Nigeria isn't exactly a paragon of stability, and we're not exactly getting that great production out of Iraq that a lot of neocon apologists insisted we'd get as a means of keeping the Saudis in line. Throw in Khamanei and Ahmadinejad running their mouths on a regular basis and the whole question of a nuclear Iran vs. what in hell will Dubya or his successor do about it, and you have a lot of uppity Yuppie futures traders on NYMEX ready to **** their pants at the first rumor of trouble.

[Zkribbler]

I heard one very scary statistic:

When China's standard of living increases to that of Mexico, their increased demand for petroleum will cause the price of oil to double.

[xvdravarvx]

The problem with projecting current trends into the future is that they never turn out to be right.


Ponder this for a moment when you next think about our oil problems (as well as our enviromentalist problems)

The biggest concern for New York City in 1900 was enviromental.

There was too much horse manure.


I'd say we solved that problem.



Something will come along that will put oil out to pasture and more likely than not it will be developed in the US. Over the past decades many discoveries have been developed in the US and as other nations start to refine it and make it better per say, America in general is on to the next big idea.

I'd argue that we have a comparative advantage to technological innovation to the rest of the world who has one when it comes to refining and producing those items

[techumseh]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Wow, this was written back in May 2005 and the author called it. Like dead on called it.

http://www.financialsense.com/editor...2005/0520.html

So who is this Joe Duarte, who wrote this article, anyway? Well, according to his bio, "Dr. Duarte is a board certified anesthesiologist, a registered investment advisor, and President of River Willow Capital Management, where he manages individual client accounts."

So he's a doctor who has got into investing. Okay, nothing wrong with that, he might still know something about Venezuela. He's written dozens of articles, most of which depend very heavily on Stratfor research.

Well that's a problem, given Stratfor's reputation as right-wing corporate source of disinformation. But maybe it's ok if Joe sticks to objective investment advice and stays away from right-wing propaganda and subjective opinions. Let's see what other things he's written....

OK, here's one from March 2003, just before the invasion of Iraq. It seem's Joe is worried that President Bush isn't getting his message out to the American people:

In essence, the President is right in what he’s doing, but can’t make anyone else see it his way, because he hasn‘t been very good at telling a story that convinces people. At this point in the cycle people are more interested in their jobs and their decimated 401-K plan, than in making the world safer for Democracy and free markets, and Bush has not effectively made them see it otherwise.

Hmm. People are more interested in their jobs and their retirement plans than in dying for free markets in Iraq. How inconsiderate of them.

Oh, and here's another sage observation made at the time:

Of course Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. He is a well-known liar and an evil dictator.

Well, he was right on the money there, eh Oerdin?

We know that you're heart is with us: "I am, in general, pro-leftest." -Oerdin. (your spelling does leave a bit to be desired, though) But where do you come up with these guys? Really, Oerdin, you're known by the company you keep.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by xvdravarvx
The biggest concern for New York City in 1900 was enviromental.

There was too much horse manure.

I'd say we solved that problem.

Right. We moved it to Washington D.C.

[Dinner]

First off the article originally came from marketwatch.com which is a pay site so I linked the same article as posted in a nonpay site. http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Stor...ve&siteid=mktw As a general rule information isn't free and if you want industry reports then you have to pay. Just about every industry is the same because it costs money to hire experts to analyze data and write briefings.

Next I notice that you did a lovely drive by shooting on company with a lot of experts who get paid big money to analyze data yet your own source is...

A far left blogger on a site named "Big, Left, Outside" Even I'd be embarrassed to relay solely upon such partisan and questionable sources. He even has a link the CHAVEZ'S OWN WEBSITE!!!! Yep, that's source can certainly be trusted to be objective.

If you really want to do an appeal to authority then I feel great about comparing my sources vs your left wing internet blogger. I'm sorry but you've been consistantly pwnd to hell and back on this forum to much for me to take anything you say at face value. You've just been wrong that many times.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
Which it's likely to do. Mexico's largest oilfield is declining in productivity, the East Texas-Lousiana offshore basin has had declining oil and gas production and is fairly close to played out, Nigeria isn't exactly a paragon of stability, and we're not exactly getting that great production out of Iraq that a lot of neocon apologists insisted we'd get as a means of keeping the Saudis in line. Throw in Khamanei and Ahmadinejad running their mouths on a regular basis and the whole question of a nuclear Iran vs. what in hell will Dubya or his successor do about it, and you have a lot of uppity Yuppie futures traders on NYMEX ready to **** their pants at the first rumor of trouble.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4808466.stm

That declining and played out offshore basin you were talking about... They just found a 10 billion barrel field there this week. Entirely new and a huge boon for Mexico. And this isn't an isolated event as the Russians just discovered an equally massive new field north of the white sea.

There is plenty of oil left out there but the big new discoveries will be in deeper and deeper water meaning it will be more and more expensive to recover them. literally 75%-80% of the Earth's surface has yet to be explored for oil because its to remote and to costly to recover the oil but that doesn't mean technology won't make it more affordable in the future. 35 years ago there were only shallow water rigs and now they're starting to build rigs which are in such deep water that they'll float like ships instead of building a tower to the ocean's floor.

It will take time for these and other fields to come online and even when they do demand in Asia will keep pushing up prices but those prices tend to be very cyclical and if Chavez gets hit by one of those down periods then his economic mismanagement is going to be made clear to everyone.

[techumseh]

Originally posted by Oerdin
First off the article originally came from marketwatch.com which is a pay site so I linked the same article as posted in a nonpay site. http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Stor...ve&siteid=mktw As a general rule information isn't free and if you want industry reports then you have to pay. Just about every industry is the same because it costs money to hire experts to analyze data and write briefings.

Next I notice that you did a lovely drive by shooting on company with a lot of experts who get paid big money to analyze data yet your own source is...

A far left blogger on a site named "Big, Left, Outside" Even I'd be embarrassed to relay solely upon such partisan and questionable sources. He even has a link the CHAVEZ'S OWN WEBSITE!!!! Yep, that's source can certainly be trusted to be objective.

If you really want to do an appeal to authority then I feel great about comparing my sources vs your left wing internet blogger. I'm sorry but you've been consistantly pwnd to hell and back on this forum to much for me to take anything you say at face value. You've just been wrong that many times.

My source was not the site you say. It was linked in an article on a site by the Centre for Media and Democracy, here: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Stratfor

What is clear is that Stratfor is a private intellegence organization closely linked to the US government and multinationals. It provides information to them and disinformation to us, via the internet. As a self-proclaimed "pro-leftest", you should try and find less overtly right-wing sources for your information.

And so what if a blogger linked to on the site I linked to also linked to Chavez's own site? He also linked to the New York Times, and dozens of others. BTW, don't you want people to see Chavez's site for themselves?

Oerdin, you really don't make a weak argument stronger by just adding extra lol smilies and ad hominem arguments. Here's a link to help you in future: http://www.soyouwanna.com/site/syws/logic/logic3.html

Remember, this argument started about Venezuela's oil production, and my source is OPEC's official site. Your's is.... well, we don't really know.