Chavez once again porves he's a tin pot dictator in the making.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Smiley
hmm, he's building a maglev monorail!

official government photo:

Just a thought. You maybe want to talk to the designers about leg room.

[Dinner]

Cost cuts meant they had to scale the project down.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Oerdin
OK, please show that Chile or Mexico did pay when they nationalized foreign businesses. You won't be able to because it didn't happen. The foreign assets got stolen and the owners didn't get a penny.

You're the one who keeps claiming over and over and over again, despite being proven wrong every time that Venezuelan output is falling, boyo.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Last Conformist
Reminds me ... Venezuela claims a big chunk of Guyana's territory. Is that just for forms sake, or is it a real source of friction between the countries?

It's been a real source of friction, going back ever since Britain seized the land from Spain. Guyana, however, is a nominally socialist country, so one hopes proletarian solidarity will prevail.

The more immediate threat to Venezuela is Columbia. Columbian troops have been crossing the border as have paramilitaries. Wars are not unknown in South America. Ecuador and Peru had a shooting war just a few years ago.

[Dinner]

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0531/p04s01-woam.html

From May31, 2006.

While the government denies it and high oil prices mask it, analysts say Venezuelan oil production is declining. Since Chávez took over in 1999, production in the state-run oil fields has fallen almost 50 percent, say analysts at PFC Energy, a global energy consulting firm based in Washington, D.C., who spoke on condition of anonymity rather than risk the wrath of the Venezuelan government.

Oil production by the state owned oil company is in a free fall. Thus Chevaz must steal assets from the private sector or admit his economic policies are a failure. He's killing the goose which is laying the golden eggs.

"The outlook for increases in the future is starting to go up in smoke and we see a petroleum industry in contraction," said Luis Giusti, the former president of Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), in an interview earlier this month with Venezuela's Union Radio.

Mind you that second quote is from the former head of the state run oil company.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by DanS
the picture is of him giving the heil Hitler salute.

Totally in character.

That's not the Nazi salute. The Nazi salute is open handed. That's the Roman salute or the solidarity salute.

[chequita guevara]

http://www.planete-energies.com/content/oil-gas/companies/world/consumption-production-statistics.html

This has Venezuela's maximum year of production as 1997, so production had already been falling for two years by 1999.

http://www.moles.org/ProjectUnderground/drillbits/5_04/vs.html

Venezuela 2.78 mb/d for year 1999.

http://www.gravmag.com/oil.html

Venezuala's 2004 production was 2.9 mb/d.

So, once again, you are totally wrong.

[chequita guevara]

What continues to fail to get through your head is that the vast majority of Venezuelans are materially better off today, because of Chavez's reforms. It's not just the poor, who constitute the bulk of Venezuelan society, but even the middle class. But for you, mystical economic statitics are more important than real people's lives.

And yet, you have a completely different view when it comes to the United States. If your views were consistent, you'd be a hard core Republican, saying that the government has no responsibility to the poor and should be giving all its money to the elite.

Why should people have to wait for generations to have their needs meet when they can do it now. If that means curtailing future growth, oh well. That just means rich people aren't going to be as rich.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
That's not the Nazi salute. The Nazi salute is open handed. That's the Roman salute or the solidarity salute.

100-nil.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
What continues to fail to get through your head is that the vast majority of Venezuelans are materially better off today, because of Chavez's reforms. It's not just the poor, who constitute the bulk of Venezuelan society, but even the middle class. But for you, mystical economic statitics are more important than real people's lives.

Actions that fundamentally weaken private markets (which are NOT the same thing as moderate SD redistributionist social programs) have a way of harming poor and middle class people in the long run.

The redistributionist stuff was already out front in Chavez 1.0. He seems to be moving well past it with these nationalizations. If they ARE compensated, that means using money that could have been used for social programs. He may well have the money to do both, for now, thanks to the price of oil.


Not to mention of course the political things. He just denied license renewal to a Roman Catholic TV station.

[Barnabas]

The other day he said Jesus was the greatest socialist in the history of mankind

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara

http://www.planete-energies.com/content/oil-gas/companies/world/consumption-production-statistics.html

This has Venezuela's maximum year of production as 1997, so production had already been falling for two years by 1999.

http://www.moles.org/ProjectUnderground/drillbits/5_04/vs.html

Venezuela 2.78 mb/d for year 1999.

http://www.gravmag.com/oil.html

Venezuala's 2004 production was 2.9 mb/d.

So, once again, you are totally wrong.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0531/p04s01-woam.html

"Venezuela's oil model: Is production rising or falling?
High oil prices keep profits up, but output may be down.
By Danna Harman | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

CARACAS, VENEZUELA – In recent weeks, both Bolivian president Evo Morales and Ecuador's president Alfredo Palacio have taken a page out of Venezuelan populist president Hugo Chávez's natural resources manual.
It's the page that features politicizing the oil and gas industries and nationalizing them - keeping more of the petro dollars at home but alienating longtime foreign investors. A good model? Many oil industry analysts are skeptical.


While the government denies it and high oil prices mask it, analysts say Venezuelan oil production is declining. Since Chávez took over in 1999, production in the state-run oil fields has fallen almost 50 percent, say analysts at PFC Energy, a global energy consulting firm based in Washington, D.C., who spoke on condition of anonymity rather than risk the wrath of the Venezuelan government.

During the same period, no new significant oil reserves have been discovered. And with new, smaller profit margins for outside companies, foreign investors are now slowing the rate of investment in the jointly run oil and gas fields.

"The outlook for increases in the future is starting to go up in smoke and we see a petroleum industry in contraction," said Luis Giusti, the former president of Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), in an interview earlier this month with Venezuela's Union Radio. "The day the prices change, the situation is going to be evident once and for all," he said.

The Venezuelan government and PDVSA declined repeated requests for comment. Official figures show oil production has bounced back after a 2002 strike and decline, but oil analysts doubt the veracity of those figures.

It's not clear how many fields are operated solely by PDVSA because the company reports production totals without details as to how many fields or wells are under their control and how many are operational.


------



That Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, is moving backwards is not clear to everyone.

The state oil company, PDVSA, reports production of 3.3 million barrels a day. There is no way to independently confirm this, and most outside analysts, including the International Energy Agency, say PDVSA's numbers are inflated and production is closer to 2.6 million barrels per day. The Financial Times reported this month that Venezuela's shortfall in production is such that it was actually forced to strike a $2 billion deal to buy about 100,000 barrels per day of crude oil from Russia to avoid defaulting on contracts - a claim the Chávez government says is false.

But whatever the real output, Venezuela - because of the high price of oil - is raking in more petrodollars than ever before. When Chávez came into office in 1999, the country reported production of 3.5 millionbarrels per day and, with oil selling at about $15 per barrel, was making just over $18 billion a year. This month, with oil at about $70 a barrel, PDVSA Finance Director Eudomario Carruyo told Reuters he expects revenue to top $85 billion this year. PDVSA officials have reportedly said that oil production will increase to 4 million barrels per day by 2012.

Furthermore, in part thanks to Chávez plowing billions of these petrodollars into new housing, free medical care, adult literacy projects and other social programs, Venezuelans perceive the industry to be exceedingly robust now. "Normal people don't care about whether production is 3.3 million barrels per day or 2.6. For them, the oil is huge and forever," says Alfredo Keller, an independent pollster in Caracas.

The problem, says Mr. Ochoa, is that politicizing the industry has rotted it, and served both to empty PDVSA of its best professionals, and to scare foreign partners away from new investment.

"It is generally safe to assume a pretty steep fall in PDVSA production over the last few years," says Jack Sweeney, a former analyst at Stratfor, a private intelligence agency, and today an independent consultant in Caracas. "There is no investment in maintenance or repairs ... They don't know what they are doing. They have old oil wells and it takes money to keep their capacity up, and they are not investing [in them]."

Maria Mercedes Febres was a senior engineer at PDVSA until 2000, when, she says, she "saw the writing on the wall," and quit. "Political appointees were taking over from qualified longtimers, and I knew it was going downhill," she says. Most of her friends stayed on, but their frustration with the political cronyism of the company finally exploded in a massive strike in 2002.

Chávez refused to negotiate and fired about 18,000 workers, many of them top engineers. "Most of my ex-colleagues left the country. They are oil professionals, but here, where the oil industry is in the hands of the state, they were blacklisted," says Ms. Febres. After the firings, she says, the level of professionalism plummeted. "You need to exploit your oil efficiently - and for that you depend on technology and maintenance. We have neither."

Meanwhile, Venezuela's joint partners - companies such as ChevronTexaco, Royal Dutch Shell, and British Petroleum - are also perceptibly slowing production here. Last year, Chávez announced that these foreign companies, who had been invited into Venezuela in the 1990s to operate 32 marginal fields, were to have their contracts converted to joint ventures that give PDVSA majority stake and control of the board. With the exception of France's Total and Italy's ENI - who subsequently had their fields seized by PDVSA - all the companies accepted the new terms, including a sharp hike in the state's royalty share.

Oil minister and PDVSA director Rafael Ramirez promised output in these fields would soon rise rapidly. But, in fact, the opposite has happened.

According to industry reports, output has steadily fallen in foreign-operated fields. The largest drop was at Royal Dutch Shell PLC's (RDSA) Urdaneta field, where output fell to 43,400 barrels per day in March from 46,900 barrels per day in October.

"Governments have the right to want a bigger part of profits," says Pietro Donatello Pitts, editor of Latin Petroleum. "It's the same all over the world and the big companies are not surprised. Latin American rates were the best in the world, so this was bound to happen."

But, while most companies, desperate for oil, won't pull out, they will slow their rate of investment. "When the rent goes up, you become wary of new investment; it's logical," he says.

The way Chávez approached the change, says Ochoa - telling companies they were breaking the law - scared investors. "The anti-imperialist rhetoric that came along with the announcements was the mistake," he says.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara

http://www.planete-energies.com/content/oil-gas/companies/world/consumption-production-statistics.html

This has Venezuela's maximum year of production as 1997, so production had already been falling for two years by 1999.

http://www.moles.org/ProjectUnderground/drillbits/5_04/vs.html

Venezuela 2.78 mb/d for year 1999.

http://www.gravmag.com/oil.html

Venezuala's 2004 production was 2.9 mb/d.

So, once again, you are totally wrong.

Did you read the Christian Science Monitor Article or the PFK Energy (a major oil industry analysis company not some rightwing propaganda site) report? Venezeula has been cooking the official numbers and adding up exports and domestic use doesn't equal the numbers Chavez is claiming. Further more the national oil company has been buying oil off the world market to help cover delivery contracts it has because its own production isn't large enough.

Read the stuff before you just quote official numbers.

[Dinner]

http://www.wattsgoingon.com/2006/09/venezuela_cuts_.html

That's an article from last September which quotes Venezuela's output at 2.5m bpd. Venezuela's big problem is it gets most of the money to run the national government from the state oil company and that's where the production is falling the most. In 2003 Chavez attracted several foreign companies to develop new oil fields in Venezuela but he's now taking those fields and it isn't clear if he will offer any compensation for the billions those companies have spent. The foreign investment is what kept total national production from falling off of a cliff.

Chavez is now trying to make up for the short fall in production from the state firm by stealing the assets of private companies. There is no doubt Chavez will run those assets just as poorly as he's run the state oil firm.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
What continues to fail to get through your head is that the vast majority of Venezuelans are materially better off today, because of Chavez's reforms. It's not just the poor, who constitute the bulk of Venezuelan society, but even the middle class. But for you, mystical economic statitics are more important than real people's lives.

And yet, you have a completely different view when it comes to the United States. If your views were consistent, you'd be a hard core Republican, saying that the government has no responsibility to the poor and should be giving all its money to the elite.

Not at all. I do think governments should spend money to help the poor, improve infastructure, and provide education to all. I don't believe that stealing private assets is benificial in the long run as it ruins private eneterprise and results in economic stagnation over the long term. Government ownership is less efficient because it results in exactly what has occured in Venezuela; namely that skilled professionals who don't see eye to eye with Chavez get fired for political reasons and are replaced with political yes men who just aren't as skilled or who are not skilled at all in these jobs. Their sole qualification is that they're fanboys for Chavez and loyal party apperatchniks which is nice but that doesn't qualify them to manage an oil company, model hydrocarbon reservior maturation, figure out where to drill new wells, manage finances, or any number of other technical fields including engineering pipelines or maintaining existing infastructure.

The best way to run an economy is to let private enterprise do its thing while regulating it to prevent unfair practices. Then the state needs to use regular tax policies to pay for social programs rather then just stealing from people to gain a temperary slush fund. That's how the best performing economies in the world remain the best performing.