Comment by card_zero
4 days ago
> world's largest oil reserves
With no infrastructure, and ten years of massive investment needed, I read.
4 days ago
> world's largest oil reserves
With no infrastructure, and ten years of massive investment needed, I read.
Sounds like an opportunity for some lucrative contracts to go to US companies, while forcing the new Venezuelan government to foot the bill.
Which would happen anyway because only US companies are (maybe) capable of extracting Venezuelan crude at a profit.
Interesting to keep reading the narrative about the supposedly worthless Venezuelan oil here. So worthless that the US has to block sales with an embargo and is starting a war over it, apparently.
3 replies →
OK, but the other piece of international aggression in the news recently was yesterday, when Trump promised that the US would "come to the rescue" of protestors in Iran if the regime starts killing them. Possibly this and Venezuela are related, and oil is involved, but in a strategic way rather than any immediately rewarding treasure-seeking.
From your source: "Venezuela, for the American oil companies, will be a field day," Florida Republican congresswoman María Elvira Salazar said in a recent interview on Fox Business. "American companies can go in and fix all the oil pipes, the whole oil rigs and everything that has to do with... oil and the derivatives." Trump might seem open to such arguments. He campaigned on the slogan "drill, baby, drill" and has generally called for expanding oil production, which he has tied to lower prices for Americans. /quote
It then goes on to note that output could be more than doubled in two years. That alone would put them as the 11th largest oil producer and the third largest in the Americas. The decade timeline and budget was for creating maximalist infrastructure for fully exploiting the resources.
The strongest proof that the article has that trump isn’t interested in oil is his word that he isn’t interested in oil. How much faith do you put in Trump’s honesty?
The 2023 Trump quote is "We would have taken over it, we would have kept all that oil". But I think war-for-oil explanations are too pat, generally. Just because he shamelessly says the oil is a motivation doesn't mean it makes sense as a motivation.
He said it then, he said it now, everyone else in the know is saying it. Trump has openly declared his intent to go after numerous other country’s mineral and oil resources leveraging military force if necessary. (Ukraine, Canada, Denmark off the top of my head). Why should I think that a man who sees everything through the lens of power and money has not just made a power and money play after spending a year promising to do just that.
I don’t doubt that other motivations exist. I do not think that the US would have gone after them if they did not have oil. I do not think the US government would be crowing about all the money they will finally be able to make with oil, if that wasn’t a motivation.
dumber than a box of rocks.
All they have to do is keep power for ten years and keep renewables being illegal (Trump already banned offshore wind turbines because he can see some from one of his overseas golf courses)