Comment by adventured
3 days ago
The US has no use for Venezuelan oil. The US is sitting on a vast reserve of relatively good quality oil and is pumping as much as the global markets can handle. Venezuela is sitting on massive reserves of low quality, difficult to process oil.
The US goal is deprive China of access to Venezuelan oil. China is ~80% of all Venezuelan oil exports (legal or illegal). Venezuela represents a very large potential supply of oil for China, for the next 30-50 years (a time after which oil probably won't matter very much to China).
Note that the US also did not take Iraq's oil. China & India mostly have got that output. The US spent trillions of dollars, used its super power military to fully invade and occupy Iraq, and then did not take its oil. Read that again if anybody still feels brainwashed from the false campaign that endlessly proclaimed the US invasion of Iraq was to Steal The Oil.
Iraq was about the great power conflict with Russia across the Middle East (see: Syria, Libya, etc).
Venezuela is about the great power conflict with China and controlling what the US considers its backyard.
> The US has no use for Venezuelan oil. The US is sitting on a vast reserve of relatively good quality oil and is pumping as much as the global markets can handle.
First, our oil tends to be better for making gasoline but worse did asphalt or diesel, so there is a market for Venezuelan oil replacing Alberta’s.
Second, this is what the man himself has been talking about. He spent weeks going on about the nationalization in the 70s–and note how much of his worldview is stuck half a century ago when he was young—and in the first interview today he said this: “We’re going to have our very large US oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country and we are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so. So we were prepared to do a second wave.”
There are reasonable arguments about how much this is really worth but one thing we’ve learned is that he doesn’t do subterfuge or misdirection well. If he’s talking about making the world safe for Exxon, I’d bet that he believes it.
> The US has no use for Venezuelan oil.
Actually it's just the exact opposite. The US might be the biggest oil producer, but it still imports 60% of its oil that it uses from Canada. Why is that? Apparently because US infrastructure was built for heavy oil, not the light version the US produces.
Well, well, well ... It just so happens that Venezuela sits on the worlds largest repository of heavy oil.
The US consumes about 20 mil bbls of oil per day and imports around 4 mil bbls per day from Canada, about 20% of US consumption. Total oil imports is about 6 mil bbls/day, with about 2/3 of imports coming from Canada.
Two fun facts: 1) the US is now the largest producer of crude oil on the planet and 2) the US exports about 4 mil bbs of oil per day. Venezuela is a distant #18 at around 1 mil bbls/day
And lastly, pretty much anything you can distil from heavy crude, you can also distil from light crude, just less of it (by volume). There's a reason tar, asphalt and such is so cheap, it's made from the distillation waste products.
> 20 mil bbls of oil per day
Almost double that of Saudi-Arabia, roughly 20 times that of Venezuela
Imported heavy crude rose from 12% 50 years ago to 70% today.
> pretty much anything you can distil from heavy crude, you can also distil from light crude
You can, but at what cost and where? The largest raffineries are apparently built for heavy crude and you can’t just retrofit them to handle light crude.
> with about 2/3 of imports coming from Canada
There are just two other countries equipped with large enough resources to compete for that market share: Russia and Venezuela
“The US has no use for Venezuelan oil.”
> Trump also said he believes that American companies will be “heavily involved” in rebuilding Venezuela’s oil infrastructure.
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c5yqygxe41pt
Considering this was one of his first statements on what happened, I think it’s a clear signal for what his priorities are.
We are straight back to the Reagan years of toppling regimes for our own resource interests. There is no way we did this out of the kindness of our hearts or because we believe in open, free elections. We have clear material interests and he’s not even trying to hide it.
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy (/s obviously) but let’s not pretend this was some sort of magnanimous gesture or that it shouldn’t be deeply concerning to their neighbors that the US has no problem attacking a sovereign nation’s capital city and making off with a country’s leader + family when we’re not even at war.
Again I am not losing sleep for Maduro specifically but the way this was handled is not something that should be simply glossed over because of who he was and how he came to power, and we should definitely not pretend “the US has no use for Venezuelan oil.”
Agreed, and it would have played out the same if Trump liked the abduction of the Dalai Llama for Tibetan oil.
the president just announced that they are directing US companies to take control of Venezuelan oil.
Sure, and it's silly. There's very little oil in Venezuela that isn't too expensive to extract.
propaganda, keeping it in the ground away from china or others, handouts to friendly companies, it has uses
Before the invasion, influence and control was iraqi state owned. Afterwards, it was controlled by the US government up to ~2011. Then the western oil companies had influence. So sure they didn’t use it but they can dictate where it goes.
> Venezuela is about the great power conflict with China and controlling what the US considers its backyard.
Sure, can you extend that idea to China v Taiwan?
"Taiwan is about the great power conflict with US and controlling what the China considers its backyard."
Sure: it would be dumb for Washington through inaction to allow China to become secure in its region like the US is secure in its region because then China would be free to intervene all over the world, like the US does and has done for 80 years, which would be bad for the US, so Washington should try to prevent it.
In short, great-power competition is mostly zero-sum, and intuitions derived from relations between individuals in a civilized society mostly do not apply.
The US may have no use for Venezuelan oil, but Venezuela nationalized US investments in 1976, stealing Exxon and Gulf Oil's assets then paying them back a pittance.
Venezuela owes those companies several billion in 1976 dollars, money they have not repaid. The US will now likely use their oil as collateral to force them to pay. No I am not dumb enough to think they will stop only there or do this in a justifiable way, but I would assert, when someone steals something from you, you have the right to use force to get it back, even if the method just used is not the right one.
I'm fairly certain that there's a large segment of the population who would deeply dislike that rationale, especially if it's applied consistently to all past actions (cough slavery)
Why wouldn't apply to the people that keep or have kept slaves? It's probably harder to find anyone alive who has kept slaves or conspired with those who kept slaves, but I'm sure you could find some. Most of them are sex trafficking victims nowadays.
(to be clear here, living person Maduro was in an active conspiracy with the [at the time] living person Chavez who seized those assets* and Maduro knowingly and intentionally used the stolen assets of currently living shareholders of Exxon and and Gulf oil, this isn't even remotely analogous to some nebulous group of white people paying people who look like they might have been slaves but have never been slaves for the sins of other dead people who happened to be the same skin color who kept slaves)
If you mean just grabbing some random person who looks like a former slaveholder and then going after them for reparations to someone who happens to look like they might have been a slave if born in another time, then no that doesn't make sense. In fact most white people that are here probably can trace their lineage to the post civil war pre-WWII mass immigration, they don't even have a family lineage or personal inheritance lineage to slave holders.
>, especially if it's applied consistently to all past actions (cough slavery) reply
Also of note here, it was applied against slaveholders in a literal civil war where a notable portion of them were killed, although it by no means made up for what happened nor was it even the sole reason for the war. So yes the US government has done far more against slaveholders than they have against the Maduro/Chavez regime.
* Yes it happened before Maduro was in the Chavez regime, but he wittingly and knowingly later entered the conspiracy and used the stolen assets of living people as an ongoing continuation of the theft.
Where do you draw the line in the list of "not the right [method]"? I would assert that this is not justified, (in addition to not being the right method).
Can we send troops down there and just starting kill people until they pay us? Torture them maybe? Start spraying agent orange?
If someone steals something from me, I'm justified in beating them up, threatening their family, maybe even burning their house down until I get what I want, 50 years later?
Where do you draw the line between justified and unjustified when it comes to "not the right [method]"?
Conveniently leaving out over 100 years of US involvement in Venezuela and stealing of natural resources huh.
Then let Exxon and Gulf Oil try to use force to get it back. Why should I be forced to help them?
You shouldn't. But you are, and taxes ultimately are there to force via violence people to pay to help fund what they won't pay voluntarily. Now we're only left thinking about how we got here. You and I have next to nill say in this, particularly since the guy ordering it is a 'lame duck' with no further vote to worry about and has a nearly unilateral command of the military by congressional deadlock on any funding hiccups until at least midterms.
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Re: taxation is theft argument below regarding taxpayer monies used for justice (my comments throttled so I can't reply in thread)
Didn't say American taxpayers should have to help. I fully agree any self-help should be fully funded by the victim and not the taxpayers. I completely agree with your argument; simultaneously I'd argue they do have the right to fund an operation to seize their assets. I stated the US did this for this reason; I'd also agree if someone say steals my bike it is theft to try and use taxpayer funds to use the police to get it back, but I'd still acknowledge why the police did it and acknowledge the right of the person with the stolen bike to get it back even though I might not acknowledge they've done it in the right way.
>Your previous comment was saying that the US has the right to use force to get back assets that Venezuela seized
I did not. I said the person that has them seized has the right to get them back. You assumed I meant I supported the US doing it via violence of forcing taxpayers to do it.
The general populace is far more agreeable to theft of the general populace for justice of theft than you or I, though, our arguments fall completely flat in the face of that of an argument for a democratic republic. Generally taxation is considered an acceptable for the securement of the most basic tenants of life, liberty, and property under such political ideology.
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>Huh? You commented on an American military operation by saying that If someone steals from you then you have the right to use force to retrieve it.
Yes I commented that because that is the rational used why the US did it; they are wrongly doing proxy by justice under a principle that could be right if done correctly. I agreed with the underlying rational but not the US forces doing it by proxy via taxpayer expense. However under the popular argument that taxation isn't theft I think your argument falls flat.
I did not say the US had the right to retrieve it via violence against innocents, in fact I said exactly what you said, the person that has it done has the right to retrieve it, not that you could force someone else to do it at gunpoint as the US has done to its citizens.
I explicitly said * even if the method just used is not the right one* to reflect my agreement with your argument, but I did not say your argument out loud, because it is deeply unpopular and it would just get my comment ignored/flagged because that has happened everytime I've used your hardcore-libertarian type logic.
>Was that just a total non sequitur? Were you just saying the oil companies have the right to use force, unrelated to the US military, on a comment thread that is specifically about the US using military force?
It is not at all unrelated that the oil companies wanted something (that might be moral, if done correctly) and then the US went on to do something they wanted in an immoral way, have you been paying attention at all to politics in the US for the past 30+ years? It's baffling you could even come up with this conclusion.
Of course even if they limited the mission to getting back Exxon assets, they will be damned either way. Either for using private mercs at their own expense, people will say they're operating outside the law. If they use the sovereign state, then people will argue the taxation is theft argument about using military assets for misplaced justice and argue they should have just used mercs. They really cannot win either way.
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Then why isn't Trump saying this in his speech. Instead he's talking about Venezuela emptying it's prisons into the US and making cities he sent the NG to crime ridden because the Democratic leaders failed or some such rationalization.
Because he doesn’t write his speeches.
> The US has no use for Venezuelan oil
Someone should tell Trump that because he’s not been remotely subtle about his thought process.
> Note that the US also did not take Iraq's oil
That doesn’t mean there was no desire to take that oil. And there very transparently was. Looking at the end result and working backwards is faulty thinking. The US disastrously mismanaged Iraq. They certainly didn’t intend to.
>Someone should tell Trump that because he’s not been remotely subtle about his thought process.
Maybe Trump just believes it'll be a good lie for his target demographic, because it certainly is a lie.
Or, and hear me out here, he’s not very smart and thinks “oil good”. He’s literally said US companies are going to be taking control over it.
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