Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Friday his government had no plan to suspend oil supplies to United States but would prefer to give priority to energy deals with Latin American neighbors.Speaking to regional central bank representatives, Chavez took a softer line after earlier harsh rhetoric and threats to cut off U.S. petroleum supplies should Washington "cross the line" in their heated diplomatic dispute.
Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest oil exporter and a key U.S. crude supplier, has signed energy pacts with Latin American neighbors, China and India as Chavez seeks to break his nation's traditional economic reliance on the United States.
"It's not that we have a plan to suspend shipments of oil to the United States or anywhere else," he said. "We send to China too and if Europe needs it, we've told their leaders, too. It's just that we want to give priority to Latin America and the Caribbean."
Saturday, March 25, 2006
Venezuelan oil
From all accounts I've heard and analyses I've seen, this is indeed the basic position of Venezuela regarding petroleum supplies to the US. The US, obviously, has a gluttonous taste for petroleum, but Venezuela also needs the market. The oil flows whatever the government in either country. But Chavez is definitely in an advantaged position here.
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The PDVSA officials we spoke with in Venezuela are pleased to have large contracts, such as that with the USA, and shipping costs for India and China are far more costly (at least until a pipeline can reach the Pacific). Chavez is just telling Condi to keep her pie hole shut. The sight of Americans begging for 63 dollar a barrel oil to finance his revolution has to be to funny.
Yes. It often strikes me as strange to use the expression, "the politics of oil." There is a politics of leverage, for sure. But the dependency is mutual, which undercuts political leverage. The US seems to want to eliminate the mutual dependency, but not through genuine energy alternatives, but through other forms of economic and military leverage. A US-supported coup in Venezuela is all about taking this advantage, which is an advantage of domination extending to other spheres of economic life.
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