PDVSA could drop Curacao refinery lease - Reuters

[PufPuf23]

PDVSA could drop Curacao refinery lease - report 27 Feb 2010 21:27:01 GMT
Source: Reuters

CARACAS, Feb 27 (Reuters) - Venezuelan oil company PDVSA may withdraw from the 320,000 barrel-per-day Isla refinery it operates in Curacao to protest U.S. military operations on the Caribbean island, Ultimas Noticias newspaper reported on Saturday, citing an interview with Venezuela's oil minister. Venezuela may order state-run PDVSA to abandon its lease of the Isla refinery because the U.S. military has been staging "provocations" on Venezuela from Curacao, Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez was quoted as saying.
PDVSA has operated the Isla refinery since 1985 under a long-term lease with the government of Curacao, a Dutch island 40 miles (65 m) north of the Venezuelan coast. A PDVSA spokesman did not return a phone call seeking comment.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has said the United States is plotting to invade his country, in December accused Curacao of allowing the Unites States to launch spy flights over Venezuelan territory from the island. Dutch officials rejected the accusations, and the U.S. government has denied any plans for military incursion into Venezuela. The Isla refinery processes mostly Venezuelan crude oil, and PDVSA has in recent years tried to negotiate a purchase of the plant from Curacao's government.
Gasoline and other refined products from Isla are shipped to the United States, South America and other fuel markets.

PDVSA has faced a series of operational and emissions issues at Isla. Refinery units were shut for months last year due to power supply problems. A Curacao judge ruled last May that PDVSA would have to carry out investments worth $100 million at the plant to reduce sulfur and other particulate pollution, or eventually face multimillion dollar fines. PDVSA has complained that tougher emissions standards in Curacao would cost up to $1.5 billion to comply with. (Reporting by Eyanir Chinea and Joshua Schneyer in Caracas; Editing by Xavier Briand)

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N27189447.htm

[Peace Patriot]

1. With the U.S. military on the Dutch islands just off Venezuela's oil coast,

the beefed up U.S. military presence in Panama, the rightwing military coup in Honduras (which helped to secure the U.S. military base and port facilities in Honduras for the Pentagon, which colluded in the Honduran military flying the kidnapped president out of the country), the reconstitution of the U.S. 4th Fleet (mothballed since WW II) in the Caribbean, the unnecessarily militarized U.S. earthquake assistance to Haiti and the new U.S./Colombia military agreement--negotiated in secret from the people of Colombia, the Colombian legislature and the leaders of the region--which basically permits the U.S. military occupation of Colombia at SEVEN military bases, including U.S. spy and fighter planes and their pilots, U.S. navy ships and crew and (if this number can be believed, which has been hauntingly described as "just a few military advisers"), some 1,600 U.S. soldiers and U.S. 'contractors,' including total diplomatic immunity for all U.S. military personnel and 'contractors,' no matter what they do in Colombia, and with U.S. military use of ALL civilian airports and other infrastructure--the Pentagon has Venezuela's oil coast and northern oil provinces surrounded. Look at a map!

Add to this the CIA's very intense psyops/disinformation campaign against the Chavez government--THE best government that Venezuela has ever had, in every respect--and I cannot escape the conclusion that the Pentagon does have a war plan against Venezuela, and has been quietly putting war assets in place on the Big Board over the last two years especially.

The Honduran coup--which the U.S. pretended not to support, but in fact did support--is probably the key to the overall Pentagon/U.S. corpo-fascist strategy in Latin America. A USAF document, unearthed by Eva Golinger, called for "full spectrum" military capabilities throughout the "southern cone," but I think the Pentagon has a "circle the wagons" strategy to focus its resources and U.S. domination/dictation in the Central America/Caribbean region, and to net Venezuela's oil into this "circle the wagons" area.

The leftist governments of Central America are of more recent vintage--less steady on their feet--than the leftist governments in South America. They are thus more vulnerable to intimidation, destabilization, infiltration with death squads and overthrow. There are newly elected leftist government now in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala--and, until recently, Honduras. These are the Reagan era U.S. death squad countries, with the U.S. using Honduras as the launching pad into these neighboring countries. Also, Mexico came within 0.05% of elected a leftist government in 2005. One Honduran coup general stated that, by their coup, they were "preventing communism from Venezuela reaching the United States" (reported in a report on the coup by the Zelaya government-in-exile). I think this is quite close to the truth. The U.S. sees universal health care, free education through university, and government "of, by and for the people" creeping up the Central American region from South America, and the Honduran coup is part of a plan to stop it.

Venezuela has the biggest oil reserves in the world--twice Saudi Arabia's--according to a recent USGS report. Again, look at a map. The oil reserves, facilities and shipping are concentrated near Venezuela's Caribbean coast and northern provinces such as Zulia (where rightwing politicians openly talk of secession). This area has a long border with Colombia starting at the Caribbean coast (at the Guajira peninsula, where Colombia is establishing a new military base overlooking the Gulf of Venezuela--a potential naval blockade location) and down through the oil provinces. The Colombian military and its rightwing death squads have been "cleansing" the adjacent provinces in Colombia of peasant farmers (3 to 4 million displaced peasant farmers in Colombia) and of local political, labor and human rights activists (many thousands murdered).

This "cleansing" has sent tens of thousands of poor refugees across the border into Venezuela--creating a big humanitarian headache for Venezuela and also promoting disorder and chaos in the border areas--a phenomenon that is also occurring on the Ecuador border, to the south.

Ecuador may be a secondary oil target of the Pentagon. Ecuador also has a leftist government, allied with Venezuela; also has lots of oil; and Ecuador kicked the U.S. military out of Ecuador last year. Further, the U.S./Colombia did a bombing/raid on Ecuador in March 2008--with the excuse of blowing away a FARC guerrilla camp where everyone was asleep--which may have been a test of U.S./Colombian military cooperation as well as a test of using the FARC guerillas and Colombia's 40+ year civil war to create incidents to provoke Venezuela and Ecuador into a war. (That incident almost sparked a war, then and there. It caused a huge ruckus in South America. And, interestingly, Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, credits Chavez for preventing it. He called Chavez "the great peacemaker.")

Given all of this information and analysis, we can better understand this statement in the OP: "Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has said the United States is plotting to invade his country, in December accused Curacao of allowing the Unites States to launch spy flights over Venezuelan territory from the island."

The Venezuelan military has undoubtedly looked at a map as well, as these Pentagon war assets have been put in place in an arc around Venezuela's oil coast and northern provinces. This ominous reality also informs Venezuelan/Curacao relations.

[Peace Patriot]

2. Further context for the U.S/Pentagon's "circle the wagons" strategy...

In summer 2008, South America formed the all-South American prototype "common market" UNASUR, which was critically important in backing up Evo Morales' government in Bolivia against a U.S. funded/organized white separatist insurrection that summer. That same summer, the Bushwhacks reconstituted the U.S. 4th Fleet in the Caribbean, which Lula da Silva said "is a threat to Brazil's oil." (Everybody south of the border knows that it is a threat to Venezuela's.)

Meanwhile, Venezuela and Cuba had organized ALBA, a trade group to provide collective economic/political clout for the smaller countries of Central America/the Caribbean. Honduras's president, Mel Zelaya, brought Honduras in as a member--and Hondurans began to benefit almost immediately, especially from low priced Venezuelan oil, by which Zelaya could lower the price of bus tickets for poor workers.

The U.S. and its corporate rulers and war profiteers do not want to see this kind of cooperation and organization among its traditional victims in Latin America. And now, South America and Central America/the Caribbean are getting together to form a new organization without the U.S. and Canada as members--a rival to the OAS, which the U.S. has dominated since its creation. Here is a description of the recent all-Latin American meeting:

--------------

The meeting in Mexico was identified as a Unity Summit because for the first time the 24 members of the Rio Group (minus Honduras, not invited because of the illegitimacy of its post-coup regime) - Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela - were joined by the fifteen members of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM): Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Montserrat, Saint Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago. (Haiti, Jamaica and Suriname are members of both organizations.)

Ahead of the summit the Financial Times wrote, "The Mexican-led initiative, a clear sign of Latin America’s growing confidence as a region, will exclude both the US and Canada. Some observers believe it could even eventually rival the 35-member Organisation of American States (OAS), which includes the US and Canada and has been the principal forum for hemispheric issues during the past half century."

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/50345
posted here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x31340

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The U.S. strategy has been to overthrow democracy in Honduras, to try to keep the region in line (a threat that worked on El Salvador's new leftist president, who recently made what was likely a U.S.-forced decision not to join ALBA) and to use Honduras as a base of operations against the surrounding leftist governments, and to place other war assets around Venezuela's oil region, quite possibly as a war plan (--it sure looks like a war plan to me), including "full spectrum" U.S. military capabilities in Colombia (with "total diplomatic immunity").

I repeat: The U.S. and its corporate rulers and war profiteers do not want to see this kind of cooperation and organization among its traditional victims in Latin America. And I think they are "circling the wagons" against it, in the Central America/Caribbean region, where they hope to topple or threaten/dominate those governments, enforce U.S. dominated "free trade for the rich" and continue to exploit resources and impoverish the majority, with the U.S. military as the "police force" for U.S. corps.

A South American "common market"--with the fabulous natural resources of South America--could alone rival the bankrupt U.S., if they stick together and exercise collective economic/political clout (--Simon Bolivar's dream of a "United States of South America) and provided that they continue to develop and empower their people--in the ways that Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador in particular have been doing: real democracy, national control of resources and use of resource profits for education, health care, land reform and local and regional development of every kind. This collective clout is already in progress, with the formation of UNASUR. I believe that it is U.S. policy--and a U.S. strategy--to prevent it from spreading north into the Central America/Caribbean region--to "circle the wagons" there, to establish and retain control there, and to push back for reassertion of U.S. economic/military control of the hemisphere from that position.

Their ultimate goal is to impose U.S. "free trade for the rich" everywhere--to reestablish U.S.-run globalisation. And for this, they need, a) control of Latin America (starting with the region closest to the U.S. and expanding from there), and b) a rich oil supply, which is sitting right there on the southern rim of their "circle the wagons" area, on the Venezuelan coast--the biggest oil reserves on earth, now being wasted on education and health care, when it could be used to fuel the great U.S. war machine and its global trade tankers.

[PufPuf23]

3. Yep. I have been following the region since the aborted

coup on Chavez in 2002.

Great summaries everyone should know; Obama has accelerated and expanded the DoD in the region - to my dismay - and PNAC/Rumfeld's slog to control to control natural resources and shipping and pipeline routes continues.

There is an FOL contract on Aruba at Queen Beatrix as well that not developed to the degree as Curacao.

[protocol rv]

4. It's for the "war on drugs"

I believe they're mostly worried about their war on drugs, not invading Venezuela or anything like that. To stop Venezuela militarily, all they have to do is say they have a few nuclear submarines offshore Venezuela, ready to sink any oil tanker coming in to pick up a load. It's very simple, no tanker owner in their right mind would send a tanker under such conditions.

[Peace Patriot]

6. "It's for the 'war on drugs...". Har-har!

That's the bullshit for the gullible--especially U.S. taxpayers whose money is being stuffed into war profiteer pockets with no impact on the flow of cocaine and other illicit drugs into the U.S. and, indeed, with an escalation of violence and militaristic fascism wherever the U.S. "war on drugs" goes.

"It's very simple...". (i.e., the U.S. invading Venezuela)--protocol rv

No, it isn't.

And your racist comment on the Indigenous in a thread about Chevron-Texaco's "rainforest Chernobyl" toxic oil spill in Ecuador has discredited you. You are an oil corp apologist, prone to racist comments.

------------------

Comment #36, here...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x30994

[Judi Lynn]

7. That was startling, seeing that "Indian" crack. Shocking, for christ's sake.

I've never known anyone who'd EVER consider speaking that way, and I'd never want to know him.

By the time this one wakes the hell up, his entire life will have flown by him and it will be far too late to do it over again as a human being.

[protocol rv]

8. Well, you did kill most of your indians, didn't you?

I guess you must feel very guilty now because you North American Europeans invaded the continent and proceeded to kill most of the inhabitants. This is the reason why so few of them remain today, right? I'm from Maracaibo, where most of us have Indian blood, so to us it's not a big deal to discuss indians or mention a particular tribe's character. For example: "Guajiros are very good guards". I suppose you're going to choke in your superior anglo-saxon self-righteousness and tell me I'm racist for making this comment, but anybody who lives in Maracaibo knows this is true.

[Peace Patriot]

10. You said an "Indian"'s word is questionable because he is an "Indian"!

You did not say that his "tribe" is known for duplicity, exaggeration and false testimony--in some sort of tribal lore characterization--among Ecuadoran tribes or regional tribes--as if that would be reason to doubt his word, and the word of 30,000 other Indigenous people who filed suit against Chevron-Texaco.

Now you compound your racist remark by accusing me of killing all of "my Indians," and by sliming "anybody who lives in Maracaibo" with your racist, rightwing opinions.

You really are a piece of work.

---------

"I'm from Maracaibo, where most of us have Indian blood..."...so, um, "to us it's not a big deal" to question an "Indian"'s word because he is an "Indian"???

The one thing does not lead to the other--so typical of racist thinking. Big disconnect, protocol rv, between characterizing a tribe and calling all Indians liars!

You do not say that you have "Indian blood". You say "most of us" have "Indian blood" (i.e., "most of us" who live in Maracaibo). So, how much "Indian blood" do you have, and how much of a percentage of "Indian blood" is required, in Maracaibo, to give you the right to call all Indians liars?

And since when is racism confined to whites? It is common knowledge, and well-documented, that mixed race people can exhibit racism based on percentage of brown/black skin color, disfavoring browner/blacker individuals, especially in a society in which whites have enslaved and/or oppressed the brown and the black. The "whiter" browns and blacks try to identify with the "white" culture. So, having "Indian blood" means nothing as to any particular individual's racism against the brown and the black. Your odd, twisted effort to identify yourself with the Indigenous, as if to say that your remark about an "Indian"'s believability was just some sort of tribal jest or tribal lore, is absurd on its face, and yet another betrayal of who you are and how you think.

Your comment that testimony presented by "an Indian" is questionable because he is "an Indian" discredits all your other views. You cannot state such a view and retain credibility in a progressive forum. And I am making an individual accusation. I am not slandering "anybody who lives in Maracaibo," or all whites or mixed race people in Maracaibo, or all currently living North American Europeans, or all of their ancestors, or all of anybody anywhere. I am saying that YOU made a racist remark, and have not taken it back--and are now defending it with absurd and typically twisted arguments--and you are therefore a racist. The fact that you cannot see the meaning of your own statement, and its insulting nature to all Indigenous people, and in particular to the tribes of the Ecuadoran Amazon who sued Chevron-Texaco, means that YOU are a racist--not your grandparents, not your purported neighbors in Maracaibo, not anybody else. You.

[protocol rv]

12. Baloney

I didn't say he lied because he was an Indian. I said all you showed was an Indian talking about the issue, and I would only be convinced if I saw some solid proof. Thus far all I get from you is insults. Why not cool off and try to discuss a subject in calm?

[PufPuf23]

9. The FOLs contracts on Curacao and Aruba have runway specs

for heavy lift cargo planes and bombers.

Look at the areas's history in WWII.

Most of the fuel used by the Americans and Brits in Europe came from Maracaibo oil refined at Lagos Colony (Standard Oil) non Aruba and Shell on Curacao. Aruba was attacked by UBoats and the shipping channels mined.

[naaman fletcher]

5. How does this hurt the USA?

The US would probably prefer that the refinery have a different owner. Perhaps this is one more example of the PDVSA getting assets out of any country that is friendly with the US, in expectation of a big claim against them on the nationalizations.

[PufPuf23]

11. The crude oil come from Venezuela - richest oil patch in

western hemisphere.

The Valero refinery (Lagos Colony in WWII) on Aruba is up for sale or was sold already.

There were $640 million in improvements done according to filings in 2004-2006.

[protocol rv]

13. Venezuela's production is down

Venezuela doesn't matter much anymore in the international oil market. Production is down to about 2,2 million barrels per day, and at least 0,6 million barrels per day is consumed inside the country. Plus they're installing power generation plants which use liquid fuels, so the exports which are now 1,6 million barrels per day, are likely to go down in the future. This means Venezuela's production, about 2,6 % of the world total, is likely to be even less in the future, and the exports will become a small amount, of little consequence in the world market.

The country has the theoretical oil reserves, but theory needs to be practice, and the government isn't efficient in this area, they have a lot of funny ideas about treaties with other nations, but we don't see any real activity come from all those agreements. And most of the oil left is very heavy, like asphalt, so it is very very expensive and complicated to produce. Problem is, there's no meaningful investment in that area.