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Venezuela Cautions U.S. It May Curtail Oil Exports

BOGOT?, Colombia, Feb. 26 ? Venezuela's oil minister, in blunt comments published in a Caracas newspaper on Sunday, warned the United States that it could steer oil exports away from the United States and toward other markets.

The minister, Rafael Ram?rez, said Venezuela, which is the world's fifth-largest oil exporter and supplies more than 10 percent of American oil imports, could act in the face of what he described as aggression by the Bush administration.

They do keep saying that.

One day a country is going to do that. The US still has an awful lot of weaponry and firepower - I fear for the first country to divert their oil elsewhere. Me thinks they will not know what hit them......

snow hope wrote:One day a country is going to do that. The US still has an awful lot of weaponry and firepower - I fear for the first country to divert their oil elsewhere. Me thinks they will not know what hit them......

I'm not so sure. What can the US do? Its troops are all tied up elsewhere and I cant see them getting away with nuking a country simply because it wont give them oil!
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hatchelt wrote: I'm not so sure. What can the US do? Its troops are all tied up elsewhere and I cant see them getting away with nuking a country simply because it wont give them oil!

Air strikes.

No nukes, just strike symbolic and infrastruture targets.

They likely would only have to do it once, to one country, and then no one else would try that move again.

Occupying a country on the ground is a world away from a few punative air striles, but the latter still sends a strong message.

The whitehouse could EASILY sell such a move against Venezuela to the US public by saying "we have solid inteligence that Venezuela was planning to engage - in league with the Tehran - in economic warfare against the US. Action has been taken to protect the homeland".

fishertrop wrote:Air strikes.

No nukes, just strike symbolic and infrastruture targets.

How does that encourage Venezuela to sell oil to the US. It seems to me that is the US did strike Venezuela not a single Venezuelan would want to sell oil to the US.

I don't think it is a case of encouragement. It is more a case of forcing them to supply, or else...... further stikes or worse. Venezuala is probably a good example of where the US might act strongly. IMO, resource wars will be exactly that - wars.....

Lets not forget the level of addiction in the US and the seriousness of the problem, to paraphase their leader. When shortages bite hard and they really need access to oil, they will make every effort to get it. I would rule nothing out.

And it is worth adding that when their citizens can't get to work, or get their normally plentiful supply of food, or heat their homes in winter, or cool them in summer, I expect they will fully support the actions required to sort the "problem" out!

I don't really buy into the idea that oil can be successfully (and energetically at a profit) be extracted from another country by force. I don't doubt resource wars will happen (are already happening?) but I do doubt that they will be effective/successful.

Virtually every war ever fought has been a resource war. We are also going into a situation where the stakes are going to be higher than they ever have been before.

Then situation now is very different to what it will be, I'd therefore not rule out anything.

Whether the resouce wars will be succesful is another question but the sad thing is that the ultimate success is often not the determining factor in a war, it is the ease of the different options at the beginning.

I guess that's why Hugo Chevez is creating oil and gas links to countries like Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and the Caribbean. An attack by the USA would then disrupt supplies to many other countries which would make Bush even more unpopular (if that's possible).

This would be favoured over strikes:



Only problem is they've tried it already.

clv101 wrote:

fishertrop wrote:Air strikes.

No nukes, just strike symbolic and infrastruture targets.

How does that encourage Venezuela to sell oil to the US. It seems to me that is the US did strike Venezuela not a single Venezuelan would want to sell oil to the US.

FIrstly, let me point out I wasn't saying it was a good idea.

If you say that Hugo has already stopped selling oil to the US and is now selling it to other buyers (aka "economic warfare" in the spinbook), then at the very least such airstrikes are punative and make the US no worse off then they were (the oil was already not coming to them) and Hugo might be prepared to begin reupply or face loosing ALL his oil output (and a whole lot else).

But it could also be argued that by destroying all of Hugo's production capacity the US not only prevents anyone else from getting it but the civil unrest caused by the loss of domestic supply might make things ripe for the CIA to have another crack at "regime change".

As for world opinion, have the US shown any suggestion they really care?

clv101 wrote:I don't really buy into the idea that oil can be successfully (and energetically at a profit) be extracted from another country by force. I don't doubt resource wars will happen (are already happening?) but I do doubt that they will be effective/successful.

I agree with you 100%.

Likely the only possible way to do this in places like iraq is to seperate - by some margin - ALL the people from the oil facilities (all the way to the ports etc) and patrol the "demilitarised zone" from both ground and air round the clock with a shoot-on-sight mandate.

If your buffer is bigger than the range of most small arms/rockets/mortars etc and you keep it completely free of people then you might just be able to do it, but can you imagine what it would take to achieve this....

hatchelt wrote:Sorry Snow, I can't see the Venezuelan people being beaten into submission like that. I also can't see the world just sitting back and watching that happen. Not when it's so blantant.

Remember what happened to Nicaragua...?

grinu wrote:Venezuela Cautions U.S. It May Curtail Oil Exports

BOGOT?, Colombia, Feb. 26 ? Venezuela's oil minister, in blunt comments published in a Caracas newspaper on Sunday, warned the United States that it could steer oil exports away from the United States and toward other markets.

The minister, Rafael Ram?rez, said Venezuela, which is the world's fifth-largest oil exporter and supplies more than 10 percent of American oil imports, could act in the face of what he described as aggression by the Bush administration.

Big Deal. So what?

Oil is a fungible commodity. This is just political grandstanding. If the Venezuelans decided to embargo the States, the markets would adjust and there would be little or no effect.

It not as if the Venezuelans are ever likely to stop producing that quantity which currently goes to the US. That really would be shooting themselves int the foot.

Politicians like Chavez and Castro are the worlds No.1 blowhards - full of endless ammounts of anti-imperialist huff'n'puff. Not worth wasting any time on.