Kerry vows to put the screws to Venezuela over Snowden

[MADem]

81. Why not invite them in, anyway?

They have a huge debt to China, and no way of relieving it through trade, UNLESS they can trade the one thing China wants, which is oil. However, their oil sucks--it is heavy, it is sour, it is difficult to refine, which means that it is cheap compared to say, Saudi Arabian Light Sweet crude.

If the Chinese want to dump a couple billion into the country and fix up their fucked up refineries, and their oil fields which aren't pumping as much due to repair issues, and then take what they are owed out in trade, well, why not?

They'd better not get the idea, though, like they do with some others, that after China prettifies everything for them, that they can swipe it back and "nationalize" it again. I don't think China would be grooving on that one bit....

Here's the upside for the USA and Canada--it frees up more refinery space for domestic north american product in US refineries that are geared to handle sour and heavy oils. End result? Let China deal with them; world's available oil supplies grow; pressure off prices. The downside is that China has another beachhead in our hemisphere, but it's a worldwide economy anyway, so what the hell, really...let them have some fun down there and see how they like it.

Of course, there would be pressure on oil prices for a time, as China would have to get in there and fix that mess. Not sure if they're terribly interested--I think they'd rather we do the refining work and they simply take shipments of the finished product.

Time will tell, though.