Venezuela's Chavez back on TV, squashes new rumour

[ChangoLoa]

39. Sure. From now on and for decades, any "opponent" will be declared "a crook, a criminal

Last edited Mon Mar 5, 2012, 12:19 PM - Edit history (1)

a psychopath and a thieve".

I see the idea you have made yourself of our country is quite far from the truth. Where did you get so much surety about your knowledge concerning our people, culture and history? Which book did you read?

I'll share one fact with you: the international oil companies have been in conflict with Venezuela for the last 4 decades, discussing the value of their capital since it was expropriated and the entire sector nationalized in.... 1975. After being completely excluded from the local oil industry for 18 years, they benefited from the reopening of the sector to private capital in the 90's. But later on, with Chavez, those companies just kept gaining importance. In 1998, their production amounted for less than 10% of the total. Nowadays, they're extracting almost 1/3 of our oil. So even if their average tax rate was increased by the govt, they're eating a bigger part of the Venezuelan oil pie today than 13 years ago. The fact that they're Russian or Chinese changes nothing to that reality.

On the other hand, I consider this govt has formulated a good policy concerning the diversification of our clients, since we were in a situation of quasi-monopsone vis-à-vis the US before Chavez.

Unfortunately and despite clamorous plans of expansion for our production, our oil industry has had a reemarkably mediocre performance in the last 13 years. We're 5 million more Venezuelans than in 1999, while the country produces/exports 500,000/700,000 less barrels per day. If the oil prices were the same they were in 1999, we'd be completely broke.