The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism (Politically Incorrect Guides) by Kevin D. Williamson

Author:Kevin D. Williamson [Williamson, Kevin D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781596981744
Publisher: Regnery Publishing
Published: 2010-12-20T16:00:00+00:00

Chávez Seizes the Oil . . . And Everything Else, Too

Crucially, after the strike was suppressed, some 18,000 PDVSA workers were fired, leaving Chávez with more direct control of the company and its oil revenues. This was a development from which PDVSA has never really recovered. Chávez does not know or care much about running an oil company. What he cares about is having a goose that lays golden eggs from which he can whip up his socialist omelet. Overall Venezuelan oil production has never returned to pre-strike levels. As analyst Peter DeShazo put it in a 2007 report for the Center for Strategic and International Studies,

Venezuela’s hydrocarbons sector is shaped by Chávez’s ideological vision of a Bolivarian revolution and his strategy to put that in motion. That vision implies a politicized PDVSA with a social mandate that supersedes the production mandate. Resource nationalism drives the process of rolling back the effects of the aperture of the sector during the 1990s, when private investment was encouraged, to put in place a regime of state control.

In the wake of the 2002–2003 strike/lockout and declining private and PDVSA investment, oil production in Venezuela has fallen from over 3 million barrels per day (mbd) to a figure of around 2.4 mbd (according to OPEC estimates) in 2007. PDVSA official production figures are 3.3 mbd.

While PDVSA’s business plans forecast strong growth in production to over 5 mbd by 2010, current levels of investment preclude any major rise in production.1

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