Venezuela, having used up all of its own resources, is planning to invade neighboring Guyana so they can use up that nation’s oil resources.
Categories: Communism
Communism
“Camping”
This is the legacy of communist policies- long term camping is overwhelming Oregon. Hey free housing though, just as promised.
13 Comments
Toastrider · December 1, 2023 at 8:38 am
Oh, it’s so much worse than that. As I understand it, Venezuela still has large quantities of oil it could extract — but it lacks the expertise and technology, having played stupid socialist games and chased out anyone who might help.
This looks less like a resource grab and more like a desperate attempt by Maduro to hype up support with a little war.
Miguel GFZ · December 1, 2023 at 9:24 am
I was reading some of that yesterday. The last time Venezuelan armed forces had some sort of deep jungle confrontation was in the 60s chasing guerrillas. They were successful but then again that cadre is not even alive. The new army is one deeply socialist which means they soldiers will be led by the politically approved, not necessarily the warriors.
And Guyana still has ties with the Brits.
Last time some South American dictator decided to pick a fight with something Brit related to prop himself up because his country was failing, ended up with a bunch of his country’s ships sunk or damaged and an international embarrassment.
And his government failing
Divemedic · December 1, 2023 at 9:54 am
Yeah, and I once knew one of the SAS guys that crawled all over the place during that invasion. Good man, but was killed in a motorcycle accident.
The Brits no longer have a military that is as capable as it once was.
EN2 SS · December 1, 2023 at 6:07 pm
But I bet the Brits are still several orders of magnitude better than anything out of Venezuela.
C · December 1, 2023 at 10:24 am
This will be interesting. I’ve got a feeling if the US doesn’t get pulled into Europe or the ME, South America will be the next destination.
neomunitor · December 1, 2023 at 11:18 am
I worked in Royal Dutch Shell for 32 years. Venezuela has plenty of oil, they just ran their infrastructure into the ground by failing to maintain it, firing all their semi-competent people and replacing them with incompetent lackeys, and descending to African levels of corruption and incompetence. Unlike ore you can dig out with a bucket, heavy oil is a teensy bit more complicated to extract, process, store and ship, and so African levels of tech just don’t cut it. They can’t keep their terminals running, they can’t keep a refinery going, they can’t keep their extraction going, they can’t keep their pipelines going, so it is all collapsing.
Divemedic · December 1, 2023 at 11:19 am
Invading Guyana for their technicians is still invading.
Jonesy · December 1, 2023 at 11:54 am
Biden wanted more oil from Maduro, maybe this is related. Or maybe we insert ourselves after the festivities KO, then launder money there instead of Ukraine.
County Cork · December 1, 2023 at 12:33 pm
Will they attack the zoo for some food?
Sardaukar · December 1, 2023 at 1:44 pm
That area of Guyana also has large mineral & rare earth deposits, gold, copper, as well as diamonds. Very thick jungle. The Guyana defense forces are about 8,000 including reserves. Mostly light infantry with around 90 armored cars & APCs, and a few long range M-46 cannons. No real Air Force, unlike Venezuela. Guyana has good relations with Brazil, and they are in the process of moving troops, armor & aviation assets up to their northern border to make Maduro think twice about doing this. Will be interesting if Venezuela goes forward.
Slow Joe Crow · December 1, 2023 at 1:49 pm
This could bite Maduro hard, Guyana still has Commonwealth ties and a reasonably competent military.
I also find it noteworthy that he is not attacking Colombia despite years of Saber rattling because he knows the Colombians will kick his ass.
Max Wiley · December 1, 2023 at 3:12 pm
Back in October, the Biden administration significantly reduced economic sanctions on Venezuela in return for supposed political and election reforms, including giving Chevron a 6 month license to produce and export Venezuelan crude BUT the profits of this will only go to Chevron to pay debts associated with nationalization of assets under the Chavez regime . The problem is that Venezuelan oil infrastructure is in such bad shape they still haven’t fully paid back oil for loans agreements with China and Russia that date back to before 2010.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Guyanas-Oil-Boom-To-Gain-Momentum-In-Second-Half-Of-2023.html
I think that article says it all.
Maduro is desperate for cash, he needs to export oil again but very little oil to export. After the nationalizations and lawsuits of the Chavez regime, no oil major is willing to invest heavily into Venezuela, and who can blame them. Some oil companies from India, China, and Russia have signed deals but the most optimistic projections only see increases of around 250k bbl/day anytime soon.
We (meaning the US) have enabled this, due to Biden needing any handle at all he can find to keep oil prices low, now that the SPR is effectively empty but he still needs to keep the energy portion of the inflation index as low as possible. IIRC Venezuelan crude is very heavy and sour but it would be a decent fit for large refineries on the US Gulf coast that were built to refine Saudi oil – and Saudi oil these days is not going West much, a trend that looks to increase.
Maduro has ran out of other people’s money so he is looking to gain more via conquest. It appears he thinks he has geopolitical pressure via oil prices on the Biden administration to stay out of it.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Big Ruckus D · December 1, 2023 at 6:43 pm
Guyana, infamously home of the Jonestown massacre. I’d say they just need to export large quantities of Kool-Aid to Venezuela, since the socialist morons there never tire of drinking it anyway.
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