Doonesbury Say What

[thewayne]

"No one wants to go in there when a random f***ing tweet can change the entire foreign policy of the country."
-- oil industry investor, about Venezuela

I was reading a quote from an Exxon exec, talking about how all of Exxon's assets had been nationalized by Venezuela TWICE. Yeah, not a place where oil companies are going to be eager to rush back in to rebuild their infrastructure.

Not going to bother talking about a certain person's habit of changing international policy via social media posts, waste of finger and mental energy.

Comments

[dewline]

So there's some people in the fossil fuel business who do have something resembling good sense. Grateful for that, as far as it goes.

[disneydream06]

UGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hugs, Jon

[white_aster]

Just goes to show a certain person knows absolutely nothing about real business. The difference between real business acumen and somebody just gambling.

[thewayne]

No, he's never demonstrated great business acumen.  He licenses his name on everything and plays golf.

[graydon]

Venezuela has the Orinico Belt, which is not generally speaking the good stuff; there's a lot of it, but it's frequently tar. The good stuff is in Guyana, offshore. Which production is rapidly expanding, mostly profiting Exxon, and subject to a territorial dispute with Venezula.

Much of these events make sense as a thing the US petrofaction wants to happen if you look at it as a tripartite "there's no territorial dispute if there's no Venezula/Guyana will get the message about wanting a larger share of the profits or control just fine/let's take out the Russian regional ally, shall we?" action. (Russia is perhaps still capable of providing political cover for nationalization; the current on-the-ground outcome is that Russia's influence has been shown to be strictly hypothetical, since the region is in range of direct American power projection from CONUS.)

tl;dr it's protecting the investment offshore in Guyana, which the oil companies do want to make, without getting that investment/extraction into the news. (I mean, officially, this is all about drugs. Any oil theft from Venezuela will exist as reparations for claims of drug damage.)

[thewayne]

Interesting info, thanks.  I knew a little about the Guyana resources, but not a lot.

[ionelv]

Despite the general chaos generated almost daily from two thumbs at Mar-a-Lago, oil execs MIGHT invest in Venezuela if any incentives are there, e.g. big orange stick, tax payer funded capital outlays, secret written future promises of military intervention if needed, Epstein/Russian blackmail shit, etc. Don't count US oil investment in Venezuela out just yet.

[silveradept]

Surprise, companies like stability! And the person who thinks he's brought stability is showing every sign that he's not stable enough to be trusted. And hasn't been since he started campaigning for the first go-round.

[thewayne]

Same thing with "bringing manufacturing back!"  It takes years and huge financing to open a factory, I'd be surprised if very many have even broken ground.

[silveradept]

Unlikely. They would have to make it profitable, and "profitable" is not a word I'd use for this administration, either way around.

[thewayne]

The finance bros and vulture capitalists are doing well.  I'm not sure what other sectors are doing well aside from IT and the "AI" bubble.