|
After Hugo Chavez was first elected (1998), his administration began a series of re-negotiations of Venezuela's oil contracts with the multinational corporations. Venezuela's oil was nationalized before Chavez (as it is a number of the other countries). But previous rightwing governments had basically been giving away most of the profits--a 10/90 split favoring the multinationals--after raking off some profit for Venezuela's oil elite and utterly neglecting the majority poor and their needs and Venezuela's development needs. The multinationals resisted, with Exxon Mobil and the Bush gang in the lead. They tried an outright violent military coup against Chavez. They tried a crippling oil professionals' strike. They tried a U.S.-funded recall election. They could not dislodge Hugo Chavez or overthrow his peaceful, leftist, democratic government. The Chavez government has persisted in the negotiations, and most of the multinationals have agreed. (France's Total, Norway's Statoil, British BP and Chevron, too, I believe. Exxon Mobil is still seething, and is still plotting Chavez's overthrow.)
In the most recent contract negotiations, the Chavez government achieved a 60/40 split of the oil profits, favoring Venezuela and its social programs. Exxon Mobil walked out of the talks--and went into U.S. and U.K. courts (and I think one European court), trying to seize $12 billion of Venezuela's assets around the world. They failed in the U.K. court. I don't know what happened in the other courts, but the failure in the U.K. court seems to have ended that dirty rotten scheme. Exxon Mobil at the time had just reported the highest profits of any corporation in history, and here they were, literally trying to take the food out of the mouths of babes, and books away from schoolchildren, in Venezuela.
Venezuela gets about 90% of its government revenue from sale of Venezuela's oil. They are now getting a fairer share of those revenues than they ever did before--due to the diligence, persistence, courage and smarts of the Chavez regime. That is where most of Venezuela's $140 billion in international cash reserves comes from.
They have some other exports, and the Chavez government has been diligently working on diversifying their economy and boosting local manufacturing/infrastructure. Previous rightwing governments had utterly neglected local manufacturing (--and everything else--education, retraining, worker benefits, health care). Venezuela was actually IMPORTING machine parts for the oil industry! The Chavez government has been working to reverse this trend. But they are still quite oil-dependent. I read one analysis that said that if oil hovers around $60/70/barrel, Venezuela won't have to touch its cash reserves. And if it falls below that (as it currently has), they have considerable flexibility in how they structure use of their cash reserves to ride out the low prices. They have excellent credit, in other words. If the low oil price persists, they have a couple of years cushion at current government spending levels.
I don't understand what you are asking--where does the money come from? It's quite obvious where it comes from--but it might not be so obvious to you, or to readers of the corpo/fascist press, how well the Chavez government has managed this resource for the Venezuelan people. The Venezuelan people know it, however. Chavez has a 60% approval rating.
Chavez has done something else, as well. He sees Venezuela's wealth in a cooperative context--as a means of pulling South America together in mutually beneficial action, with goals of Latin American independence and social justice. He and his government have been leaders in creation of the Bank of the South (local/regional control of development funds--which is elbowing out the World Bank/IMF loan sharks), ALBA (a barter type trade group), and, most important of all, UNASUR, the new South American "Common Market." When Argentina went belly up, for instance--due to World Bank/IMF policy--Venezuela helped bail them out, with easy term loans and barter deals, thus creating a healthy trading partner for itself, Brazil and other countries. They have also helped Bolivia, Nicaragua, Honduras, Cuba and others. And you may have heard of Venezuela's contributions of cheap or free heating oil to the poor in the U.S. The Chavez government--and most Venezuelans--see things differently than Exxon Mobil. They use their oil wealth to benefit others--not to make the rich richer--and it redounds to them in good karma. They have friends and allies throughout the region. And almost all South American leaders like, support and defend Chavez--even leaders who get no direct benefit from Venezuela's oil, such as Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, and Rafael Correa, president of Ecuador (both are running countries with their own large oil reserves). Chavez and his government are the avant-garde of South American--and Latin American--sovereignty.
There are certainly a lot of ironies in all this--that oil, which has caused the slaughter of a million innocent Iraqis by our oilmen/war criminals, and certainly has contributed to the loss of democracy in the U.S.--is being used to FREE Latin Americans from slavery to the U.S. And that oil--one of the major contributors to pollution and the threat to our planetary environment from global warming--is being used to create progressive societies, who--like the people of Ecuador--revere Mother Earth ("Pachamama") and have enshrined her rights in their Constitution (recently passed with nearly 70% of the vote, in a national referendum). All I can say is: If you are dependent on an oil economy, what better use could there be for the oil revenues than creation of a just and democratic society? These leftist governments--Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, in particular--have good records on the environment, and on the treatment of the indigenous, for whom Mother Earth is sacred. And there are positive trends on the environment in Paraguay, Brazil and other countries.
Perhaps the lesson is to "ride the tiger" as the I Ching says. Don't let it ride you. We are oppressed by our global corporate predators and their greed for oil and its profits. South Americans are "riding the tiger"--using that same energy to instigate positive change and to help people. And, ultimately, this gives the people the power to DO something about the planetary environment. We are enslaved by oil. They are freed by it. It's very strange.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
