Americas Quarterly today carries a followup that to my 29 August piece on Post-Chavez changes at PDVSA.
Drilling rig (PDVSA)
NOTE: During the past couple weeks, while in Maracaibo and Caracas, I was repeatedly told of a new offshore payment mechanism that PDVSA has begun offering to its Joint Venture foreign partners. Venezuelan private sector leaders took credit for the general idea. Continue reading
Posted in Chavez, Chavez lagacy, Chavez legacy, China, Faja of the Orinoco, heavy oil, Hugo Chávez, Latin America and Caribbean, Maracaibo, PDVSA, Trade and Commerce, Venezuela oil, Zulia
Tagged Americas Quarterly, Caracas, Maracaibo, Nicolás Maduro, PDVSA, Petróleos de Venezuela, Twitter, Venezuela
PDVSA oil rigs in Venezuela (TalCual)
Throughout 2012, and especially after President Hugo Chávez’ death in early March 2013, Venezuela’s national oil firm, Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA), has taken measures beyond anything done in the past decade to raise its lagging production. While the likely impact merits cautious analysis, the drivers of the Bolivarian Republic’s scramble for increased oil revenues are clear. … Continue reading
Posted in Chavez, Chavez lagacy, Chavez legacy, China, Faja of the Orinoco, Gaddafi, heavy oil, Latin America and Caribbean, Libya, Maracaibo, Oil prices, OPEC, PDVSA, PDVSA weakness, The USA, U.S. oil, Venezuela oil, Zulia
Tagged Beijing, Carabobo, Caracas, China, Heavy crude oil, Hugo Chávez, Nicolás Maduro, OPEC, PDVSA, Petróleos de Venezuela, president hugo chavez, Rafael Ramírez, South America, United States, Venezuela, Venezuelan
Iraqi oil production has surged. Source: EIA
[Updated/edited 5 June] The New York Times had an interesting article: “China is reaping biggest benefits of Iraqi oil boom” on June 2, 2013. The question that comes to mind is …
Why is Chinese production in Iraq booming, and in Venezuela lagging?
As late as 2007 and 2008, China clearly intended its investments in Venezuela to be its largest anywhere, to ramp up development of Venezuela’s huge Faja Orinoco extra-heavy oil reserves. In those years, Iraq was still mired in sectarian war. Yet, here we are in 2013, with Chinese production in Iraq surging and its companies’ production in Venezuela lagging. Why? Let’s first look at the Chinese relationship and logic in Iraq, then in Venezuela.
Geostrategic interests behind profit issue
The NYT article says that Chinese success in Iraq is largely because their oil companies aren’t especially interested in profits because they don’t have to answer to investors demanding higher returns; they just want to secure oil to bring home.
Yes, but one should see that this is also strongly a geostrategic imperative for Beijing. It is true Chinese firms can get along with lower profits, and they also have much more cash than others, which also helps them get in now at small profits for the long run. However, unlike other firms, they are under specific instructions by Beijing to persist at getting into countries with huge reserves like Iraq and Venezuela because it is in the geostrategic energy interests of Beijing to do so.
Chinese geostrategic motivations to stick in Iraq (and Venezuela)
Before examining the better situation, on the ground, for Chinese firms dealing with Baghdad as verses Caracas, it is important to recognize Beijing won’t ever give up on either state. Beijing is the one power having serious reservations about too much reliance on the US/Saudi-dominated “global barrel” market-and-security system. It is the only major power (aside from Russia) with aspirations to project power against the USA and its naval carrier fleets, at least in its near-home waters. For any such confrontation of any duration, it needs to have a certain significant percentage of oil brought directly home independent of the USA and the global market the USA dominates. So, China’s energy firms tend to blend their deepening integration into global oil-market processes with old-fashioned bi-lateral mercantilist relationships with producing states like Iraq and Venezuela. (See also the Addenda below.)
Different contractual and working relationships in Iraq and Venezuela
Venezuelan oil production has lagged. EIA 2012
Chinese firms are clearly more willing to work with the difficult resource-nationalistic conditions imposed by the Iraqi and Venezuelan states. However, in many ways Iraq’s are more difficult, yet Chinese–and many others–do better getting production going in Iraqi than Venezuela. Why? Continue reading
Posted in Chavez, Chavez lagacy, China, Faja of the Orinoco, heavy oil, Henry Capriles, international relations, Iraq, Iraqi oil, Oil supply, OPEC, PDVSA, Persian Gulf, The USA, U.S. oil, Uncategorized, Venezuela oil, Venezuelan Nationalism
Tagged China, Iraq, Middle East, New York Times, Oil reserves in Iraq, PDVSA, United States, Venezuela
Deutsche Welle, the German international TV service, interviewed me on the
legacy of Hugo Chavez on their live evening news broadcast Journal from Berlin. I tried to relate two, strikingly contradictory aspects of President Chavez legacy:
The outpouring of sincere affection for him from the poor and many others in Caracas, which the world is witnessing, as the embodiment of their liberating political awakening. And, in contrast, the utter shambles in which Hugo Chavez, as a practical political leader of 14 years, left the Venezuelan state and economic institutions, including PDVSA. My segment comes at 4:08 minutes into the video stream here:
Venezuela’s troubled national oil company, PDVSA — Post-Chavez Reforms ?
What’s the future of PDVSA post-Hugo Chavez? My comments to Platts Energy writer Mery Mogollon were quoted in detail today in Oilgram News. A JPEG image is below (click it to enlarge). My thanks for permission to post it here. Continue reading
In my travels and interviews in Venezuela this summer, it became clear that there has been a major advance in the relationship between China and the Bolivarian administration of President Chavez. China’s dogged persistence and large state-sponsored investments in Venezuela – apparently the largest they’ve made to date in any country – are finally beginning to bear fruit. The new Chinese influence is being simultaneously extended to both oil and non-oil sectors.
Partly this development is due to the many crises affecting the Bolivarian state, and decisions it has been forced to take to make increasing national oil production a priority. To advance this program, President Chavez’ administration has made initial moves to grant Beijing access to Venezuelan oil in major ways it had not previously.
However, there are two sides to this story: on the other side, increasing Chinese participation is also a product of China having step-by-step put some quite sharp demands on PDVSA and the Venezuelan Bolivarian state for financial transparency and accountability, for geopolitical stabilization, and in particular, for Chinese firms being granted large-scale access to new heavy-oil fields in the Faja of the Orinoco River. The key ingredient here is that Continue reading
Why did President Chavez last week order that Venezuela‘s gold reserves held abroad be repatriated and that international reserve funds held in banks in the U.S., Switzerland, Britain–the global north–be moved to banks in Brazil, Russia and China–to BRIC countries? The move is being hailed by Chavistas; but, the generalized anti-imperialist and nationalist rationals being cited are not useful as far as a specific geopolitical analysis. That is , they do not explain why this takes place right now as opposed to having been done at any given time during the last 12 years of his presidency.
So, why is this being done now? The idea is obviously to keep these funds in places where they cannot be seized or frozen. But, WHAT might trigger seizures or freezing of these funds NOW as they lay in U.S., British or Swiss banks? Continue reading
Posted in Chavez, Economic Crisis, Gaddafi, Libya, Venezuela update
Tagged BRIC, ConocoPhillips, Hugo Chávez, Libya, PDVSA, Petróleos de Venezuela, United States, Venezuela
The Global Barrel 