I swear I didn’t even know there was a such a word as “uninvestable.” The spellcheck on Daily Kos doesn’t believe it either, but the CEO of Exxon Mobil told the Orange Ape that under conditions that his company could not invest in Venezuelan oil production. I wonder if this was before Trump told oil executives that they would have to come up with $100 billion to repair the oil production infrastructure in Venezuela? To sweeten this deal, Trump promised that oil company property and personnel would be protected by U.S. troops.
The money quote:
Exxon CEO Darren Woods offered the starkest assessment, telling Trump in the live-streamed meeting in the East Room that Venezuela is “uninvestable” under current conditions. He said major changes were needed before his company would return to the country, and that big questions remain about what return Exxon could expect from any investments.
“If we look at the legal and commercial constructs and frameworks in place today in Venezuela today, it’s uninvestable,” Woods told Trump. “Significant changes have to be made to those commercial frameworks, the legal system. There has to be durable investment protections, and there has to be a change to the hydrocarbon laws in the country.”
Still, Woods said he was confident the U.S. can help make those changes, and said he expected Exxon could put a technical team on the ground in Venezuela soon to assess the state of its oil infrastructure.
You notice all the nice legal things Woods is focusing on? I believe what he really means is, “We want to be paid handsomely for the oil. We want the Venezuelan government to just let us go in and develop it and drill baby, drill! No environmental laws! No health and safety bullshit! No funding the Venezuelan government with the oil profits! And GUARANTEES OF NEVER NATIONALIZING OIL PRODUCTION EVER AGAIN!”
But this is the closest that any of these greedy bastards came to telling Trump, “Oh Bullshit! We are going to listen to a guy who lost money running a casino?”
And you have to be a greedy bastard to have dreams of oil production profits coming out of Venezuela any time soon. It’s because the oil drilling and refining facilities are a fucking mess. The facilities went to hell in a handbag when Hugo Chavez nationalized the oil industry and FIRED all the state oil engineers and technicians back in 2003.
A leaked document from PDVSA in 2021 said its pipelines had not been updated in 50 years and estimated the cost to return the country’s systems to peak production levels would be $US58 billion. More recent estimates have placed the figure at $US100 billion ($149 billion) or more.
“The industry was basically destroyed by the regime,” says Jairo Rincon, a former PDVSA engineer who now sells equipment to Venezuela’s energy sector.
PDVSA is the state agency that runs or did run oil production and facilities into the ground.
A 2023 report from PDVSA, leaked to Reuters, said more than half of the 22 oil tankers in Venezuela’s fleet were so run-down that they needed to be repaired or taken out of service.
The country also relies on an ageing pipeline network, with parts more than 50 years old, posing a structural challenge for transporting crude from wells to refineries, according to the US Energy Information Administration. The system often ruptures, causing leaks.
Will current Venezuelan President Rodriguez and the rest of the Maduro regime, which is wedded to keeping the oil industry nationalized, take orders from Trump? I heard on NPR the other day that a conspiracy theory is running loose in Venezuela that the American source on Maduro’s movements was Rodriguez. If that conspiracy theory is making the rounds, it sure as hell is not going to make Rodriguez popular with the rest of Maduro’s thugs.
You can see the potential problems for Rodriguez if she bows to Trump.
Anyway, for now, Venezuela is “uninvestable.”
