Venezuela president Hugo Chavez says he will not send anymore crude to Exxon (XOM). The most profitable US company has frozen $12 billion assets from the Latin American country's state owned oil operation to offset assets which the government nationalized.
Exxon can get oil elsewhere, at least for the time being. It is likely to be supported in its fight by other large oil companies who have also been bullied by Chavez. OPEC members are also likely to help Exxon's crude supply moving. They do not want to be seen as aiding and abetting a rise in the price of oil, even if it might benefit them for a period.
Chavez cannot be certain that the oil he does not send to Exxon will find a place somewhere else. Doing business with Venezuela has not exactly taken on the dressings of stability. He can turn to China as a buyer, but the Asian country is likely to drive a hard bargain if it sees Chavez has excess crude. That will tend to drive the price lower, which works against Venezuelan interests.
The most important barometer of whether the Chavez move is working is the price of oil. It has not gone up much in the last two days. And, certainly not to the $200 level that the president-for-life predicted.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/14/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
He's not "cutting his own throat", he's pursuing his foreign policy objectives, even if they prove detrimental to his short-term cash flow. Jeez I hate Hugo just as much as everyone else, but it doesn't help anyone when we describe his actions like this.
#2
Exxon (XOM). The most profitable US company has frozen $12 billion assets
I suspect Exxon and the US Government fully anticipated Hugo's response and had numerous couses of action and OPEC member agreements quickly at hand. There really is not fixing stupid.
#3
hugo will meet the actual science of crude oil soon, see the above article on titan. Once the myth of oil as a fossil fuel is debunked, the work of actually locating it becomes far simpler. See my reply under the titan story. Hugo is leveraging aa myth out of his own inability to accept reality, socialism and crude oil as fossil fuel, are just plain stupid.
#6
Since Hugo has taken office oil production in Venezuela has dropped from 3.3 million barrels per day to 2.5 million barrels per day and continues to drop. This is where he has truly cut his throat.
The Exxon dispute is a smokescreen to hide the incompetence of his government and his economic policies.
#7
Relax gromky,
that's 24/7 wall street's title, not Fred's.
And it just so happens that I agree with the sentiment. In fact, I couldn't agree more. Venezuela used to be a good friend to us before that skidmark took over.
It's hard to imagine a figure more dangerous, more sophisticated or more experienced than arch-terrorist Imad Mughniyeh. Until his assassination on Wednesday, Mughniyeh served as the mastermind behind Hizbullah's operations, an elusive figure linked to almost every attack executed by the organization since its inception in the early 1980s. In fact, it is impossible to name even one large-scale attack executed by Hizbullah that Mughniyeh was not involved in - from airplane hijackings to embassy bombings to kidnappings and more.
The senior Hizbullah leader was responsible for suicide attacks on the American embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, which lead to the strategic withdrawal of American and foreign forces out of Lebanon. He was also wanted in connection to the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy and the 1994 attack on the AMIA building in Buenos Aires, attempted attacks in Asia and the Arab world and the kidnappings of dozens of Westerners in Lebanon throughout the 1980s.
Mughniyeh's importance lies not only in his ability to execute extraordinary attacks against targets around the world - or even in his control of Hizbullah's operational branch in Lebanon - but more significantly in the close connections he established between Iran, Syria and Hizbullah. Mughniyeh positioned himself as the operational link between these actors. It is in this framework that Mughniyeh also served as al-Qaida's contact within Hizbullah throughout the 1990s.
There is good reason the FBI set a $5 million price on his head, and that some in the American intelligence community have described Mughniyeh as an even more dangerous enemy than Osama bin Laden himself.
Unlike bin Laden, however, Mughniyeh's influence was not derived from the image he created of himself, but by his actual deeds and capabilities as an initiator, planner, supervisor and executor of attacks on an international scale. In effect, these attacks tremendously strengthened Hizbullah's capabilities in a variety of spheres, creating the deterrence that the organization was seeking to achieve vis-à-vis foreign states and Israel.
After the assassination of a terrorist leader - especially one as senior as Mughniyeh - the question arises: Will there be a boomerang effect? Will the organization seek retaliation?
Hizbullah is known to employ a policy - developed by Mughniyeh himself - in which a significant attack against the organization and its leaders does not pass without harsh response. It is thus reasonable to assume that such retaliation will indeed follow Wednesday's assassination.
Hizbullah is known to employ a policy - developed by Mughniyeh himself - in which a significant attack against the organization and its leaders does not pass without harsh response. It is thus reasonable to assume that such retaliation will indeed follow Wednesday's assassination.
The list of actors potentially responsible for Mughniyeh's assassination is long and goes well beyond Israel. Among the possible culprits: Lebanese Christians who hold Mughniyeh responsible for assassinations against their own leaders; competing factions within the Shi'ite community; and Syrian intelligence figures who, despite previous cooperation, may have been uncomfortable with Mughniyeh's close connections to Iran and his strength within Lebanon and the Mediterranean region.
Yet there is actually little importance in identifying the perpetrators. Even if Israel is relieved of responsibility for the assassination, Hizbullah will react instinctively against Israel - placing blame on the country and even retaliating with attacks against Israeli targets and interests around the world.
Hizbullah, under Mughniyeh's leadership, has already developed the infrastructure and contingency plans necessary to activate sleeper cells into launching attacks against Jewish and Western interests on short notice - a matter of days, weeks or months. They are additionally capable, of course, of launching Katyusha rocket attacks against Israel from Lebanon. Hizbullah retaliated against Israeli and Jewish targets in Argentina after the Israeli assassination of organization leader Abbas al-Musawi in 1992 and Israel Air Force bombings in 1993.
While Mughniyeh's assassination may serve to intensify the group's motivation to fulfill their proven capabilities, the hand that controlled the organization's activities for so long, which previously would have been the hand of retaliation, has now been severed.
Dr. Boaz Ganor is the Executive Director of the International Institute of Counter Terrorism (ICT) and the Deputy Dean of the Lauder School of Government at IDC Herzliya.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/14/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
So one mean bast**d became one poor bast**d. He was not as smart, not as clever, and not as lucky as he thought he was. None of them are.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Venezuela president Hugo Chavez says he will not send anymore crude to Exxon (XOM). The most profitable US company has frozen $12 billion assets from the Latin American country's state owned oil operation to offset assets which the government nationalized. 
