By Simón Rodríguez
Photo: Greenpeace
August 28, the US government and the semi-colonial Venezuelan dictatorship announce a ‘historic’ oil deal with great fanfare. Nobody knows what it actually entails. The US (the government, US companies – which ones?) would invest $100 billion in 17 oil fields and pay $209 billion in taxes. That is what has been announced.
Over what timeframe will these taxes be collected, and what percentage will be allocated to servicing the US$240 billion in external debt that the Venezuelan government claims to have? Are these new oil fields or ones already operating? These taxes will be collected on what basis? Supposedly, some 65 billion barrels of proven reserves would come under US ‘control’. What is the legal basis for this? The 55 per cent of production that the US is set to receive, will it be paid at market price, or will this be corresponding to US equity participation in one or more joint ventures? Is the ‘bolichico’ Alejandro Betancourt implicated in this deal? Are companies owned by the Trump family involved?
The Trump administration has claimed that this agreement will lower petrol prices in the US. This is false; at least in the short term, this agreement cannot affect the prices paid by consumers as there are no projections of a substantial increase in Venezuelan oil exports this year. The Chavista government has claimed that this is a mutually beneficial agreement, but if the agreement were in the country’s best interests, its details would already have been made public; the lack of transparency suggests otherwise. Promises that the new revenue will go towards housing and other social expenditure are not only implausible after 27 years of fortunes squandered by the corrupt ‘Bolibourgeoisie’, but they also remind us of Jorge Rodríguez’s false arguments when he justified this year’s unconsulted reform of the Hydrocarbons Law, claiming that it did not matter who extracted the oil but rather how state revenues were managed, and that ‘this time’ the oil money would go towards public health – something that obviously did not happen.
It is such a grotesque agreement, and it reflects to such an extent the colonial dynamics imposed following the January 3rd attack, that the lifting of US economic sanctions against Venezuela was not even announced. Chavismo is handing over the oil for a hundred years in exchange for a couple more years in power. That explains Delcy Rodríguez’s servile expression of ‘gratitude’ when announcing the agreement.
Ultimately, Chavismo has implemented María Corina Machado’s political and economic programme: US political tutelage, the surrender of sovereignty, further privatisation of the oil industry, increased dependence on oil and mining, and US military operations on Venezuelan territory, such as the overflight of Caracas in May. The implementation of that programme did not require Machado to seize power, and the US has driven it forward without her, after thanking her for dedicating her Nobel Peace Prize to Trump and presenting him with the tainted Norwegian medal.
The government’s false anti-imperialism and the right wing opposition’s false democracy have converged to the point where the country is now entirely subordinate to the US: economically, politically and militarily.
The illegal decisions of a dictatorship lacking even the slightest legitimacy must be regarded as null and void and must be challenged. We Venezuelans must reject this humiliating capitulation and break definitively with the political forces that have made it possible: Chavismo and the right-wing opposition. No one is going to save us; our future depends on ourselves.
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Venezuelan Voices 