Oil for profit or for people?

Two U.S. companies, ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil, have refused to abide by Venezuela’s new laws on ceding ownership of some of their oil holdings. Several other international oil companies have already agreed to the new terms, which require that majority control over investments be handed over to Venezuela’s government-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela.

A report on this development in the June 27 New York Times called Venezuela’s most valuable natural resource “some of the most coveted oil reserves in the Western Hemisphere.”

What has Venezuela done with its oil since the beginning of the Bolivarian Revolution?

It has pledged to provide oil to Zimbabwe, where U.S. and British neocolonialists continually push for “regime change” against a president who returned to the indigenous population land stolen by white colonialists. (WW, April 12)

It has an oil deal with impoverished, U.N.-occupied Haiti that saves that country $150 million a year, and it recently announced a tripartite agreement with Haiti and Cuba—another country facing the guns of imperialism—covering health, energy and oil. (WW, March 29)

It has provided discounted heating oil to people in 11 U.S. states, including more than 220 Native tribes—a program that was created after Venezuela’s offer to assist Katrina survivors exposed the need throughout the United States. (WW, Oct. 2, 2006)

And, in Venezuela itself, the resources from the country’s oil reserves have allowed a number of social programs to be created and thrive. These programs have combated illiteracy, reduced a staggering amount of poverty, and brought health services to long-neglected communities. The Times article had to acknowledge these programs when it said, “Any increase in oil prices that does result [from the exit of the U.S. companies] will only help [Venezuelan President Hugo] Chávez finance his broadening government social programs.”

The influence of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution on other countries was not overlooked by the Times. It discussed how the fact that companies from other countries have accepted the new rules in Venezuela “and the potential exit of Conoco and Exxon point to concern that developments in Venezuela may influence negotiations over oil and natural gas projects in other countries, from rising African oil producers like Angola to longtime members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries like Iran.”

The “concern” is that these countries will exert their sovereignty to use their own oil to sustain their own people—and perhaps people elsewhere in the world—rather than the pockets of the imperialist corporations.

This development lets the cat out of the bag as to what is really behind the forces that have been trying to make Venezuela’s recent closing of the right-wing, imperialist mouthpiece RCTV television station into an issue of “free speech” and “human rights.” Notwithstanding the use of the station to openly support the failed overthrow of the Chávez government in 2002—an act that would result in the immediate shutdown of a station in any country—the government’s decision not to renew RCTV’s contract was yet another blow to those in Venezuelan society who would put corporate profit above people’s needs.

The closing of RCTV is really a struggle between imperialism, and all those who have been privileged collaborators with it, and a popularly elected government that is trying to serve the interests of the majority of the Venezuelan people. This current battle over the use of oil clarifies what the struggle with the U.S. and with domestic reaction inside Venezuela is all about.