Bolivarian revolution advances with seizure of oil fields
By
Deirdre Griswold
Published Apr 8, 2006 2:00 PM
What happens in a real revolution? Nothing
could be simpler: power and property are taken away from the privileged few in
order to distribute to the people the wealth the exploiters once
hogged.
Venezuela has once again confirmed that it is on the road of
revolution. It has moved to gain more control over oil, its most precious
resource. It calls its revolution Bolivarian after the Great Liberator,
Simón Bolívar, in order to stress that necessary social change
requires the liberation of the country and the region from foreign
domination.
Near the end of March, the National Assembly passed a law that
gives the state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela or PDVSA, at least a
60 percent stake in projects where foreign oil companies once got the
lion’s share of the profits. The law applies to 32 oil fields that are
pumping about one-fifth of the country’s production.
Foreign oil
companies will still be making money in Venezuela—just not as much as
before.
Sixteen companies, including Royal Dutch Shell, the
Spanish-Argentine company Repsol YPF, Brazil’s Petrobras and China
National Petroleum agreed to the new contracts. Italy’s Eni and
France’s Total, however, refused to go along with the new terms.
For the first time ever, the government then seized their oil fields,
putting them under PDVSA’s management.
“These two companies
are refusing to abide by our laws,” said Energy Minister Rafael
Ramírez in a press conference in Caracas on April 3. “They
won’t accept state control over our resources, and they won’t accept
the taxes and royalty rates.”
The U.S. oil giant ExxonMobil, on the
other hand, got around the problem by selling off its stake in the
15,000-barrel-a-day Quiamare-La Ceiba field to a Spanish company rather than
resist the new law. One reason it didn’t want to jeopardize its relations
with the government is that it still holds a 42 percent stake in a much larger
heavy-oil project at Cerro Negro, which is not affected by the new
law.
These three oil companies are among the six largest in the
world.
What does the Venezuelan government of President Hugo Chávez
want to do with the money?
It is moving to transform Venezuela by lifting
up the poor majority who in the past got virtually nothing from the
country’s oil riches. The state’s enhanced revenue will go to the
many social projects it has launched in recent years, with a priority on
literacy and general education; medical clinics for the poor, many staffed by
Cuban doctors; subsidized food in poor communities; new housing and land
reform.
President Chávez recently announced that 150,000 new houses
for the poor will be built by the end of the year. The mayor of Greater Caracas,
Juan Barreto, has announced that to alleviate the housing problem and combat
high rents, the government expects to expropriate about 400 apartment buildings
in the city. To be seized, a building must be at least 10 years old and the
owner must have collected at least five times the building’s value in
rents.
Venezuela has also been helping poor people in other countries who
have been hit by the worldwide increase in the price of heating oil. Many cities
in the U.S. itself have now signed on to receive Venezuelan oil at a low
cost—just at a time when the U.S. government has cut heating subsidies for
the poor.
One of Venezuela’s major goals is the regional integration
of Latin America as a giant economic bloc with its own powerful banks,
telecommunications and developed infrastructure. All this has been impos sible
ever since the Monroe Doc trine of 1823 declared all of Latin America to be
under the domination of the United States.
Washington’s reaction to
the ongoing revolution in Venezuela is deepening hostility—which should
come as no surprise, considering the terrible war the Bush admin istration has
launched in the Middle East, for no other reason than to control that oil-rich
region. Venezuela has what some consider to be the largest recoverable oil
reserves in the world.
The Virginian-Pilot, a newspaper from the Hampton
Roads area where the U.S. Navy has an enormous base, reported on March 28 that:
“The Navy will send an aircraft carrier strike group, with four ships, a
60-plane air wing and 6,500 sailors, to Caribbean and South American waters for
a major training exercise, it was announced Monday.
“Some defense
analysts suggested that the unusual two-month-long deployment, set to begin in
early April, could be interpreted as a show of force by anti-American
governments in Venezuela and Cuba.
“‘The presence of a U.S.
carrier task force in the Caribbean will definitely be interpreted as some sort
of signal by the governments of Cuba and Venezuela,’ said Loren Thompson
of the Lexington Institute, a pro-defense think-tank in
Washington.
“‘If I was sitting in the Venezuela capital
looking at this American task force, the message I would be getting is America
still is not so distracted by Iraq that it is unable to enforce its interests in
the Caribbean,’ Thompson said.”
The Venezuelan government is
taking the threat seriously and has recently purchased military aircraft and
small arms from Russia. It has gained enormous prestige in the region through
its progressive policies and the masses of people at home are solidly behind the
revolution, as shown in every election for the last seven years.
But the
leaders, many of whom, like Chávez, come from the military, know that to
defend themselves against imperialism the Venezuelan people need more than good
will.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
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