How Socialism Wiped Out Venezuela's Spectacular Oil Wealth

[rangerrebew]

How Socialism Wiped Out Venezuela's Spectacular Oil Wealth
Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves. It's out of gasoline.

Andrés Figueredo Thomson | 2.1.2021 12:50 PM
 
Venezuela has the world's largest proven oil reserves and yet the country has run out of gasoline. The socialist government has lost the capacity to extract oil from the ground or refine it into a usable form. The industry's gradual deterioration was 18 years in the making, tracing back to then-President Hugo Chávez's 2003 decision to fire the oil industry's most experienced engineers in an act of petty political retribution.

The near-total collapse in the nation's oil output in the ensuing years is a stark reminder that the most valuable commodity isn't a natural resource, but the human expertise to put it to productive use.

"At this moment Venezuela is living through its worst nightmare," said Luis Pedro España, a professor of sociology at Andrés Bello Catholic University in Caracas, who has studied the nation's economic collapse. "We are witnessing the end of Venezuela as a petro-state."

https://reason.com/video/2021/02/01/how-socialism-wiped-out-venezuelas-spectacular-oil-wealth/

[catfish1957]

Plot line being replayed right before our eyes.  As dip shit Biden destroys the production aspects of our oil industry, infrastructure will fall and crumble  into rust and disrepair.  Even to the point and possibility that internally as a country we may not be able to revive it from a captilaizaiton perspective.

This is like watching a crash is slow motion.

[Cyber Liberty]

Good article.  Short answer:  The communists looted the cash cow to finance rampant socialism, with no regard to maintaining their infrastructure. 

[PeteS in CA]

Good article.  Short answer:  The communists looted the cash cow to finance rampant socialism, with no regard to maintaining their infrastructure.

Stalin's thugs stole Ukrainians' grain, including the following year's seed. Holodomor.

Ethiopian leaders' thugs stole Ethiopians' grain, including the following year's seed. "We are the world ..."

Mexico nationalized its oil industry and milked it as a cash cow to the point that maintenance couldn't be done. Their industry deteriorated.

Venezuela nationalized its oil industry and mercilessly milked it as a cash cow to the point that maintenance couldn't be done. Venezuela's oil industry collapsed.

[Fishrrman]

PeteS observed:
"Venezuela nationalized its oil industry and mercilessly milked it as a cash cow to the point that maintenance couldn't be done. Venezuela's oil industry collapsed."

Seems to me there is already some talk from the communists/dems about the possibility of "nationalizing" the AMERICAN oil companies, which otherwise cannot be trusted to deal "properly" with climate change...

[Cyber Liberty]

PeteS observed:
"Venezuela nationalized its oil industry and mercilessly milked it as a cash cow to the point that maintenance couldn't be done. Venezuela's oil industry collapsed."

Seems to me there is already some talk from the communists/dems about the possibility of "nationalizing" the AMERICAN oil companies, which otherwise cannot be trusted to deal "properly" with climate change...

It's not a question of "if".....

[Smokin Joe]

Stalin's thugs stole Ukrainians' grain, including the following year's seed. Holodomor.

Ethiopian leaders' thugs stole Ethiopians' grain, including the following year's seed. "We are the world ..."

Mexico nationalized its oil industry and milked it as a cash cow to the point that maintenance couldn't be done. Their industry deteriorated.

Venezuela nationalized its oil industry and mercilessly milked it as a cash cow to the point that maintenance couldn't be done. Venezuela's oil industry collapsed.

In the latter two cases, foreign investors got out with what they could. Service companies fled, sometimes unpaid. Even tools left behind wear out and without the personnel and parts to rebuild them, the industry falls apart. It was often American expertise that led to their prosperity, although I have little doubt some Venezuelans learned well also, but those are people who, if they could get out could find employment almost anywhere in the world there is oil.

Now they want to court foreign investors, but with that track record, that situation should be radioactive...

[Fishrrman]

Smokin' Joe reckoned:
"Now they want to court foreign investors, but with that track record, that situation should be radioactive..."

Not for the Chinese, if they choose to go there.
But inviting the Chinese in... would be like inviting the Mob.
Once they get their hand in, they won't be letting go.

[Bigun]

Marxist governments of any type are always destructive and once that form of government is adopted the end result is as easily predicted as the sun rising in the East each day.

[PeteS in CA]

Marxist governments of any type are always destructive and once that form of government is adopted the end result is as easily predicted as the sun rising in the East each day.

That was the point of my list. Marxist/Communist/socialist governments have collectivization and nationalization in their DNA. The consequences are predictably messy or disastrous, and sometimes deadly.

In the latter two cases, foreign investors got out with what they could. Service companies fled, sometimes unpaid. Even tools left behind wear out and without the personnel and parts to rebuild them, the industry falls apart. It was often American expertise that led to their prosperity, although I have little doubt some Venezuelans learned well also, but those are people who, if they could get out could find employment almost anywhere in the world there is oil.

Now they want to court foreign investors, but with that track record, that situation should be radioactive...

By the time reality hit the fan Ukrainians and Ethiopians were stuck. My Grandparents got out of the Ukraine, but 28 years before the Holodomor and 11 years pre-revolution. They knew the revolution bode ill for ethnic-Germans and land-owning farmers.

Foreign investors will have some reluctance to invest in a country whose current government has a history of nationalizing industries.