Socialism has done wonders for Venezuela.
There were the food riots, widespread hungers, shortages of everything, inflation making its currency worthless, hospitals left without medication and schools left without teachers because they're busy waiting on line to buy food.
I've chronicled many of those over the years. But now Berniestan has hit Peak Socialism. Despite being an OPEC member, it's importing oil.
Despite having the greatest oil reserves in the world, Venezuela’s government is being forced to spend millions of dollars a day importing crude to prop up its ailing industry.
Petrol remains the only cheap commodity left in Venezuela amid the collapse of most of its economy, but the oil industry is now also struggling to meet basic domestic demands.
In 2016, with its own industry failing to deliver, Venezuela imported diluents for the first time in its history. In the two years since, those imports have grown to as many as 200,000 barrels a day, mostly from the US, according to Francisco Monaldi, fellow in Latin American energy policy at Rice University in Texas.
“One of the craziest things is that a part of Venezuela’s imports is for the domestic market, but given its price, they practically give gasoline away for free. They are importing barrels that cost $80 to $90 and selling them at $0.”
Venezuela's oil industry is collapsing badly. And the military takeover hasn't helped.
US Gulf Coast refiners in January imported more crude oil from Canada than from Venezuela, a historic first, the US Energy Information Administration said Friday.
Gulf Coast refiners imported an average of 448,000 b/d of Canadian crude in January, compared with 438,000 b/d from Venezuela, the EIA said in its Petroleum Supply Monthly report.The Trump administration has weighed sanctions on Venezuela's oil sector, but has held off due partly due to the impact sanctions may have on US refiners.
US refiners though appear to be going Canadian anyway. And the Narcosocialist regime in Venezuela is on its last tyrannical legs.
What’s going on is that thousands of oil workers are fleeing the state-run oil firm under the watch of its new military commander, who has quickly alienated the firm’s embattled upper echelon and its rank-and-file, according to union leaders, a half-dozen current PDVSA workers, a dozen former PDVSA workers and a half-dozen executives at foreign companies operating in Venezuela.
Some PDVSA offices now have lines outside with dozens of workers waiting to quit. In at least one administrative office in Zulia state, human resources staff quit processing out the quitters, hanging a sign, “we do not accept resignations,” an oil worker there told Reuters.
Socialism. It's for the working class.