Taking Venezuela’s Oil Won’t Come Cheap
Two people close to the White House said the president’s lack of interest in supporting Machado, despite his recent efforts to flatter Trump, stemmed from his decision to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, an award the president openly coveted.
Although Machado ultimately said she was dedicating the award to Trump, her acceptance of the award was an “ultimate sin,” one of those present said.
“If she had refused and said, ‘I can’t accept it because it’s Donald Trump’s,’ she would be president of Venezuela today,” this person said.
Our president, it has been observed, is not feeling well. Now back to oil.
“We built this whole industry there,” Trump said at the news conference. In fact, the colonial power present during the creation of Venezuela’s modern oil industry was Great Britain, through its multinational oil company. Royal Dutch Shellthen second largest oil company in the world (after John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil). The triggering event is what Venezuelans remember as El Reventon— the violent eruption, on December 14, 1922, of a Shell oil well on Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela, called Los Barrosos II. He was a chronicler wrote later“one of the greatest eruptions the world has ever seen. Oil coated the trees, covered the vines, and flowed in ever-increasing rivulets through the undergrowth like black snakes.” In a decade, Venezuela’s oil production extended from one million barrels per year to 137 million, and the country became the world’s largest oil exporter.
Even before El Reventon, Venezuela played John Bull against Uncle Sam in granting oil concessions, and in the decade following the blowout, Standard Oil (now Exxon) and Gulf (now Chevron) gained equal footing with Shell through aggressive moves. State Department diplomacy and endless litigation. None of these three companies land owned in Venezuela; instead they negotiated oil concessions with the Venezuelan government, which was a dictatorship until 1958. The terms of these agreements were frequently changed.
