Coals to Newcastle and the mad mullahs

[230TE]

This news story caught my attention:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-5378317...

US govt claims to have seized four laden Iranian tankers bound for Venezuela, which has the largest oil reserves of any country in the world.

So what was really in the tankers? Do they even exist? Something doesn't add up here.

[coolg]

I would guess that the socialist dream in Venezuela has gone so badly wrong they can’t even supply their own fuel.

[vonuber]

Can someone explain to me why the US is allowed to sieze them just like that? Purely down to their military being so strong no-one will argue?

[hidetheelephants]

coolg said:

I would guess that the socialist dream in Venezuela has gone so badly wrong they can’t even supply their own fuel.

That basically; Venezuela is so fked they've passed through fked, out the other side into unfked and then back to totally fked.

[105.4]

vonuber said:

Can someone explain to me why the US is allowed to sieze them just like that? Purely down to their military being so strong no-one will argue?

As far as I understand it, the simple answer is, because they can.

The longer answer is that USA offered to help Venezuela get back on its feet 10+ years ago, (or in all likelihood, asset strip the place). The Socialist President of Venezuela gave a rather impolite ‘sod off’ and things went downhill from there.

Edited to add;

Video from Vox, a pretty left wing news outlet about what went wrong in Venezuela.

https://youtu.be/S1gUR8wM5vA


(it would of course help if I posted the bloody link )

Edited by 105.4 on Saturday 15th August 00:07

Edited by 105.4 on Saturday 15th August 00:08

[230TE]

hidetheelephants said:

coolg said:

I would guess that the socialist dream in Venezuela has gone so badly wrong they can’t even supply their own fuel.

That basically; Venezuela is so fked they've passed through fked, out the other side into unfked and then back to totally fked.

Incredible that a major oil producing country can't provide itself with enough fuel for its own needs and has to import it. I always thought the benchmark of socialist failure was the GDR: making an impoverished economic shambles out of a country populated entirely by Germans. But I think Venezuela just raised the bar.

[Transmitter Man]

CoolG,

They produce oil but I believe lack refining capability.

[Plymo]

Transmitter Man said:

CoolG,

They produce oil but I believe lack refining capability.

Yup. I've been to Maracaibo, the stuff literally pours out of the ground (into a huge lake, but that's another story)
But they import various oil products as there is some issue with refinery capacity - I assume it's because they lack the cash to get these rather expensive plants up and running.

A few years ago I was on a tanker taking gas oil from Venezuela to the US so at least then they were doing some export trade

[hidetheelephants]

Transmitter Man said:

CoolG,

They produce oil but I believe lack refining capability.

Refineries need bits and bobs and a steady flow of consumables, few of which are made in Venezuela, there's bugger all foreign currency that isn't promptly looted or used to buy cattle prods for the secret police so none available to buy consumables, plus everything is nationalised and 'run' by idiots who are put in jobs because of political reliability rather than ability to run a refinery.

[hutchst]

And sanctions.

[Exige77]

hidetheelephants said:

Transmitter Man said:

CoolG,

They produce oil but I believe lack refining capability.

Refineries need bits and bobs and a steady flow of consumables, few of which are made in Venezuela, there's bugger all foreign currency that isn't promptly looted or used to buy cattle prods for the secret police so none available to buy consumables, plus everything is nationalised and 'run' by idiots who are put in jobs because of political reliability rather than ability to run a refinery.

Didn’t the Venezuelan gov seize all the foreign oil companies assets and thought they could do it all themselves ?

They must have been following the great Mugabe success of stealing all the farms.

[hidetheelephants]

They don't help at all, but the output of domestic refineries fell off a cliff long before Trump started shouting the odds; the sanctions Obama imposed were on individuals responsible for torture and/or corruption, not the state.