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Gustavo Coronel: Chavez denounces
ExxonMobil for “stealing our oil and gas”
Last Sunday Hugo Chavez demonstrated again his oil expertise. He said that ExxonMobil had been stealing Venezuelan oil and gas, “using pipelines hidden in the bushes”. According to “petroleum engineer” Chavez, ExxonMobil used “pipelines hidden in the bushes to steal the oil, under the cover of night or before sunset”. He added: “They also took away our gas”, although he did not specify the mechanism utilized by the foreigners to steal the gas. Chavez did say: “They [ExxonMobil] kept telling us there was no gas in the fields they operated but there was and they were stealing it….”. He did not explain how the “technical” staff of the revolutionary PDVSA would be so easily deceived by the foreign imperialists. When I worked in PDVSA we knew how much oil and gas we were producing and no foreigner, American or Chinese, could come to tell us if there was gas or not in the oilfields.
The information about the existence or absence of gas is one of the most basic ones an oil company will have. Anyone who claims he has been deceived by a third party is just ignorant and/or stupid, especially since all oil operations in Venezuela should be duly supervised by the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum. We have to remember, however, that the Ministry is not in competent hands, the same hands in charge of PDVSA.
Even the badly managed, red PDVSA, however, should know how much gas is in the oilfields and to what use, if any, is being put. This clownish accusation is the full responsibility of Hugo Chavez, who is an ignorant about oil matters but audacious enough to say whatever comes to his head. He feels he has to say something spectacular at every event he attends. This was a meeting of PetroCaribe, the organization he created to give away our hydrocarbons resources for free or to exchange it for bananas and black beans and he felt compelled to make this kind of anti-imperialistic noise. It must have been very embarrassing for the representatives of the Caribbean and Central American states to listen to Chavez’s absurd utterances.
During the last meeting of OPEC held in Caracas Hugo Chavez made a similarly grotesque announcement. He explained to the OPEC representatives how oil was discovered in Venezuela. “Suddenly, there was a big noise coming from inside the earth [an earthquake?] And the oil started to flow, witnessed by our Venezuelan Indians and poor people”… Forget about oil exploration by Arnold; forget about drilling in Mene Grande. Oil appeared in Venezuela as a sudden act of God.
The notoriety of Chavez as an entertainer extends rapidly all over the hemisphere. This is not exactly what he wanted. He wanted to be famous, known as a great leader, not as a comedian.
Gustavo Coronel is a 28 years oil industry veteran, a member of the first board of directors (1975-1979) of Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), author of several books. At the present Coronel is Petroleumworld associate editor and advisor on the opinion and editorial content of the site. Petroleumworld does not necessarily share these views.
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Petroleumworld News 07/15/08
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