Hugo Chavez has recently been a very good OPEC member. He´s been keeping oil production down. But this reduction has not taken place because Hugo Chavez wants to be a good OPEC member. The paradox of authoritarian leaders who nationalize oil production is that oil production goes down simply because they are bad at running their own, inefficient state oil companies. And the price of oil goes up. Personally I don´t believe that oil multinationals are the solution either. The best way for a country to get the most for its citizens is to blend well regulated intervention by multinationals with a very good schooling of local energy professionals. Rushed decisions a la Chavez simply fail.

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gustavo on May 8, 2006  · 

PDVSA had very good people to run the business but after de 2002 strike Chabez fired probably half of the payroll. Since then, he brought people from Iran and Indian to help to run the industry.

What is sad is that Chavez´s goverment would be taking advantage of oil price to invest in expand Venezuela´s oil production but instead he is just giving away million and million of petro-dollars to other countries equal to Venezuela in terms of poverty.

Chavez is just about to Venezuela to impose
a new oil extraction tax which means probably about an extra billion US$ p/year for his fake revolution.

Indeed, Venezuela´s current oil output could be much higher but as Martin said is favoring OPEC by not paying attention to the flaw.

3.0 rating

Dimitar Vesselinov on May 9, 2006  · 

Peak oil?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil

3.0 rating

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