Everybody's Favorite Dictator Pleads with Oil Companies to Come Back "Baby, it's Not You, It's Me"

French cuffs and a sporty sash! Lipstick, meet Pig.

Seems the doggone drop in oil prices has Hugo reconsidering his recent spat of bad manners with global energy companies. He was still willing to do deals with the state-owned operations like the Chicoms and the Iranians. But they've got their challenges to deal with too. So he dusted off the welcome mat for those fucking capitalists ChevronTexaco, Royal Dutch/Shell and Total.

Until recently, Chávez had pushed foreign oil companies here into a corner by nationalizing their oil fields, raiding their offices with tax authorities and imposing a series of royalties increases.

But faced with the plunge in prices and a decline in domestic production, senior officials here have begun soliciting bids from some of the largest Western oil companies in recent weeks — including Chevron, Royal Dutch/Shell and Total of France — promising them access to some of the world's largest petroleum reserves, according to energy executives and industry consultants here.

This is a guy you can obviously do business with when the chips are down. Having kicked their asses around when prices were high, he still screwed up and drove down production. Now the problem is even worse, lower production and lower prices, not to mention having pissed off a few other industries enough to make them want to leave as well.

Under the current bidding rules, the onus for financing the new projects lies with the foreign companies, even though Petróleos de Venezuela would maintain control. Banks might balk at such a prospect. Distrust also lingers in dealing with Petróleos de Venezuela.

Well what the hell else is he gonna do, he can't afford to build the delivery systems himself, can he?

God sure did put a lot of oil under some real assholes, didn't He?

tipped from DrewM.

posted by Dave In Texas at 09:31 AM

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