Venezuela rejects imperialism's 1% solution
Published Feb 17, 2005 11:13 PM
Sometimes a single figure can speak volumes.
Keep in mind the figure 1 percent when discussing Venezuela with your friends
and co-workers.
For almost a century, the Venezuelan economy has depended
on selling oil abroad. It has a rich supply of petroleum and was at one
time--before the development of Middle East oilfields--the second-largest oil
producer in the world.
Oil has been Venezuela's main source of revenue,
amounting to 80 percent of its exports. The Rockefeller-owned Standard Oil Co.
for years controlled Venezuela's oil, but promised that its exploitation of this
precious resource would make the country rich. It did make the Rockefellers
fabulously rich, and it made some Vene zuelans comfortably rich. But most
Venezue lans never saw that money and lived in great poverty.
Until now.
The Bolivarian Revolution, which began with the election of Hugo Chávez
to the presidency and has now become a vast popular movement for profound social
change, is changing all that.
Today, Venezuela's oil revenues are pay ing
for a broad range of social programs, including a huge literacy campaign, land
reform that is revitalizing agriculture and raising the standard of living in
the countryside, and a free public health system that has already reduced infant
mortality and maternal deaths.
Now comes the figure 1 percent. That's what
foreign oil companies--including Chev ronTexaco, whose origins go back to
Standard Oil--had been paying until recently in royalties to the Venezuelan
government for the extra-heavy crude oil they extracted there.
One percent
is like nothing. These multibillion-dollar companies were getting the oil
virtually for free, even though Venezuela had technically nationalized its oil
back in 1976.
Hydrocarbons Law and the coup
In November 2001,
after several elections in Venezuela had established a new Constitution and a
new National Assembly dedicated to eradicating poverty, the Hydrocarbons Law was
passed. Under this law, Venezuela reasserted its control over its most vital
resource. The royalty on light and heavy crude was raised from 16.7 percent to
30 percent. On extra-heavy crude, which costs more to produce, the royalty was
raised from 1 percent to 16.6 percent.
But almost immediately, before the
law could be implemented, a vigorous anti-Chávez campaign took to the
streets. Within five months a coup had taken place in which Venezuela's business
leaders, allied to elements in the military, kidnapped Chávez and
declared themselves to be the new government. There was no question that
Washington--which speaks so glowingly of democracy and free elections--was in
total support of the coup against the elected Chávez
government.
The coup lasted two days. After hundreds of thousands of angry
people surrounded the presidential palace, and many soldiers began questioning
the orders they were getting from the high command, Chávez was rescued
and the coup was smashed.
That was in April 2002. Almost immedi ately,
changes began to be made in PDVSA. Although nominally the state oil company,
PDVSA had been in the hands of a privileged elite who were completely tied to
the big imperialist oil companies. A detailed and fascinating report on the
history of PDVSA, written by a free-lance jour nalist living in Venezuela,
Gregory Wil pert, shows how it functioned as a "Trojan Horse" for these
transnationals. ("The Economics, Culture and Politics of Oil in Venezuela,"
www.venezuelanalysis.com)
Wilpert describes how after the failed coup, the
new head of PDVSA, Ali Rodri guez, tried to reorganize the company, both to make
it more efficient--it was top-heavy with cushy supervisory jobs--and to break it
away from the control of foreign capital.
Some of PDVSA's most sensitive
functions had been outsourced to U.S. companies. Since 1996, the U.S. company
Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) had managed all of PDVSA's data
processing needs through a joint venture called INTESA. In other words, they
controlled PDVSA's computers--and it was costing a lot of money. Rodriguez
wanted this work taken over by Venezuelans.
But before this change could
be implemented, the bureaucrats who had been running PDVSA organized a "strike"
that shut down Venezuela's oil production. INTESA was part of the strike. When
the government, with the cooperation of some of the workers, started to get oil
production going again, everything had to be done manually.
"The result
was that PDVSA could not transfer its data processing to new systems, nor could
it process its orders and bills for oil shipments," writes Wilpert. "PDVSA ended
up having to process such things manually, since passwords and the general
computing infrastructure were unavailable, causing the strike to be much more
damaging to the company than it would have been, if the data processing had been
in PDVSA's hands."
The "strike" failed to bring down the government, which
has since reorganized the oil industry. In the process, it made some interesting
discoveries.
Wilpert wrote in 2003, "... INTESA, which controlled all of
PDVSA's information, is in turn controlled by SAIC, a For tune 500 company
(revenues in 2002: $6.1 billion) that is deeply involved in the U.S. defense
industry, particularly as it relates to nuclear technology, defense intel
ligence, and computing technology. Its man agers included two former U.S.
Secretaries of Defense (William Perry and Melvin Laird) and two former CIA
directors (John Deutch and Robert Gates). Its current Board of Directors
includes the former commander of the U.S. Special Forces (Wayne Downing), a
former coordinator of the National Security Council (Jasper Welch), and the
former director of the National Security Agency (Bobby Ray Inman). Whether or
not SAIC was actively involved in the PDVSA strike and whether it passes crucial
company information on to other oil companies is unknown."
The last thing
the oil companies and their friends in the political/military/ intelligence
establishment of the U.S. government want is to have the public know the
specifics of their dirty dealings around the world.
Why oil execs are
worried
Last November, Chávez announced during his weekly
television program that the government would begin implementing the rise in
royalties for extra-heavy crude oil from 1 percent to 16.6 percent. The oil
companies pretended to be surprised and shocked, even though Chávez was
merely affirming what had been passed in the Hydrocarbons Law of 2001.
Recently, two U.S. companies that had been drilling for oil offshore were
told to suspend their operations by the Venezuelan government. At the same time,
Vene zuela has signed contracts to sell more oil to China.
In the
business pages of the corporate press, articles are appearing about how worried
U.S. oil executives are over developments in Venezuela. In the mass media,
however, the line is that U.S. consumers could suffer from the revolutionary
changes in that country.
A popular slogan in the large anti-war demo
nstrations of recent years was "No blood for oil." To say that the war in Iraq,
or U.S. hostility toward the revolutionary pro cess in Venezuela, is over oil is
catchy, but it is not adequate. Many pro-war, pro-imperialist elements will also
say that the issue is oil, and they mobilize mass sentiment with the argument
that the population here will be deprived of oil and gas for heating their
homes, driving their cars and so on unless the U.S. military polices the
world.
What has to be made clear is that imperialist intervention is not
for oil itself, as a useful product, but for oil PROFITS. The government in
Washington that decides where to send troops and who to put under sanctions is a
government owned lock, stock and barrel by big capital--and there are no
capitalists bigger than the oil capitalists.
The people of the U.S. will
need oil until the economy can be reorganized around safer and sustainable
sources of energy. And many countries want to sell that oil. What we don't need
are the oil companies that want us to fight and die for their profits.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: [email protected]
Subscribe [email protected]
Support independent news http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php)
|
