cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/71473420
“The Departments of State and War have negotiated a historic opportunity to secure US majority control of more than 65bn barrels of proven oil reserves in Venezuela at zero taxpayer cost,” a Pentagon spokesperson said.
That is maybe one of the dumbest sentences I have ever read.
I can’t comprehend not realizing if you actually think like this that you need to hide it from other people at least superficially.
They were saying that they need like $100 billion in investments to get Venezuela back up just to its own peak oil production (which is still small compared to other producers) and only like single digit percentages of that have been pledged over the next five years. Also Venezuela’s oil is a poor quality acidic sludge which can only be refined with specialized equipment like at America’s Gulf Coast refineries and it must be diluted with expensive imported fluids prior to shipping to be usable so exporting it is uneconomical when oil prices go down.