Anybody else thinking that Chavez has put together his plan to sell Venezuela's stake in their Citgo US refineries so that they can clear the way to drastically reduce exports to the US (as an act of war) and have China take up the slack in buying their crude? These Commies think in terms of long-range plans. I'm sure that we have folks in the US government who do, too, but it gets complicated with homegrown Demo/Commies constantly yapping at the heels of the adults...
Oh, well. I'm sure more unfettered free trade with Maoist tyrants will solve all our problems.
my belief is that if not for Citgo chavez would have already gone farther than he has. What I do not know is how much of a problem it is to find refinery capacity capable of processing venezuelan crude, which is apparently rather unusual and noxious.
I have no doubt that he is working on both of those, and if not for both of those obstacles would already not be selling oil to the US.
Trash-talk and empty rhetoric aside, this guy became president for life when his april 2002 removal unraveled and was confirmed with the failure of the national strike later that year. He's in, he has LOTS of oil, and pretty much everyone else is going to deal with him.