Posted on 02/19/2003 4:56:03 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
Venezuela's Oil Crisis Bubbles
Feb. 18: Juan Fernandez, president of PDVSA’s Workers’ Association and strike leader, warned that production forecasts for the recently militarized state-owned company for the year to come do no exceed 2 million barrels a day, amounting to 65 percent of pre-strike volumes.
The president of PDVSA, former guerrilla leader Ali Rodríguez Araque, agreed on lower production forecasts for 2003.
Rodríguez rejected JPMorgan’s projections that PDVSA would reach 80 percent of capacity toward the end of 2003, assuring that the reactivation of refineries would be carried on “carefully”. He stated, however, that gasoline production would satisfy internal demand by the second week of March.
While production is restored, Rodríguez plans to continue importing gasoline and declined to comment on the quantities to be bought from foreign producers.
Skeptics believe that President Hugo Chavez’s tactic to further oppress the already weakened business sectors will include restricting internal gasoline supply while sustaining exports.
PDVSA is at the brink of defaulting on third-party obligations, such as the recently gasoline import contracts entered into by Chavez during the two-month strike that reduced oil production to 150,000 barrels a day, as well as on fees to the government.
In an attempt to weather the increased risks caused by the political significance of PDVSA, used as a tool by the opposition, the government is considering the sale of Citgo, a U.S. gasoline distribution firm, wholly owned by PDVSA. Citgo’s direct affiliation with the state-oil company renders its sale sensitive; the company’s president declared "the sale of any PDVSA affiliated company is not under consideration at this moment in time. However, as soon as the due diligence process ends, the sale of assets within and outside of the country might become a point to consider” (www.eluniversal, Feb. 17). The future of the company is in danger not only due to the possible sale of its parts, but also due to the massive layoffs amounting to 11,917 to date, mostly due to political reasons. It is hard to believe that the new users, who have not been trained within the oil sector, will be able to operate the remains of the company.
PDVSA workers’ protests continue in Caracas daily. Fernandez said the demonstrations would continue until an electoral solution to the president’s term is reached.
Dealing With Colombian Leftists' Terrorism
Feb. 14: The bodies of an American and a Colombian found amid the wreckage of U.S. government plane had bullet wounds, an official with the Colombian attorney general's office said today. The plane crash-landed in a southwestern province of Colombia controlled by the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
The plane disappeared Thursday carrying Interior Minister of Social Protection Juan Luis Londoño and four Americans. The incident is attributed to FARC, the largest guerrilla group active in the country. The Marxist terrorist group, founded in the early 1960s, has also declared itself responsible for the explosion that killed 35 people and wounded 173 at Club Nogal, an elite meeting spot in the center of Bogotá.
The U.N. Security Council has approved Resolution 1373 with regard to the situation Colombia, dictating zero tolerance for terrorists. President Uribe had requested that FARC, National Liberation Army (ELN) and the paramilitary groups be given international terrorist status. This resolution would commit member countries to freeze terrorist accounts and impede free circulation limiting the number of countries that could provide political asylum.
The U.N. Security Council declared "in conformity with resolution 1373, it is imminent that member countries cooperate with Colombian authorities to show their support in the Colombian government’s effort to locate and try the organizers of the terrorists who committed the terrorist assault” (www.elnacional.com, Feb. 14).
Chavez's Plan to Stay in Power
Feb. 12: President Hugo Chavez has promised “jail time to the coup-plotters, boycotters and worker mafias” that incited the general strike halting Venezuela’s oil industry for two months.
He called on judges and prosecutors to apply all the force of the law and insisted on expanding the Supreme Court's membership, once controlled by him.
Recent messages reveal his plans of land redistribution, the blacklisting of a number of companies to exclude these from the limited sale of dollars after the implementation of foreign exchange controls Thursday, as well as the end of the “Dolce Vita” for those who sabotage his Bolivarian revolution.
Chavez uses a four-hour TV space every Sunday called “Hello, President” to air his messages and recently celebrated his 548th broadcasted hour.
Foreign-exchange controls promise to devastate the business sector after Chavez’s declaration that dollars would be sold only for “vital areas of development” (www.talcualgital.com, Feb. 10), citing as an example the expected governmental support for agriculture. Chavez plans to assign 70 percent of Venezuela's territory to his supporters.
He has announced that not “one dollar will be sold to the coup-plotters” (globovision, Feb. 6), as he calls businessmen. Businesses have started to close foreseeing the lack of dollars to import raw materials and components.
The Ministry of Labor has warned that fraudulent bankruptcies would be investigated in view of the law that prohibits companies to fire workers, passed last May.
The gasoline crisis, a major hindrance to the business sector, is being partially solved through imports. The government made the unlikely promise that 200,000 barrels would be released by today, satisfying 72 percent of internal demand.
Venezuelans, however, are still making eight-hour lines to pump gas.
Oil exports have been re-established to half of the pre-strike volumes in spite of the 9,000 oil workers fired to date whom Chavez plans to put on trial on the charges of sabotaging the economy.
He has also announced the granting of concessions to Chevron-Texaco and the Norwegian company Statoil to research gas fields in exchange for $1 billion, possibly paving the way for independence from PDVSA’s contributions.
The next step for Chavez’s government will be to shut down several TV stations once the media-restricting “Law of Contents” is passed by parliament. The law would violate all international treaties entered into by the Venezuelan government on freedom of speech.
So far, the law states that user committees will censor indecent material, but also information that can incite to disrespect the institutions.
Talks between the government and the opposition have reached a stalemate. The Group of Friends, composed of Brazil, the U.S., Chile, Mexico, Spain and Portugal, has expressed its irritation due to Chavez’s victorious tone.
The opposition’s request is still to push for the amendment of the constitution to reduce the president’s period from six to four years. The government, however, does not consider this as an option and has recently placed all future decisions on a soon-to-be elected National Electoral Committee after being declared invalid by the government as it voted in favor of a non-binding referendum last month, as well as on the Supreme Courts of Justice.
The expansion of the Supreme Court and the new election of the Electoral Committee need to be approved by parliament, in large support of Chavez.
The course that the Venezuelan crisis will take heavily depends on the outcomes of both electoral procedures and on the response by the opposition, which is unquestionably radicalized.
Arab advisers now are reinforcing a sizable contingent of Cubans in efforts to reorganize Venezuela's security services, assimilate its industries based on totalitarian models and repress a popular opposition movement. "What happens in Venezuela may affect how you fight a war in Iraq," Gen. James Hill of U.S. Southern Command is reported recently to have told his colleague at U.S. Central Command, Gen. Tommy Franks.
"Chavez is planning to coordinate an anti-American strategy with terrorist states," says Venezuela's former ambassador to Libya, Julio Cesar Pineda, who reveals correspondence between the Venezuelan president and Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi about the need to "solidify" ties between liberation movements in the Middle East and Latin America and use oil as an economic weapon.
Exhorting his countrymen to return to their "Arab roots," Chavez has paid state visits to Libya, Iraq and Iran and signed a series of mutual-cooperation treaties with the rogue governments whose operatives now are flooding into Venezuela. There they can blend into an ethnic Arab community estimated at half-a-million.
Last Jan. 10, 18 Libyan technicians flying in from Tripoli via Frankfurt, Germany, were received at the Caracas airport by Ali Ahmed, head of Libya's "Commission" in Venezuela. He was accompanied by the parliamentary whip of the ruling Venezuelan Revolutionary Movement (MVR), Cilia Flores. Nicolas Maduro and Juan Baruto, two other bosses of the MVR party militias (the Circulos Bolivarianos) who had paid an extended visit to Tripoli in 2000, also were on hand to smooth the way for the Libyans coming off Lufthansa Flight 534.
The Libyan agents were identified as: Alsudik Alghariy, Elmabruk Najjar, Koaled Adun, Zeguera Adel, Sherif Nagib, Abubaker Benelfgh, Nabiel Bentahir, Abdulfat Enbia, Waldi Majrab, Amhamed Elkum, Abdulgha Nashnush, Mohamed Romia, Abdurao Shwich, Abdulnass Elghanud, Ezzedin Barhmi, Abdulssa Seleni, Hassan Gwile and Mhemmed Besha.
The high level of security provided for the Libyans' arrival was intended to avoid the havoc of previous days when the entry of Iraqi and Iranian groups touched off a riot. As word of the landing of 20 Iranians had spread through Simón Bolívar International Airport on Jan. 8, crowds of infuriated travelers banged counters and cigarette urns and chanted "Get out! Get out!" to protest what many Venezuelans perceive as foreign interference in their country's affairs.
…………. Meanwhile, Iraqi VIPs, moving under the protection of Chavez's secret police -- the Department of Intelligence Security and Prevention (DISIP) -- came to the attention of Venezuela's regular military when government agents tried to use air-force planes to fly five of Saddam Hussein's agents into the interior of the country. Military pilots requested special clearances before allowing the Iraqis onto the C-130s.
Military sources also report that the recently arrived group of Libyans is billeted at the Macuto Sheraton Hotel in La Guaira, which they share with Cuban commandos who have been conducting strike-breaking operations around the nation's oil ports. Local units of the National Guard, the branch of the Venezuelan armed forces responsible for internal security, were reported to be refusing government orders to repress strikers.
According to Capt. Jose Ballabes of the merchant-marine union, the Cubans improvised floating concentration camps on board oil tankers, threatening officers and crews to get them to move the paralyzed vessels. When the Venezuelans still resisted, "such methods as sleep deprivation, often used against political dissidents in Cuba, are being systematically employed against our people," says Ballabes.
Sources in Venezuela's merchant navy name two of the Cuban agents on the tankers as Arturo Escobar and Carlos Valdez, who were presented as "presidential advisers" operating with DISIP. Venezuela's internal-security organization now is reported to be controlled by a command cell of undercover officers from Fidel Castro's military-intelligence service. Venezuelan sources say the Cuban operatives also run a computerized war room inside Chavez's presidential palace, Miraflores. It is in this war room that the repressive policies now afflicting the country have been planned, according to serving officers in the Venezuelan army, navy and national guard consulted by Insight.
The Libyans, like the Cubans, are specialists in military intelligence and security, but are described as computer specialists brought in to operate and reprogram crashed systems at the oil refineries, according to industry sources.
"The West must expect deepening relations between Venezuela and Islamic states," says professor Elie Habalian, a specialist in petroleum economics and a consultant to PDVSA President Ali Rodriguez Araque, who is identified by Venezuelan military sources as a one-time communist guerrilla chief. Aided by Cuban intelligence and Islamic workers, the government has managed to get oil production back up to 34 percent, a level sufficient to supply basic domestic needs. "It's a war between two models," continues Habalian, "one seeking total control over oil policy and the liberal international policy represented by PDVSA's previous management" effectively eliminated by the government, which has ordered the mass dismissal of 7,000 oil-company employees.
Interfacing of Venezuela's oil industry with the radical state systems also facilitates plans for a possible oil embargo against the United States in the event the military assault on Iraq is prolonged. While international oil experts consider such a scenario unlikely due to Venezuela's desperate need for export earnings, Venezuelan opposition leaders fear that Chavez could take advantage of a conflagration in the gulf to consolidate his dictatorship with the support of Cuban and Arab agents already in place.
"Chavez has violated the constitution on 34 counts and is moving to nationalize banking," says a leading member of Venezuela's business community. "He has packed the high courts with his judges, neutralized the army and turned the national assembly into a rubber-stamp parliament. All that's left to do is shut down the independent media and decapitate the opposition." According to this source, Chavez is most likely to move when world attention is fixed on Iraq.
……….. Undercover police officers report that the group has ties to a Hezbollah financial network operating from the Caribbean island of Margarita under Mohammed al Din, an important Chavez backer and a close friend of hard-line MVR deputy Adel el Zabayar Samara, a key link between Islam and Latin America's radical left.
The Caracas cell is involved in recruiting Venezuelan Arabs for terrorist indoctrination and military training at isolated camps in the country's interior and on islands off the coast, according to intelligence officers who claim that members of al-Qaeda are hiding out in Margarita. They say these members include Diab Fattah, who was deported from the United States for his possible connections with the Sept. 11 hijackers. Four Venezuelan officers investigating terrorist activities on the resort island were killed in 2001 when Chavez moved to dissolve DISIP Section 11, which had targeted radical Arabs. ***
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