What’s th punch? I don’t get it.
Uh oh. The word “socialist” got by the editors at Reuters.
I’m confused. Why would a Socialist Paradise need gold in the first place? Gold is a filthy capitalist tool for hoarding wealth.
Karl Marx said “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” There’s no mention of gold anywhere in that saying.
Doesn’t make sense
Refining gold is not very difficult. Hell, I know a large coin-and precious metals dealer who does it in the basement of his nondescript urban office building
Ironic- Venezuelans are eating democrat mascot( donkeys) to avoid starvation.
Link: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/venezuela/article215644840.htm
Remember when Hugo Chavez made a big show of bringing all Venezuela’s gold home, from all over the world? I think when he brought the last of it back from Germany he had a huge parade.
You would think they’d have confiscated a gold refinery from one of the mines they nationalized from Russia.
None of that gold is coming back. What Erdogan doesn’t keep will go into off-shore Moros accounts. Some gold plated tungsten bricks may wind up back in Venezuela.
The Erdogan Crime Family in Turkey made big money laundering sanctions busting oil and gold shipments for the Iranian regime. His cronies also laundered oil exports for ISIS, as well as oil exports from the KRG in Iraq which needed to get around Baghdad’s taking of all the profits. He has his son Bilal in charge of oil exports, and his son-in-law in charge of all domestic oil activities.
Erdogan is highly corrupt, and is probably just partnering with Venezuelan socialists to get a cut. His regime has increasingly become a bad actor on many fronts (main sponsor of jihadis in Northern Syria). President Trump and VP Pence both begin openly discussing sanctions on Turkey last week.
Venequelan extra heavy crude oil, has issue in transportation and in refining.
It makes excellent lubricants, but takes special refining methods to handle. Houston based refineries traditionally handled it.
UPDATE 2-Citgo seeks crude as supplies from Venezuela dry up -trade, data
Marianna Parraga {} Published 5:46 PM ET Mon, 11 June 2018
HOUSTON, June 11 (Reuters) - The U.S. unit of Venezuela’s state-run oil producer PDVSA is increasing purchases of crude on the open market because it cannot get sufficient deliveries from its struggling parent company, traders said on Monday.
Citgo Petroleum has been buying crude from multiple countries worldwide as PDVSA has been unable to comply with the contractual volume of heavy crude due to falling output and port congestion slowing deliveries, according to the traders.
Declining oil production, lawsuits by creditors, shortages of spare parts for terminals and executive braindrain have all reduced PDVSA’s ability to export oil. Most recently, U.S.-based ConocoPhillips’ actions to seize PDVSA assets to cash in on a $2 billion arbitration award have added to the firm’s export issues.
Crude exports are Venezuela’s main source of revenue, but the OPEC member has seen deliveries fall sharply in the last few months, dropping to 1.17 million barrels per day (bpd) in May from 1.24 million bpd in April, according to Thomson Reuters trade flows data.
Citgo in recent weeks has been buying Colombian and Ecuadorean heavy crude on the spot market, as well as Azeri Light from the Black Sea region and Arab heavy and medium crudes, according to the Reuters data and traders.