Through the wikileak cables we conform what we always suspected: Ramirez and Chavez were a total failure in the sale of the natural ags and heavy oil crude projects and in the end had their arms twisted by the bid bad oil companies. The Venezuelan oil Emperor has no clothes, in fact, he does not even have rags on.
Just think, the defender of the sovereignty, the revolutionary, being blackmailed by the bad ass imperialistic oil companies and abandoned by his buddies from Russia and China when he needed them. Of course, nothing new here, we had always suspected all of this, after all, the Russians and the Chinese did not even bother bidding for the Carabobo oil field:
“That Russian and Chinese national oil companies did not submit bids in Carabobo suggests the Minister’s travel is to ensure support from “like-minded” countries and to avoid new public setbacks”
This forced Chavez and his combo to give the concession to none other than Chevron. Throughout it all, Ramirez and Chavez keep a straight face, kept lying through their teeth and hailed the success of their failure. What cynics!
The cables are a treasure trove of all the lies we have heard in the last two years as well as the ability of Chavez and friends to lie, for example, on natural gas:
“Senior PDVSA officials are reportedly upset over the failure to solicit bids from international companies for the Mariscal Sucre offshore natural gas project; PDVSA announced it would develop the resources on its own”
No way PDVSA will be able to do that on its own, it has no money to do it.And no matter how upset they were:
“In Beijing, XXXXXXXXXXXX expected Ramirez to focus on “bringing CNPC” back in line and advancing the various Chinese heavy oil projects in the Faja. XXXXXXXXXXXX believed Ramirez’s stop in Tokyo would be designed to seek additional financing for PDVSA, to advance the Junin 11 reserve certification study (Ref B), and to reprimand the Japanese companies for not submitting bids in the Mariscal Sucre bid round”
Well, CNPC never came back in the fold and the Japanese did not advance financing upset over the nationalization of briquette companies.
But the best part is how Italy’s ENI simply backmailed Chavez and Ramirez by threatening to leave thirty minutes before teh documents were to be signed:
“Thirty minutes before the ceremony was tto begin , the CEO of the Italian company Paolo Scaroni, told Ramirez: Take it or leave it, I can get on my plane and move on. Ramirez took thirty minutes to convince President Chavez to accept all of the terms proposed by ENI or rsik losing the deal, according to the cable, the italians said they would not pay the signing bonus, because PDVSA owed ot US# 1 billion”
There you have it, the empty and naked revolution is a bluff and an empty shell, not even its “buddies” like the Russians and Chinese participate in their projects because the terms are not attractive and they yield then to the “imperialistic” companies of Italy and the United States.
The Chavez revolution is simply a farce.
The Devil's Excrement 