The Devil's Excrement

Saul
Guerrero worked at PDVSA for many years and was involved in the development of
Orimulsion which the current administration has decided to do away with on the
grounds that it is not sufficiently profitable. The basic argument being that
it is better to improve the crudes from the Orinoco Oil Belt than to use it for
Orimulsion I have written about this topic before here is the view of a true
expert as expressed in El Nacional on Friday.

Accounts and Tales of the Oil Belt by Saul Guerrero

The fool who hearkens not, regards
what is profitable as useless.

Maxims of Ptah-Hotep, Egypt,
ca 2300 before Christ.

The
Orinoco Oil Belt is a mirror which implacably reveals all of the deficiencies
and improvisations of our vision and management to take opportune advantage of
its energetic resources. How can we develop that vast potential on time,
without depressing prices in the diverse markets and without remaining in the
sterile complacency that we are the owners of the greatest hydrocarbons reserve
in the planet? The Venezuela
of the decade of the 90’s created two paths to take advantage of those
resources, the strategic associations and to feed the transportation sector and
Bitor to launch Orimulsion outside the OPEC quota as a fuel to generate
electricity. Beginning in 2003 the present administration of the Ministry of
Energy and Mines and PDVSA has wanted to destroy Orimulsion, artificially
confronting these two options, ignoring the reality that they complement each
other and do not exclude each other. The public disqualification of Orimulsion
on the part of the Ministry of Energy/PDVSA and its decision to base the
development of the Oil Belt exclusively with more projects of improving the
extra heavy crudes is a great fallacy that crumbles itself with only reading with
care the numbers and papers of the new PDVSA.

On May 21^st.
of the current year, PDVSA published an ad that textually said; “During the
period January-April 2005…the production of the associations of the Orinoco Oil
Belt of 617 thousand barrels a day generated dollars that did not come into the
country…2 billion 171 million dollars… Since the four projects are costing a
total of at least $12 billion dollars, this tells us grosso modo that for each dollar invested in improving extra heavy
crudes, one manages, in the year of the highest prices of crude oil , $0.50 in
gross annual sales and $0.09 in royalties.

What the
Ministry of Energy and Oil does not explain is that in including the improved
crudes within the OPECD quota one is: a.- displacing 617 thousand barrels of products of the
Venezuelan oil basket there price of which is much higher ($45 per barrel) than
the average according to PDVSA of the improved crude ($29 per barrel), which
brings a reduction in sales of 3 billion dollars a year and b.- the associations
only pay 34% in taxes and not the 50% that PDVSA pays, that is, that according
to what was published by Vice-Minister Mommer in his paper “The Subversive
Oil”, the tax office failed to collect at least $10 per barrel, which would add
some US$ 2.3 billion in annual taxes that are not collected by the tax system.
In total a sacrifice of more than US$ 5.3 billion a year at this moment, which
substantially reduces any earnings at the end of the day for the Nation from
this production of improved crudes.

In
contrast, the current Orimulsion contracts (those that they want to eliminate
or transfer to Sinovensa in December 2005) average about US$ 20 per barrel of
sold bitumen, which implies annual sales of some US$ 400 million for each US$
400 million module that each new Orimulsion module costs. At these new prices
for the sale of Orimulsion in Asia, for each
dollar invested one obtains a dollar in annual gross sales and $0.20 in
royalties for the nation, double what you have managed to do with a multimillion
dollar investment in the strategic associations in its best year of sales.
Moreover, when Orimulsion was sold at a price tied to coal and invoiced gross
sales of US 200 million (see PDVSA’s report to the SEC), for each dollar
invested in Orimulsion, one obtained $0.50 in sales, the same level that the
four strategic associations have only managed to obtain under the price
euphoria of 2005. Contrary to what was argued by the Ministry of Energy and
Oil/PDVSA, Orimulsion has always been an excellent option for the profitable
and large scale development of the Orinoco oil
belt, without incurring in the costly penalty that implies the displacement of
the traditional production within the OPEC quota by the improved crudes.

The simple
calculation above can not escape the current authorities of the Ministry of
Energy and Oil/PDVSA. The only and great mystery that still persists is what is
the true reason for which they continue to be set on destroying the business of
Orimulsion, the endogenous development of greatest technical and commercial
success in the history of Venezuela.

Saul
Guerrero worked at PDVSA for many years and was involved in the development of
Orimulsion which the current administration has decided to do away with on the
grounds that it is not sufficiently profitable. The basic argument being that
it is better to improve the crudes from the Orinoco Oil Belt than to use it for
Orimulsion I have written about this topic before here is the view of a true
expert as expressed in El Nacional on Friday.

Accounts and Tales of the Oil Belt by Saul Guerrero

The fool who hearkens not, regards
what is profitable as useless.

Maxims of Ptah-Hotep, Egypt,
ca 2300 before Christ.

The
Orinoco Oil Belt is a mirror which implacably reveals all of the deficiencies
and improvisations of our vision and management to take opportune advantage of
its energetic resources. How can we develop that vast potential on time,
without depressing prices in the diverse markets and without remaining in the
sterile complacency that we are the owners of the greatest hydrocarbons reserve
in the planet? The Venezuela
of the decade of the 90’s created two paths to take advantage of those
resources, the strategic associations and to feed the transportation sector and
Bitor to launch Orimulsion outside the OPEC quota as a fuel to generate
electricity. Beginning in 2003 the present administration of the Ministry of
Energy and Mines and PDVSA has wanted to destroy Orimulsion, artificially
confronting these two options, ignoring the reality that they complement each
other and do not exclude each other. The public disqualification of Orimulsion
on the part of the Ministry of Energy/PDVSA and its decision to base the
development of the Oil Belt exclusively with more projects of improving the
extra heavy crudes is a great fallacy that crumbles itself with only reading with
care the numbers and papers of the new PDVSA.

On May 21^st.
of the current year, PDVSA published an ad that textually said; “During the
period January-April 2005…the production of the associations of the Orinoco Oil
Belt of 617 thousand barrels a day generated dollars that did not come into the
country…2 billion 171 million dollars� Since the four projects are costing a
total of at least $12 billion dollars, this tells us grosso modo that for each dollar invested in improving extra heavy
crudes, one manages, in the year of the highest prices of crude oil , $0.50 in
gross annual sales and $0.09 in royalties.

What the
Ministry of Energy and Oil does not explain is that in including the improved
crudes within the OPECD quota one is: a.- displacing 617 thousand barrels of products of the
Venezuelan oil basket there price of which is much higher ($45 per barrel) than
the average according to PDVSA of the improved crude ($29 per barrel), which
brings a reduction in sales of 3 billion dollars a year and b.- the associations
only pay 34% in taxes and not the 50% that PDVSA pays, that is, that according
to what was published by Vice-Minister Mommer in his paper “The Subversive
Oil�, the tax office failed to collect at least $10 per barrel, which would add
some US$ 2.3 billion in annual taxes that are not collected by the tax system.
In total a sacrifice of more than US$ 5.3 billion a year at this moment, which
substantially reduces any earnings at the end of the day for the Nation from
this production of improved crudes.

In
contrast, the current Orimulsion contracts (those that they want to eliminate
or transfer to Sinovensa in December 2005) average about US$ 20 per barrel of
sold bitumen, which implies annual sales of some US$ 400 million for each US$
400 million module that each new Orimulsion module costs. At these new prices
for the sale of Orimulsion in Asia, for each
dollar invested one obtains a dollar in annual gross sales and $0.20 in
royalties for the nation, double what you have managed to do with a multimillion
dollar investment in the strategic associations in its best year of sales.
Moreover, when Orimulsion was sold at a price tied to coal and invoiced gross
sales of US 200 million (see PDVSA’s report to the SEC), for each dollar
invested in Orimulsion, one obtained $0.50 in sales, the same level that the
four strategic associations have only managed to obtain under the price
euphoria of 2005. Contrary to what was argued by the Ministry of Energy and
Oil/PDVSA, Orimulsion has always been an excellent option for the profitable
and large scale development of the Orinoco oil
belt, without incurring in the costly penalty that implies the displacement of
the traditional production within the OPEC quota by the improved crudes.

The simple
calculation above can not escape the current authorities of the Ministry of
Energy and Oil/PDVSA. The only and great mystery that still persists is what is
the true reason for which they continue to be set on destroying the business of
Orimulsion, the endogenous development of greatest technical and commercial
success in the history of Venezuela.

After being postponed five times since September, the preliminary hearing to decide whether there will be a trial or not against the Sumate directive took place today. The judge will decide tomorrow if the trial will take place and in which conditions.

Note that despite that the Supreme Court indicated that in the event of
a trial, the accused should be free, the Fiscal in charge of the
case is asking that the Sumate directive be put in jail during the
trial….

Yeah, right, they are such DANGEROUS criminals that the society is in
REAL danger having Maria Corina and Alejandro Plaz walking the streets
of Caracas!

27 military masked police officers wandering around with machine guns are OK…but Maria Corina! that’s a no-no, she is a real threat!

I’ll keep you posted.
Jorge Arena.

One striking aspect of Hugo Chavez’s leadership is the way his
criticisms of past practices reliably foreshadow his own plans. Between
1998 and 2003, Chavez rarely missed a chance to criticize the Venezuelan
State Oil company, PDVSA, for its lack of transparency, accountability
and auditability. In the 30 months since chavistas took full control of
PDVSA, however, the oil industry has reached levels of opacity,
unaccountability, and inauditability undreamed of in the pre-Chavez era.

Now, with the proposed reforms to Venezuela’s Central Bank Law, the lack
of transparency that has characterized PDVSA’s operations since 2003
will be officially extended to the oil industry’s
thick revenue stream. As explained by AIO in Daniel’s Blog
the new Central Bank law would enshrine in law a series of quasi legal
practices in place since last year that allow PDVSA to keep part of its
dollar revenues outside the country, to be spent – as dollars – however
the government wants.

Needless to say, in the current context, “the government” and “Chavez”
are synonyms.

There’s so much wrong with this proposal it’s hard to know where to even
start. From my point of view, though, what’s most dismaying about the
new law is that it officializes the Chavista Parallel Budgets doctrine.

Blithely discarding the long established principle of the “single treasury” –
la unidad del tesoro” – and the centuries’ old doctrine of the
parliamentary “power of the purse strings,” the new law allows PDVSA
(read: Chavez) to set aside billions of dollars each year to spend
without any constraints, controls, or oversight whatsoever. The
fundamental notion that the state can only spend money in accordance to
a budget approved by the elected legislature – a doctrine dating back to
Magna Carta and enshrined in every modern constitution around the world,
including Venezuela’s 1999 constitution – is quite simply ignored, as is
any measure that might obstruct Chavez’s total discretionary power over
the billions of dollars involved.

The parallel dollar budget will stand beyond the reach of any attempt at
independent auditing. This is not merely because the Contraloria General
de la Republica and the National Assembly’s leadership have been in
the hands of presidential cronies for years – though this is clearly a
major part of the problem – but more fundamentally because it will be
administered in dollars, from accounts sitting outside the country,
where Venezuelan state auditors have no jurisdiction. No longer will
lack of transparency hinge on the contraloria’s current political
docility: with the new central bank law, even a future, hypothetically
honest contralor would be unable to track the money. Until now,
transparency has been enshrined in law but ignored in practice – with
these reforms, the Chavez cronies’ disdain for transparency is
solidified into law.

Shielded from any oversight, any need for parliamentary authorization,
any auditing standards, any controls at all, there is just no telling
what will happen to the substantial sums of money involved. One thing I
can say for sure as a social scientist: lack of transparency breeds
corruption. Barring a “government of angels” – which no country on earth
has, and Venezuela less than most – extending such thorough,
sure-fire guarantee of zero-oversight virtually guarantees that
substantial sums will be stolen. What will happen to the rest is
anyone’s guess.

In light of the longstanding Chavista rhetoric against the lack of
transparency in the old PDVSA’s finances, this whole episode brims with
particularly bitter irony.

Francisco Toro

And yet another editorial by Petkoff: Give Omar Mora his visa back

Omar Mora Diaz, who won the Presidency of the Venezuelan Supreme Court in a box of detergent, has thrown a terrible tantrum because the gringos voided his visa. He is not the first an only Venezuelan victim of the Patriot’s Act, in whose name, according to the recent report by Amnesty International, the US has turned into the country in which the largest human rights abuses are committed. In fact, the Director of this paper also had his visa voided last year, which shows the absolute irrationality of that paranoid policy that is being backed by the gringo neocons. But one does not understand these “revolutionaries” of ours. Weren’t we going to “revise” diplomatic relations with the US?  Isn’t it like it would be good to know what good it does us to have an embassy in Washington? One would have expected of Omar Mora a vibrant statement telling the gringos that they can stick their visa you know where…in their pocket because soon we are going to show how tough we are as a country when our commander in chief sends them to hell. But no way. Return his visa to poor Omar, that man is no “threat” to the security of the empire. He does not want to go there to put a bomb in New York but to sped the dollars from his big salary in Disneyland and the Miami stores, like any ta’ barato* squalid.

*ta’ barato: Name used to describe Venezuelans who went to Miami in the 70’s when the Bolivar was overvalued and they would supposedly say: “Ta’ barato, dame dos” (It is cheap, give me too. It was later shortened to the first part.

What the hell is this? by Teodoro Petkoff in Tal Cual

Bury the Tascón list? What a farce! I am writing this mini-report on the bases of information I received a few minutes ago from an economist that applied for a position at the Central Bank. She brought all her credentials and her CV.

Yesterday, the person in charge of handling personnel matters at the Central bank informed her that her credentials were impeccable but unfortunately she had not passed the “citizen aptitude” test. Surprised, the economist pointed out that she had had no problems with the law. “No, it is not that” her interviewer told her. “The citizen aptitude test has to do with you know”. No, I don’t know, what are you talking about? Demanded the economist in question somewhat astonished. From the other side, the verbal answer continued being mysterious and evasive: “You know that thing” but the hand made a gesture of signing. The economist understood. She had signed and at the Central Bank they had consulted, obviously, the miserable Tascon list, where her “citizen ineptitude” was registered. This mini-reporter, that personally knows a number of Directors of the Central Bank, is addressing them by their names: Tell me Gaston Parra, tell me Armando Leon, tell me Prof. Maza Zavala, tell me Jose Felix Rivas, tell me Bernardo Ferran. What the hell is this? Are you going to accept that in the Institution you direct commit this type of dirty tricks?

The Venezuelan Supreme Court admitted a suit against Deputy Luis Tascon on the same day the list officially became Chavez’ list, substituting Tascon’s name in it. As can be seen in the document below on January 30 2004, President Hugo Chavez sent a letter to the then President of the Electoral Board Francisco Carrasquero and authorizing Deputy Tascon to take with him the copies of the petition submitted by the opposition to request a recall referendum against President Hugo Chavez. This petition formed the basis for what had been known as Tascon’s list, but was clearly a direct order from the President himself. Moreover on Feb 1 2004, Chavez said in his Sunday program Alo Presidente :” I signed a few days ago an order asking for copies of all of the forms handed in by the opposition”.

Thus, the suit can now be extended to Chavez himself. Tascon tried today to defend himself by saying that he did what he did to stop a massive fraud, which was never shown, despite two rounds by the CNE to try to stop the recall process by inventing new rules. Where is the Attorney General in all this? This is noticia criminis which he should not, but will surely ignore. Will the former President of the CNE who happens to be now a Justice of the Constitutional Hall of the Venezuelan Supreme Court abstain? Or will he act with his usual bias and partiality?

Valentina Guzman was the first case that Teodoro Petkoff talked about in his Editorials in Tal Cual on the victims of the Tascon or McCarthyist list. She was a lawyer at FOGADE and was fired along with most of the employees of that institution who signed the petition to recall President Hugo Chavez. Her great grandmother was my grandfather’s sister. She wrote this article in today’s Tal Cual.

 I am not marrana* by Valentina Guzman Ramos

(*Marrana means either a swine or a converted Jew during the inquisition)

At the height of the Inquisition, according to Argentine writer Marcos Aguinis in his book “The heroic deeds of the Marrano”, those considered “heretical” by the Spanish crown, would be exhorted to “convert” to Catholicism so that they would not be taken to the bonfire for the sins charged due to their religious conditions. Those that were forced to accept would be called “marranos” because even though they had to accept, as their own, the catholic doctrine and faith, their blood was not one hundred percent clean or pure.

Many did it to save their lives and that of their families, others simply preferred to continue practicing their thousand-year traditions in silence or in some reckless cases, quite openly. Torquemada, the Spanish monk of the inquisition in charge of executing the decisions of the Kingdom, prepared his famous lists to inquire one by one, who had obeyed the royal edicts of conversion and those who because of “rebelliousness” had not complied with it. Of course, the latter were searched for in each corner of Spain and in each area of the new America, a continent to which they had to escape as their only way out of extermination.

This whole story took place during the years in which Isabella the Catholic governed the vast territories of the motherland, an epoch which was later called obscurantist, and of course, of little tolerance. I don’t know if I had a sort of “déja vú” or a close encounter with my recent reincarnations, but something similar (of, course, not as drastic as death) happened to the workers of FOGADE, for not being with “the process”. At times, I felt like a poor Jew or gypsy because for believing in a Constitution, or in the “rule of law” or in a “participative democracy”, I was “marked” and “pointed to” for manifesting my position both publicly and openly, signing the petition for a referendum that constituted a right, as much as any other consecrated in our “Carta Magna”. Thus, my new boss and some of my colleagues that worked with me, turned themselves into cruel instruments of persecution and harassment, elaborating lists, laughing in hiding, point at us as “opposition” and accusing us as if we had committed a terrible crime against an ideology that was imposed at all costs.

The saddest thing about the case is that in order not to be fired, many “converted” with their silence, or with their tacit acceptance and filthy complicity with the “process”. And with that change in attitude, the qualification of “marranos” ended up being too small and poor, because they literally sold their soul, their values and their beliefs in order to survive (Of course, this presupposes that they had had those souls, those values and those beliefs). At the beginning I judged them, and was so disappointed that they even got me depressed. With time, I learned that there are people whose dignity is worth very little, or better, is not worth anything.

Was I discriminated against? Everything seems to indicate that yes…But I have to confess and I say I in all honesty: I DO NOT REGRET HAVING EXPRESSED MY OPINION and what is worst (because for many this attitude is stubborn and arrogant) I continue to maintain it. I prefer to be condemned to die in a bonfire and burn in the fire of injustice, that sell myself for a salary, for stability, for economic benefits that in no way feed neither my spirit, nor my soul. I AM NOT A MARRANA and I say it with honor. I don’t need redeemers that want to scratch my name to “wash their hands” and “clean their sense of guilt” nor do I want either that my name be removed from any list, because if being in it meant fighting for what I believe in, then that is precisely where I want to be. Thus, Mr. Tascon and all the other “Pilates” of this Government: I don’t need your last hour favors, or your late “mercy”. I feel proud of what I did and happy because I did not silence my ideas, nor saved my thoughts. Signing to express my disagreement can not be considered a heroic act, or least of all a superhuman effort, it simply consisted on the exercise of a right that the same “inquisitors” established in our Constitution and which I exercise with pleasure.

As if it were not outrageous enough that there existed a list, the so called Tascon list, which contained the ID numbers of all Venezuelans who signed a petition requesting a recall referendum against President Hugo Chavez, today we find out in El Universal that there was an even more sophisticated piece of software, we could call it the Super Tascon list, which was used by Chavez’ campaign command during their campaign to drive out the NO vote (and stop the Si vote) in the recall referendum. For recent arrivals, the Tascon list was a copy of the database from the Consejo Nacional Electoral (CNE) which was placed on the webpage of Luis Tascon, a Deputy from Chavez’ MVR party and distributed in CD’s. The list has been used to fire, hire, discriminate and persecute those that signed against Chavez and work or wanted to work for the Government, as documented in the category Tascon Fascist List on the left. It was a very simple program, you would put in the ID number of the person and it would tell you where they vote and whether they signed against President Chavez or not.

Today, El Universal publishes the Super Tascon software used by the so called “Electoral Battle Units” of the Maisanta command, Chavez’s campaign command for the recall referendum. This “Units” were equipped with laptops, all 14,000 of them paid by the country’s oil company PDVSA, that were supposed to aid “in giving people have access to the information, control the voting process, avoid fraud” all without the use of Internet.

The software is much more sophisticated than the simple Tascon list. In the Tascon software you inserted the number and it would give you the answer of whether teh person signed or not, which required you to know the national ID number of the person. Here, you could do reverse finding, insert the name of the person and in a much slower process the program will find the person. It would also tell you whether the person’s signature had been rejected by the CNE, thus making you “suspect” even if you did not appear in the list of those that had signed. The program called “Santa Ines Version 1.10” in honor of an obscure battle in Venezuela’s history, had much more information that certainly violates the right to privacy of all those that participated in the petition drive to oust President Chavez (and even those that did not).

Below is the window which would appear when you searched for someone. Right next to the ID number (Called Cedula) it says: Did not sign against the President. But it goes way beyond that. It shows the date of birth, the home address of the person (the phone number if the data was available) and on the left bottom corner it says whether the person has died, whether the person has voted (Defined as abstentionist) and whether the person is involved in two of the “Misiones” that the Government has started. Thus, the program has access to multiple databases: the Electoral database, the National ID card database and the Government’s database on the Misiones.

The software says in it’s About “This software contains the Electoral registries up to March 2004. It also contains the national ID numbers of people who have died who were registered to vote. Future versions of this program can be obtained at www.luistascon.com ”.

I am at total disbelief here at seeing all this. From the fact that PDVSA paid for the laptops, which is a crime under Venezuelan law, to the lack of respect for the privacy and rights of all Venezuelans  whether pro or against Chavez, by their own Government, the intromission in the personal lives of millions of Venezuelans, the existence of this program simply reaffirms that this country is being run by a bunch of crooks without any scruples and who are fascists at heart.

Will the Attorney General/Prosecutor do something about this? Well, let’s see, who was President of the Comando Maisanta? President Hugo Chavez. Who were its members? Among others, Jesse Chacon, Minister of Justice (hah!), Diosdado Cabello (Governor of Miranda State), Mari Pili Hernandez (Vice-Minister of Foreign Relations), Nelson Merentes (Minister of Finance). In any other country, all of these people would be charged TOMORROW for human rights violations, violation of the Constitution and misuse of funds. In this Dictatorship with no checks and balances and Justice, nothing will happen, it will another scandal on top of many others.

One for the ages, today from Government officials:

–Hugo Chavez: I have ordered the introduction of the Armed Forces in PDVSA Occidente because there is a dark and hairy hand there…

–Minister of Oil and President of PDVSA Ramirez: I categorically deny the militarization of PDVSA Occidente as reported by the national press today…

Hey, it is very clear, either Ramirez is the dark and hairy hand, or
Chavez is the dark and hairy hand. But clearly, these two guys don’t
work together, unless the CIA did it!