A chavez topic

[Tribesman]

Self interest. He wants to be the big player in South America, with de facto control with the oil pipeline.

yep , though the change in policy is more to do with someone else entering the equation .

. Ethanol / biofuels takes away his lead, giving it more to Brazil.

If that were so then how was the old deal being done , the old policy involved Venezuelan investment in Brazilian State owned and private sugar/ethanol companies and those same Brazilian companies investing and developing Venezuelas sugar/ethanol industry .
It cannot be the .....the use of ethanol as a biofuel would use up valuable arable land and increase food prices....line either as Venezuela cannot produce sufficient sugar for its domestic market , and hasn't been able to for many decades , that is being dealt with by the modernisation of the carribean sugar industy by Venezuelan investment in return for cheap guaranteed imports .
It would certainly appear that the only reason for his change in policy is the US involvement .

[Seamus Fermanagh]

It would certainly appear that the only reason for his change in policy is the US involvement.

So far this seems likely to be the best explanation.

Sad, really. It's not a wise basis for policy in realpolitik terms, and given our propensity for tossing out administrations after no more than 12 years, it doesn't even speak to securing a means of influencing U.S. policy over the long haul -- vindictiveness against one U.S. admin does not mean winning points with the successors, and even if it did, the successorts are only there for so long anyway.

[BigTex]

Brazil recently signed an alliance with the US to promote ethanol production.

Quoted for the truth. Little else matters to that man more then having a pissing contest with the USA. Not to mention that higher uses of ethanol would lower their profits, two birds with one stone and all.

[JAG]

Realpolitik.

Dare I say it, the same kind of realpolitik Bush underwent when agreeing the ethanol agreement with Brazil in the first place.

It is politics after all.

[Tribesman]

Wierd , both Rory and Tex mention the effect on profits , how is that the case ?
Venezuela subsidises very heavily its domestic fuel supply , the deal with Brazil was for both importing Brazilian ehthanol and producing its own domestic supply , this would reduce its domestic petroleum consumption would it not , which would free that petroleum for export .
Apart from the special deals it has with some countries the exported petrol is not subsidised by Venezuela , so how would the ethanol program have reduced profits considering the expected increases in Asian oil consumption and the oil export deals Venezuela has made in that region ?

Quoted for the truth. Little else matters to that man more then having a pissing contest with the USA.

The same could be said for the current US administration , considering the relations between Chavez , De Silva and Washington . The US/Brazilian deal is a pissing contest in the face of the Venezuelan/Brazilian deal .
So is the US deal actually of much benefit to America , or is it just an attempt to annoy Chavez ?

[rory_20_uk]

Venezuela exports masses of fuel. The worth of this allows the home subsidy.

[Tribesman]

Venezuela exports masses of fuel. The worth of this allows the home subsidy.

So how could domestic production and consumption of ethanol negatively affect profits from exports considering the limited global scale of the bio-fuel production ?
Don't forget the policy Chavez has abandoned was to reduce domestic petroleum consumption and increase exports .

[Seamus Fermanagh]

So is the US deal actually of much benefit to America , or is it just an attempt to annoy Chavez ?

Economically, no. It's more expensive to do the ethanol thing than it is to exploit known reserves etc. Politically, it lets the administration throw a sop to the enviro-republicans and claim they're actually "doing something" about dependency on foreign oil. More political theater than actual substance if you ask me.

[Adrian II]

So is the US deal actually of much benefit to America , or is it just an attempt to annoy Chavez ?

Heh, well spotted, and a well-made thread, Tribesman.

Almost without smileys, totally without hateful comments... See, you can do it.

[Tribesman]

More political theater than actual substance if you ask me.

Smoke and mirrors theatre , from both Venezuela and the US .

Heh, well spotted, and a well-made thread, Tribesman.

Can you spot the real "reasoning" behind the moves ?
Considering that Venezuela isn't actually cancelling the ethanol project it is massively scaling it back .
It has more to do with a sugar producing country that doesn't have oil that was going to get most benefit out of the deal until the US intervened with the company that owns the technology for the planned refineries .

[Xiahou]

Venezuela is the region's only member of the oil-producers' cartel Opec and Mr Chavez opposes the use of ethanol.

No, really?

yep , though the change in policy is more to do with someone else entering the equation .

Who does Venezuela export most of their oil to? Certainly Chavez would be concerned about another country making major alternative fuel deals with the US. Predictably, he wraps up his self-interest in typical anti-American rhetoric.