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Judi Lynn

(160,217 posts)
Sun May 5, 2019, 08:35 PM May 2019

From March: Venezuela: The Trump Coup And Our Next Oil War


Aggressive Progressive Jimmy Dore interviews Palast
MARCH 6, 2019
Greg Palast

People don’t know the Kochs have these giant refineries, some of the biggest in the world, on the Gulf Coast of Texas, in the middle of oilfields. They can’t use Texas oil because it’s not heavy and filthy enough, so they have to take almost all their oil from Venezuela, one of the only places where you get this super heavy oil. Normally it’s discounted. But because they know the Kochs have to use their oil, Chavez, who was really bright man, was squeezing the Kochs by the cojones and charging them a premium for his oil. The Kochs have been going crazy – they were losing money at their refinery because of the price.

. . .

So they had two choices. Buy Tar Sands gunk from Canada, via the XL Pipeline, but it’s taking too long. First they had to get Trump to come in as president and overcome all of the environmental objections to get the XL Pipeline approved. But it still ain’t there. So what do you do? You better overthrow the government of Venezuela with some guy named Juan Guaido who said, and I quote, “I will open up the Venezuela oil fields to American companies. You have to understand, Exxon was basically thrown out of Venezuela. They’ve had lawsuits going against Venezuela. Guaido says he’ll pay off Exxon and he will let Exxon take control again of the Venezuelan oil fields. That’s what this game is about, it’s about the oil.

. . .

And who is this guy Juan Guaido that Trump has said he’s recognized as president? He’s not someone who said, “Oh, the election was stolen from me.” He literally never ran for president. He’s just a 35-year old white guy – and that’s really at the heart of it. That’s something that Trump likes. He speaks good English, he hung out with the Right Wing think tanks in Washington, went to George Washington University. He’s a rich, white guy. That’s really, really important. And in a Mestizo nation, which is made up of about 70% Mestizos, that is people, as Chavez told me, who are a combination of “Negro e Indio,” as he said, black and indigenous, that’s the majority of the people in Venezuela, but they’re finding a white guy to run it.

https://www.gregpalast.com/venezuela-the-trump-coup-and-our-next-oil-war/
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