Rope Tightens: U.S. Orders Foreign Firms To Further Cut Down On Oil Trades With Venezuela

[50 shades of black + 254]

The United States has instructed oil trading houses and refiners around the world to further cut dealings with Venezuela or face sanctions themselves, even if the trades are not prohibited by published U.S. sanctions, three sources familiar with the matter said Reuters Agencies. The move comes as Washington’s efforts to oust President Nicolas Maduro in favor of opposition leader Juan Guaido have stalled, and is further evidence of how it is leaning on non-U.S. firms to achieve its foreign policy goals. The U.S. imposed fresh sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry earlier this year but some companies have continued to supply the country with fuel from India, Russia and Europe. Washington is particularly keen to end deliveries of gasoline and refined products used to dilute Venezuela’s heavy crude oil to make it suitable for export. Jet fuel and diesel would be exempt for humanitarian reasons, the sources said. The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced a ban in early February on the use of its financial system in oil deals with Venezuela after April. But as recently as this week, the U.S. State department has called up foreign firms to say that the scope of the sanctions is wider.

[Pavel + 384]

I'm not sure it will work..

[francoba + 93]

Meanwhile,  agencies report that oil is set for its biggest quarterly rise in price since 2009 amid OPEC cuts and US sanctions against Iran and Venezuela.

[pinto + 293]

1 minute ago, francoba said:

Meanwhile,  agencies report that oil is set for its biggest quarterly rise in price since 2009 amid OPEC cuts and US sanctions against Iran and Venezuela.

Good days for oil giants, OPEC.. for everyone in that chain, except ordinary people

[50 shades of black + 254]

So, Putin will take it for granted.... Russia has a 2001 agreement with Venezuela concerning oil rights. And, it agreement is, as we see, stronger than ever...

[rainman + 263]

 The countries with the most oil reserves:  Venezuela tops the list with 300.9 billion barrels of oil in reserve...unfortunately the poor Venezuelans can't feel it. The Maduro's regime has destroyed the state.

 

[Pavel + 384]

Until now, the only concrete result is the strong presence of Russia in Venezuela... And, it's clear sign that something has to change...

 

[Uvuvwevwevwe Onyetenyevwe Ugwemuhwem Osas + 96]

US naval blockade = game over Maduro

[ceo_energemsier + 1,818]

3 hours ago, rainman said:

 The countries with the most oil reserves:  Venezuela tops the list with 300.9 billion barrels of oil in reserve...unfortunately the poor Venezuelans can't feel it. The Maduro's regime has destroyed the state.

 

Chavez and Maduro raped, plundered and pillaged the natural resources and financial resources created because of those for all of Venezuela. It will take a decade to bring the oil industry and natural resources industries back to a certain level of productivity and sustainability.

[ceo_energemsier + 1,818]

4 hours ago, 50 shades of black said:

The United States has instructed oil trading houses and refiners around the world to further cut dealings with Venezuela or face sanctions themselves, even if the trades are not prohibited by published U.S. sanctions, three sources familiar with the matter said Reuters Agencies. The move comes as Washington’s efforts to oust President Nicolas Maduro in favor of opposition leader Juan Guaido have stalled, and is further evidence of how it is leaning on non-U.S. firms to achieve its foreign policy goals. The U.S. imposed fresh sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry earlier this year but some companies have continued to supply the country with fuel from India, Russia and Europe. Washington is particularly keen to end deliveries of gasoline and refined products used to dilute Venezuela’s heavy crude oil to make it suitable for export. Jet fuel and diesel would be exempt for humanitarian reasons, the sources said. The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced a ban in early February on the use of its financial system in oil deals with Venezuela after April. But as recently as this week, the U.S. State department has called up foreign firms to say that the scope of the sanctions is wider.

This will work to a certain degree. Some trading houses are already moving towards abandoning all trades with Venezuela even those based in Switzerland.

[Leroy Cox + 7]

there have been too many "decisive" and "this time its big!" sanctions...and yet Iran, Venezuela continue to trade their oil. payments are made outside of SWIFT, traders are registered in sovereign states, Turkey, China, and Russia (oil for goods) trade Iranian oil. China has boosted purchases of Venezuelan oil by 17% last month. Outside of creating more noise, I don't think Washington can affect anything. Now that Guiado is looking more and more pointless, only open aggression could rescue the situation from a diplomatic defeat. After Korea, Iran, Syria, could Trump afford another one?

Edited March 29, 2019 by Leroy Cox

[Happy Go Lucky + 25]

" diplomatic defeat. After Korea, Iran, Syria, could Trump afford another one? "

Could be Trump's game plan - make the U.S. a paper tiger --- 😫

[Dmitry Bedin + 25]

2 hours ago, Leroy Cox said:

there have been too many "decisive" and "this time its big!" sanctions...and yet Iran, Venezuela continue to trade their oil. payments are made outside of SWIFT, traders are registered in sovereign states, Turkey, China, and Russia (oil for goods) trade Iranian oil. China has boosted purchases of Venezuelan oil by 17% last month. Outside of creating more noise, I don't think Washington can affect anything. Now that Guiado is looking more and more pointless, only open aggression could rescue the situation from a diplomatic defeat. After Korea, Iran, Syria, could Trump afford another one?

Another epic fail you mean?

[B H + 5]

  Trump and his neocon security adviser John Bolton, are attempting to steal Venezuela's oil and then hand it over to US oil companies.  Venezuela's has a democratically elected government, plain and simple. Venezuela isn't threatening anyone militarily. So what's the f^%cking problem?  OIl. Venezuela nationalized it and US oil companies want it.  All one needs as evidence is to look at Honduras by comparison. Honduras current dictator, Juan Orlando Hernandez, won his last election by stealing it:

Quote

 

 

After voting, the TSE planned to begin releasing vote totals as they came out, but suspended the process for close to seven hours.^[19] Before any official results had been announced, Hernández declared himself the victor, and Nasralla followed by also claiming victory.^[19] The following day, the TSE released its first preliminary results: with 57% of the votes counted, Nasralla held a 5 point advantage over Hernández, with 45.17% to Hernández's 40.21%.^[20]

The TSE then halted the count for 36 hours^[21] and announced that final results may not become available until Thursday, 30 November.^[19] Over the course of the week, the TSE released updated vote totals, which saw Nasralla's lead steadily erode and Hernández pull ahead in the vote count.^[21] After the TSE again paused in its vote totals for several hours, claiming to have experienced a glitch in the computer system,^[21] Nasralla denounced the TSE for fraud, declared he would not recognize the results, and urged his supporters to take to the streets, which they did across the country.^[22] According to an analysis done by Georgetown University professor Irfan Nooruddin for the Organization of American States, there was a sudden swing in the vote totals after 68 percent of the votes were counted.^[6] Nooruddin concluded that the "differences are too large to be generated by chance and are not easily explicable, raising doubts as to the veracity of the overall result."^[23]

On 30 November, with approximately 94% of the votes counted, Hernández's lead had climbed to 42.92% compared to 41.42% for Nasralla.^[22] On 1 December, the TSE announced that they would give no further results until the TSE had been able to review all of the 1,031 tally sheets which had not been properly filled out by the political parties.^[22][24] The 1,031 tally sheets represent 5.69% of the total vote.^[24] Later that same day, as the TSE was still trying to convoke 60 representatives and four supervisors for both Nasralla and Hernández for the final vote count,^[25] Hernández's cabinet announced a ten-day curfew from 6pm to 6am to try to calm the violence associated with the protests.^[4]

On 2 December, the Honduran National Roundtable for Human Rights issued a press release, in which it declared that the government actions were state terrorism against civilians, it warned that the declaration of a state of exception was in order to create repression to ensure electoral fraud labeling it as illegal after reading several articles of the Honduran constitution.^[26]

As of 15 December, 2017, the court had finished a recount of ballot boxes that presented irregularities but had still not declared a winner, and protests continued throughout the country, with 16 deaths and 1,675 arrests, according to Honduras' National Human Rights' Commission.^[30] The court had 30 days from the contest to do so.^[30]

The TSE finally announced a winner on 17 December, giving Hernández the victory with 42.95% of the vote to Nasralla's 41.42%.^[31] The announcement sparked a new wave of protests across the country, with Mel Zelaya announcing a national strike.^[31] The country's two major cities - Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula - saw streets blockaded, their main exits blocked, and traffic between them severely reduced.^[31][32]

Organization of American States (OAS) election monitors, in their final report, documented widespread and numerous irregularities in the conduct of the voting and ballot tabulation, and doubted the validity of the official results. OAS secretary general Luis Almagro issued a statement following the TSE's announcement saying: "Facing the impossibility of determining a winner, the only way possible so that the people of Honduras are the victors is a new call for general elections." Hernández rejected the OAS's position, and his top aide accused of OAS of seeking "to try and steal the election" for Nasralla.^[6]

The Economist analyzed the vote tallies as reported by the TSE and compared that information with census data to analyze the validity of Hernández's explanation for the sudden swing in the vote tallies: that the later votes came from areas with more National Party support.^[33] However, The Economist found that explanation implausible, noting that the swing happened in municipalities, which tend to be small and urban, across the country.^[33] The only other explanation for the swing in the vote tally would be that paper ballots favored Hernández by 18 percentage points where electronic ballots favored Nasralla by 5 percentage points, but, as The Economist noted, the "odds are that that didn’t happen".^[33]

 

 ^{Trump had no problem with it and immediately accepted the results. Just as many Hondurans, if not more, have fled their county  as have Venezuelans theirs,. No plans for sanctioning}  Honduras..

 

[Gerard Remy + 10]

Maduro for all his ills is not using the army to kill his own people like most dictators do so to me is not really a dictator and does not deserve to be burdened by all these sanctions which are only hurting innocent citizens the most. President Trumps strongman politics is getting out of hand where now he is ordering private companies to impose sanctions on Venezuela. I wonder now who is the real dictator?

[ceo_energemsier + 1,818]

On 3/29/2019 at 9:34 PM, Gerard Remy said:

Maduro for all his ills is not using the army to kill his own people like most dictators do so to me is not really a dictator and does not deserve to be burdened by all these sanctions which are only hurting innocent citizens the most. President Trumps strongman politics is getting out of hand where now he is ordering private companies to impose sanctions on Venezuela. I wonder now who is the real dictator?

Hello Gerard!!!

If I may. ask you, where are you from.... your statement seems to say that you are an inner circle Venezuelan elite? I am just assuming?

Dictators ,  are they like taters? baked or fried? LOL all in fun and jest

Edited April 2, 2019 by Rodent
violation of community guidelines

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,194]

15 hours ago, francoba said:

Meanwhile,  agencies report that oil is set for its biggest quarterly rise in price since 2009 amid OPEC cuts and US sanctions against Iran and Venezuela.

OPEC aren't stupid.  They have eyes and ears; see the Permian basin pipeline bottleneck and purposefully cut oil production to jack prices up.  Prices will drop once again when that bottleneck is opened. As for the rest of the worlds production.... meh... has as much to do with declining production around the world in most areas and increasing demand along with a few new areas opening up. 

PS: Ven wasn't producing anything without the sanctions.  Sanctions are just an excuse.  Now those against Iran?  Yea, that helped jack the price up more than anything else.

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,194]

10 hours ago, Leroy Cox said:

 China has boosted purchases of Venezuelan oil by 17% last month.

Uh.... China doesn't actually USE that oil.  They "buy" it and immediately sell it.  For a long time China was "buying" Ven oil and selling to USA.  Just curious, who are they selling it to now?

[B H + 5]

What?  No sanctions on Saudi Arabia's unelected brutal regime?  What's the latest on sanctions for longtime human rights abusers like China, Uzbekistan, Myanmar, Kazakhstanan, Cambodia etc.? Any warnings from the U.S. government sanctioning  corporations conducting business in or with any of those countries? Didn't think so. 

I really wonder sometimes as to who exactly they think they're fooling with their bullsh*t.

[Uvuvwevwevwe Onyetenyevwe Ugwemuhwem Osas + 96]

8 hours ago, B H said:

What?  No sanctions on Saudi Arabia's unelected brutal regime?  What's the latest on sanctions for longtime human rights abusers like China, Uzbekistan, Myanmar, Kazakhstanan, Cambodia etc.? Any warnings from the U.S. government sanctioning  corporations conducting business in or with any of those countries? Didn't think so. 

I really wonder sometimes as to who exactly they think they're fooling with their bullsh*t.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

Whataboutism is a variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy that attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging them with hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving their argument, which in the United States is particularly associated with Soviet and Russian propaganda.

[B H + 5]

 

 

 

Quote

    Whataboutism is a variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy that attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging them with hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving their argument, which in the United States is particularly associated with Soviet and Russian propaganda.

 

Lol!!!!  Yeah, good luck with that sh*t!!!     

 

 

 

[AncientEyes + 14]

I think this maybe escalation of the geopolitical tidal waves that are leading to bigger moves on the grand chessboard. I don't see the U.S. is so much as being interested in the oil that Venezuela has for its own, but rather, to ward off potential competitors - in this case, Russia and China. The grand chessboard appears to be a lot like turf war between different mob groups - U.S., EU, China and Russia - all vying for a bigger slice of the pie. If the U.S. can have some energy choke points, it figures it still may have an advantage over China and Russia. 

There was a time when no one would dare go against the U.S. and sell oil to sanctioned countries. Times are changing, as the wealth of the world has moved East, along with the geopolitical center of gravity. If a few don't go along, other parties may be emboldened or galvanized to. Even if most adhere to the U.S. order, the fact that a few don't is already telling.

Bit by bit, the status of the petrodollar is increasingly chipped away in a death by a thousand cuts. By warding off competitors, it is also an attempt to maintain the petrodollar paradigm. The question then is, if the U.S. cannot get its way through 'diplomatic' dictations, will it revert to force? And if so, will other major powers respond? If so, in what ways? If they respond, then depending on their geopolitical standing, they may go tit for that, or raise the stakes.

Unfortunately for humanity, when world orders change, it is never pretty, and there is usually never a peaceful transition between the ages. Change of world orders usually leads to world wars.

 

[AncientEyes + 14]

On 3/29/2019 at 11:03 AM, Leroy Cox said:

there have been too many "decisive" and "this time its big!" sanctions...and yet Iran, Venezuela continue to trade their oil. payments are made outside of SWIFT, traders are registered in sovereign states, Turkey, China, and Russia (oil for goods) trade Iranian oil. China has boosted purchases of Venezuelan oil by 17% last month. Outside of creating more noise, I don't think Washington can affect anything. Now that Guiado is looking more and more pointless, only open aggression could rescue the situation from a diplomatic defeat. After Korea, Iran, Syria, could Trump afford another one?

Essentially this. It's sad but true. If the U.S. does not use force, then it may well be the most anticlimactic and humorous diplomatic defeat to add on top of the list of the ones mentioned. Trump is too vain, egoic and psychopathic to notice the nuances of geopolitics. I don't want to find out how miscalculating he can be on the world stage.

[Mike Marcellus + 157]

anyone interested in helping the people in Venezuela, ...or just criticizing the people who are trying to help?

The efforts are stalling, I hope this non violent plan works.

[Refman + 207]

A lot of the of the crude that was previously being purchased by US companies is now being purchased by Rosneft, and a lot of it is going to India.

 

Looks like Rosneft not currently too bothered by the US sanctions

Edited April 2, 2019 by Refman