Post #3050

Venezuela has been open to partnering with U.S. companies like Chevron for years. The terms are simple. Foreign companies operate as minority partners. They pay royalties and taxes. Ownership stays with the Venezuelan state. PDVSA controls the flows. State decides where the revenue goes. The problem is not commercial; win-win arrangements are easy. The problem is political. A confluence of U.S. actors focused on way more than the day-to-day margins from oil sales—but control over oil flows, control over ownership structures, control over the collateral that underpins the entire Western financial architecture. These actors operate on longer time horizons than quarterly earnings. They seek to eliminate every model of resource sovereignty before it spreads. To maintain dollar-denominated energy markets. To ensure the largest reserves in the Western Hemisphere serve U.S. strategic interests—not China's. The irony: when sanctions block U.S. companies, 90% of PDVSA's cargoes go to China anyway. These gangsters have been taking down, or trying to take down, every country with a nationalized oil sector that pursues an agenda independent from Wall Street and its oil banks. Iraq. Libya. Syria. Iran. Russia. Venezuela. It's a hitlist of competitors. The pattern is the policy.