I believe that the oil industry has been lobbying on this for a long time, and they’ve said as much outside of this immediate context. One of the things they do a lot around Trump is publicly protest too much and say, “Trump is pushing for deregulation, but that’s not what we are interested in.” They say in the media, “Just because Trump wants us to produce more doesn’t mean we’re going to.”
If the greatest lie the devil ever told was to convince us that he wasn’t real, the greatest lie the oil industry ever told us is to convince us that they don’t want oil. Where do we even begin to think about that as possible? They want to control when they produce it and how, and under what terms. They need to show a growing amount of oil that they can count as their reserves.
There are very few big pots of oil left sitting around anywhere unclaimed. The only way to get that is to increase technology, go into very expensive, technologically complex modes of production that face a lot of resistance. Venezuela is a country that [the big oil companies] were producing in not that long ago and making money in not that long ago and have wanted to get back into but on their own terms.
So I think when they protest publicly, one, it’s to distance themselves from Trump’s extremism, but two, it’s a great public negotiating tactic. They’re basically saying publicly, and the media is repeating it, “We wouldn’t want to operate in Venezuela. Oh, my God, it’s expensive, it’s technologically complex.” I actually think those are ridiculous things if you look where else they operate.
It helps their negotiating position with Venezuela, because ultimately, what this is about is: Will there be terms that will make it worth their while to go to Venezuela, and can those trust that those terms will carry into the future? Things like the cost of starting up Venezuela production, which is something that gets cited a lot.
Exxon was producing in…
Auteur: Antonia Juhasz
