“Just as the US governments need the oil companies to guarantee the fuel necessary for their capacity for global war, the oil companies need their governments and their military power to ensure the control of oil resources throughout the world and along transport routes”.

James Paul, Report of the Global Policy Forum.

Oil is indispensable for US capitalism. Black gold is their vital sap. All of their lavish and unsustainable American Way of Life is based on the consumption of petroleum. It is the country of the world that consumes the most hydrocarbons daily: 20 million barrels per day. The country that follows, the People’s Republic of China, barely reaches half of this figure: 10 million barrels per day. Between their immeasurable industrial base, the monumental quantity of individually owned automobiles and their means of mass transport that mobilize their population and the gigantic military apparatus at their disposition (plus a strategic reserve, calculated at 700 million barrels), their thirst for this element is insatiable.

The petroleum business is in fact one of the biggest in the world: the second after the military industry (35 thousand dollars per second spent on arms). The US oil companies, all private, are among the largest in the planet: mega-monsters of global scope, such as Exxon-Mobil (the fourth company at the world level), Chevron-Texaco, Conoco-Phillips, Amoco, Bush Energy, Oxy, and some other lesser ones (Koch Industries, Apache Corporation, PBF Energy, Alon USA), all have multimillion-dollar sales, and to a large extent they determine the foreign policy of Washington.

One might say that the history of the United States is the history of oil: of that in their subsoil (60% of their daily consumption) and of that in the subsoil of other countries, that the ruling class of the nation still appears to consider their own, with the slight difference–an “awkward detail”–that it is not within their borders. Why does the geopolitics of the United States put so much emphasis on the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, or more recently–from the Bolivarian revolution onwards–on Venezuela? Because that is where the greatest reserves of black gold in the world are. And because, although they are not in their own subsoil, they consider them their own.

There are two reasons for which the imperial policy of Washington reeks of petroleum (and of arms: their military-industrial complex is the first business of their economy). On the one hand, because they need to continue maintaining their provision of black gold as the indispensable oxygen of their capitalist economic system (their industrial base, the whole huge field of petrochemicals, the world of the automobile, of transport in general–air, land, sea–, their military apparatus, the space race... all depend, directly or indirectly, on oil). Ensuring their access to oil (40% of their consumption comes from the exterior), it maintains their living standard, and, fundamentally, it ensures that the mega oil companies that manage this fabulous business cannot fail.

A significant fact: the present Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, was formerly the Executive Director of the mega oil company Exxon-Mobil; likewise, the ex-Secretary, Condoleezza Rice, used to be a distinguished member of the directorate of the Chevron oil company. What does this mean? That the high-level policy of the White House does not greatly distinguish between a decision-making public official and the high-ranking staff of their global corporations; in reality, they are practically the same. Who is running whom?

But on the other hand–and this today is of capital importance–, the petroleum business, at least to date, has operated in dollars. This currency, imposed by US imperialism, is what dominates in international oil transactions. When some countries (Iran, Iraq, North Korea) manifested their distancing from the dollar zone to employ other currencies (euro, ruble, yuan, yen, a combined basket of currencies) in their international trade, they were declared members of “the axis of evil”, supposedly for supporting that always imprecise and never well defined “terrorism”. This is clear: Washington trembles (and trembles greatly!) on seeing that their currency may lose value... or, in other words, when they see that their empire may begin to fall.

For the geostrategy of the White House, losing the hegemony of the dollar for oil transactions marks the beginning of the end of their supremacy. This is why they want at all cost to ensure world oil reserves (at least the greater part of them) in order not to have to engage in trade where Washington cannot dictate the conditions.

Why did Secretary of State Rex Tillerson leave on February 1 for a weeklong trip through “friendly” countries of Latin America (Mexico, Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Jamaica, all of them countries with ultra-right neoliberal governments that are totally aligned with the policies of the Northern master? Supposedly it was to “promote a secure, prosperous and democratic hemisphere, with energy security”. What does this mean?

It means preparing the conditions to guarantee “their” energy security, that of their country, of the American Way of Life that the US population should continue to enjoy, in order not to damage the economy of their big corporations. That is: to retrieve the enormous oil reserves of Venezuela (the biggest in the world) in order to ensure a provision of black gold in the long term (over 200 years), thus enabling them to continue fixing the prices in dollars.

Several of the five biggest oil companies in the world (the State Saudi Aramco, of Saudi Arabia, the State National Iranian Oil Company –NIOC–, of Iran, the State China National Petroleum Corporation–CNPC–, of the People’s Republic of China, the private Exxon-Mobil company, of the United States, and the State Petroleum of Venezuela –PDVSA–), are at present already escaping from the primacy of the dollar: the Iranians, the Chinese and the Venezuelans are moving towards arranging their transactions in other currencies. Obviously, the US ruling class is trembling.

In the first place China, the second world oil consumer and the great economic-industrial-financial power, has begun to establish future oil contracts in petro-yuanes, duly backed by gold, and no longer in dollars. This is linked to the launch that Russia will make on March 5 of the crypto-ruble (this country having the largest petroleum reserve outside of OPEC, also with large gold reserves), plus the entry in force, as of February 20, of the crypto-currency Petro, in Venezuela, all of which will be released from their link to the dollar zone, as will Iran also.

The “energy security” sought by the United States, that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson laid on thick during his trip, is nothing other than the attempt (a desperate attempt) to re-seize the energy reserves of Venezuela (petroleum and gas, and eventually other strategic minerals, but fundamentally oil), the administration of which, since the Bolivarian Revolution, has been taken over by the State itself, with a national and popular project with a socialist bent.

Thus, to lose PDVSA is inadmissible for the imperial logic (which is the logic of their ruling class, and in this case, of the big oil corporations). In other words, the trip of Secretary Tillerson was seeking to create a regional group absolutely aligned with Washington-the Arcomepe: Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Peru–from which to ask (and bring about) a “humanitarian” intervention in Venezuela. All this makes it more than evident that in Venezuela there is no “murderous narco-dictatorship”, as the venomous dominant discourse promoted by the White House and its media factories claims: but there is a great deal of oil! There is a State petroleum company that now, since Chávez took on the presidency and built the Bolivarian Revolution, distributes the income generated by this business in a more equitable and popular way, benefitting historically marginalized social groups! PDSVA, with the present political process underway, ceased to be a US affiliate to become a true Venezuelan corporation with a deep social projection.

The idea of the US government is that the petro-secretary “minister of the colonies”, on his trip through “this little village that lies to the South of the Río Bravo called Latin America”, could create the conditions to turn Exxon-Mobil, today the fourth oil company of the globe, into number one, by recovering the Venezuelan PDVSA.

The continuous threat to the Bolivarian Revolution during its whole existence is explained by this: having the biggest hydrocarbon reserves in the world. The launching of these crypto-currencies by other world powers such as China and Russia and their abandonment of the dollar, dangerously set off alarms in the United States. What could now hit Venezuela could be very unpleasant: if everything that has been attempted up to now to detain the Bolivarian Revolution–yesterday with Hugo Chávez at the helm, today with Nicolás Maduro–has not worked, at present, with the blow that these anti-dollar measures could signify, the danger for US hegemony is doubled. And wounded animals, we know, are the most dangerous, because they strike out with the most lethal blows, simply in order to survive.

The US empire has not fallen nor is it about to agonize, but it is showing signs of deep preoccupation. And in these conditions, they could do anything to maintain their hegemony. The idea of a limited nuclear war is circulating through the minds of many ideologues in the United States. It could be an absurd mistake in humanitarian terms, but desperation could lead to any act of stupidity, of imprudence. What this could mean for the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is uncertain, although everything indicates that, as a product of Tillerson’s trip, it is highly probable that countries could be organized to “intervene” to rescue the population from a “humanitarian crisis”.

If there will then be “actions to save the population from the Madurista brutal dictatorship”, is still not clear, but everything indicates that this is possible (perhaps intervention from the OAS, or the UNO, with multilateral forces led by the United States). Therefore, any attempt to interfere in Venezuela should be condemned with the most categorical vigor. Venezuela is an independent, free and sovereign country, and their oil and natural resources belong to the Venezuelans, and to no one else.

09/02/2018

(Translated for ALAI by Jordan Bishop)

- Marcelo Colussi

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