Venezuela - Next Conflict Area?
Is Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez the next target for an oil hungry US administration?
U.S. Official Says Venezuela Destabilizing Neighbors “The administration has found mounting evidence that Venezuela is actively using its oil wealth to destabilize its democratic neighbors in the Americas by funding anti-democratic groups in Bolivia, Ecuador and elsewhere,’’ Matthew Reynolds, the State Department’s acting assistant secretary for legislative affairs, stated in a letter to a congresswoman.
Reynolds’s comments were in a letter July 27 to Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican on the House International Relations Committee. Reynolds was responding to a letter Ros-Lehtinen sent to President George W. Bush asking him to pay attention to “the troubling axis’’ between Chavez and Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Chavez’s support “for Colombian terrorist organizations,’’ and Venezuelan arms’ purchases.
These comments from US lawmakers and bureaucrats have a deja vu ring to them. Will we be looking at Contra II in Venezuela in years to come? Iraq II?
Its certainly true that Chavez is trying to use his country’s resource wealth to gain influence in the region. Currently Venezuela is a major exporter of oil to the US; but the US doesn’t like Venezuela’s president much. That Chavez is shopping around for other customers for a product which the entire world wants should not surprise us at all.
In fact in a globalized-world where the free-market reigns, we should expect Chavez to seek diversification.
Yet in the light of a world potentially facing “peak oil”, this picture takes on a different hue. There are many net-importers of oil in the region Venezeula is geographically near. A number of these nations are already suffering due to the lack of less-expensive energy, so just imagine how much influence a major producer like Venezuela could have on the region when peak oil becomes an apparent reality…
An agreement between Venezuela and Caribbean countries, dubbed Petrocaribe, has been in the works for over a year and was ratified this past July.
Even among countries that did not sign on, such Trinidad and Tobago, there are voices within who are supportive of the development:
It is not simply about Venezuela increasing its influence in the region. As far as I am concerned the region could do with a bit more of Chavez-type thinking as an influence. It is a matter of whether increased Venezuelan influence can benefit us as a whole region. (Trinidad and Tobago News)
That nation’s prime minister, Patrick Manning, is not supportive of the Petrocaribe agreement. Energy politics may be playing a reverse role here – Trinidad and Tobago are the largest exporters of Liquified Natural Gas to the US bar none. With Natural Gas use in the US expected to far outstrip domestic production, LNG imports figure prominently in the US energy future.
In a world now dealing with a tight energy supply-demand balance, one that is will as a matter of course get tigher still provided world economic growth continues to head higher, it seems inevitable that the next world-shaking conflict will flare up over oil supplies.
Its a chicken and egg problem of global proportions – staving off the peak requires investment world wide; yet political instability is not condusive to the massive multi-year / multi-decade investments required to bring on major new fields or even bring significant upgrades to existing fields and production facilities.