When compared to Venezuela’s oil reserves, Citgo is nothing.
Sir, Colby Smith refers to Citgo as “the last-remaining crown jewel of Venezuela” “Stakes rise for Venezuelan assets stateside” Alphaville May 17.
Frankly, Venezuela has what has been reported as the largest oil reserves in the world. What is Citgo compared to that? Absolutely nothing!
What’s valuable for Venezuela is its oil, but the value of it has been greatly diminished, first and foremost because the government handles the redistribution of all net oil revenues, but then also because way too many have wanted to profit from doing something with our oil, for instance refining it, abroad.
“Until someone convinces me of something different, I insist that anything else the Venezuelan state tries to do with oil, means a loss or a net reduction of the benefits brought by the first phases of the operation, [its extraction].
Because of that and the fact that I have seen the corporation's reports, I still can't understand the economic reasons for having bought and kept Citgo. There is evidence in the reports that it is being subsidized by PDVSA.
And, for those who argue so much in favor of privatizing PDVSA, I challenge them to make an IPO for Citgo, subject to their obligation to purchase oil products at market prices."
Sir, we have millions of our young growing up undernourished and still some try to hang on to a very high hanging fruit as Citgo, so my current tweet sized proposal is:
So that Venezuelans can eat quickly, hand over Pdvsa (and Citgo) to Venezuela’s creditors quickly, to see if they can put all that junk to work quickly, to see if they can collect something quickly, and pay us Venezuelans, not the bandits, our oil royalties quickly.
The Iraq Study Group established by the U.S. Congress, reported in 2006 the following: "There are proposals to redistribute a portion of oil revenues directly to the population on a per capita basis. These proposals have the potential to give all Iraqi citizens a stake in the nation's chief natural resource." Sadly it came to nothing
Sir, if that were to be implemented in Venezuela, then Venezuelans would live in a truly independent nation, and not just in somebody else’s business.
PS. A couple of years ago I gave a speech to transfer price specialists in Washington recounting the very curious thing of Venezuela´s state PDVSA that sold petrol at lower than market prices to their then recently acquired refinery subsidiary in the US, CITGO, paying unnecessary taxes to another than their own tax man, probably just because they wanted to show the Venezuela public that Citgo was such a good investment. Crazy? Yes of course, but that´s life in a tropical country.
@PerKurowski
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