Venezuela

Valcor, the real nationalization and re-appropriation of the oil resources

by Alia2

The oil industry only employs 1% of the Venezuelan active population. In view of this, president Hugo Chávez asserted that “endogenous development, a productive endogenous economy, is the way to solve the serious unemployment and poverty problem; that is the model to follow”. In this way, the president explained that “the solution for unemployment is not within the oil industry”, making it clear that “what we are using now is the oil income, rescuing it to drive a productive economy(...)In 1993, the «empire» said that oil prices would not go over 20 U$. Today they (the prices)are structurally strengthened. There will not be more oil given away at 10.15 dollars or 20 dollars”, said Chávez.

Valcor is a reality. The Venezuelan East is now self-reliant as a producer of lead-free gasoline and of everything necessary for the internal market, said president Chávez after inspecting the Current Assessment project (Valcor).

This new phase of the real nationalization of our oil, which Chávez has named Petroleum Sovereignty Plan, “involves state of the art technology, training, and upgrading of the refinery, which has an unforgettable symbolic weight; this refinery was never taken over by the coupmongers, thanks to the heroic workers and to the people of Anzoátegui.”

“Thirty years ago, in 1974, they talked about the nationalization of petroleum and(...) it was a great sham, as Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso (Venezuelan oil expert and former Minister of Mining and Hydrocarbons in the early sixties and creator of the Organization of Oil Exporting Countries OPEC) once called it: a lousy nationalization, not really a nationalization” he indicated. The Head of State affirmed that the real nationalization of the petroleum industry started in January of 2003, when “we entered the first stage of the nationalization”, he said, “by initiating a real process of re-appropriation of our oil resources, of our oil business strategies and policies, when we began the counterattack to wipe out fascism, which tried to take over the country to hand it over to the empire once again”

“Today is also a day for history, because it marks the beginning of a second phase of this process that began in January of 2003. This refinery starts out today. It is the second phase of the nationalization which we are going to call Absolute Petroleum Sovereignty: national independence for the full development of the country”.

For his part, Alejandro Granados, National and International Refining CEO for Pdvsa (the state owned oil corporation) indicated that “since 1999, the strategies on energy have sought to value our natural resource, and we have therefore undertaken projects that had been forgotten, even though they increased the value of the refined products and would have allowed us, within a medium term, to process greater volumes of heavy and extra-heavy crude oil in this region”, all the necessary efforts were made to make of Valcor a reality.

Published in Quantum N. 36

Alia2