U.S. poised to strike military targets in Venezuela

[Winehole23]

a view from Venezuela

According to the fact sheet published by the White House on August 31, the Office of Strategic Capital of the Pentagon (renamed the Department of War) will own 35% of the shares of the company North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), selected by the Trump administration to lead oil extraction projects in Venezuelan fields with a proven potential of 65 billion barrels.

For the US government, the inclusion of the Department of War in the commercial operation represents “up to hundreds of billions of dollars in value and dividends for the United States.”

The do ent also outlines the managerial control and the additional benefits obtained with the equity stake deal. At the same time that “the U.S. government has a veto power over the appointment of any member of the board of directors, and a majority of NABEP’s board of directors must be U.S. citizens,” it would obtain “the right of first refusal to purchase the remaining 80% of its production, providing a guaranteed source of energy in our hemisphere in emergency situations,” states the fact sheet.

An exceptional deal and its risks

First of all, there is no immediate precedent for direct Pentagon involvement in the exploration of another country’s oil reserves. To find some kind of analogy, one would have to go back to the distant year of 1943. That year, in the midst of World War II and its high energy demands for the US, the Franklin D. Roosevelt government created the Petroleum Reserves Corporation(PRC) to acquire fields in Saudi Arabia, which at that time were controlled by large US corporations.

The main players in the operation were the Pentagon and the State Department, just as is the case today with the oil agreement between Washington and Caracas.
The objective was to lease concessions (through the purchase of the majority of the companies’ shares) and use the US government’s financial power to support investments and develop fields, which allowed the US to gain preferential access to extracontinental oil as a complementary support for the war effort.

The idea, however, never came to fruition for various reasons. The companies resisted the government’s purchase of shares, as they saw Roosevelt’s move as an attempt at covert nationalization. The fears that the deal would deteriorate relations with the Saudi crown and serve to consolidate British power in the area also generated friction within the State Department. Ultimately, and although an attempt was made to reduce the possibility of acquiring shares to one-third, the PRC stalled in its declared purpose.

More than 80 years later, the Trump administration has revived Roosevelt’s idea of state capitalism to apply it in Venezuela, trying to overcome the obstacle that his predecessor faced: using Big Oil companies as a vehicle for getting concessions in another country.

Understanding the lesson of 1943, Trump realizes that going after the shares of Chevron, an established corporation with extensive oil operations in Venezuela, would be a fruitless maneuver. But withNABEP, an intermediary company led by Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt, who is under su ion of corruptionin electricity sector contracts, the US president seemed to find an alternative on which to impose political and financial conditions.

What is not entirely resolved is the legal front, beyond what the White House fact sheet presents as truth.

Analyst Orlando Pérez correctly points outthat oil is excluded from the categoriescovered by the Office of Strategic Capital to support loans and investments. Moreover, according to Pérez, “the proposed financial authorization to support the agreement could expire in 2028, unless Congress renews it,” a situation that puts the agreement at extreme legal risk

https://orinocotribune.com/why-penta...uela-oil-deal/

[Winehole23]

Washington reaffirms to Venezuela that future negotiations on what was agreed today in terms of royalties and taxes can change (always in favor of the US), according to the unilateral geo-strategic and economic needs of the US empire, to the detriment of the projected material benefits for the Venezuelan nation.

Regarding this, the fact sheet states that “NABEP has also granted the U.S. Department of State the right of first refusal to purchase the remaining 80% of its production, providing a guaranteed source of energy in our hemisphere in emergency situations.”

This aspect is not minor. What Trump is trying to say, more or less, is that the agreed-upon clauses can be modified at Washington’s request, with the Pentagon’s not-so-friendly mediation.

[Winehole23]

robbery and graft

CASTEN: Trump said 'we're taking in billions and billions from Venezuela.' Who is the 'we'? That suggests flows to US persons

BESSENT: Again, this is one of the largest assets ever to go on the US balance sheets

CASTEN: You can't testify whether or not they're flowing to US persons?

BESSENT: No

[Winehole23]

So a big part of Iran Contra and one of the (many) reasons it was illegal was that third party funds weren’t deposited into the U.S. Treasury

[Winehole23]

[Winehole23]

war, famine and rapine

Spanish hotel chains. A Canadian mining firm. European shipping giants. Visa and Mastercard. Scores of foreign companies have been driven out of Cuba this summer over fear of being hit with potent, new secondary sanctions. Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, told Axios last month there are “no escape valves” from his unprecedented pressure campaign against the island.

But not everybody is losing out. Agrowing cast of Washington and Florida insiders – from billionaire Trump allies and Rubio-linked lobbyists to Cuban exiles – are jockeying for control of the communist-ruled island-nation’s key assets, charging top dollar to help clients navigate the ever-expanding web of sanctions, and positioning themselves for lucrative business opportunities in the case of regime collapse.
...

A similar approach is being pursued by Australia’s Antilles Gold Ltd, which after being blacklisted over its Cuba operations in June received the green light from the Trump administration to negotiate the transfer of its stake in a Cuban copper-gold mine to the New York-based, multibillion-dollar investment fund, Global Emerging Markets.

“If I had done during the Biden administration what Trump’s friends have done now, I’d have been put in jail,” said a person with several decades of experience in Cuba policy who requested anonymity.

Sources tell the Guardian that several Trump Organization executives who had previously traveled to the island to explore real estate deals and who even registered the Trump trademark there in 2008 have in recent months returned to Cuba under the aegis of Dominari Holdings for meetings. The executives are said to have met with Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, the grandson of former Cuban president Raúl Castro, dubbed “the Crab”, to explore opportunities amid the departure of Spanish hotel giants Meliá and Iberostar, which had been operating on the island since the 1990s

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...rco-rubio-cuba

[Winehole23]

personalist regime rewards cronies and political donors

there's fair to middling chance US will be fighting a war over this eventually

“It’s a milestone deal in making the Western Hemisphere the center of the global energy system,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Wednesday.


He was talking about a fellow Trump ally’s oil deal with Venezuela: oil tycoon Harold Hamm of Continental Resources, a US petroleum and natural gas production company, who announced a preliminary deal with PDVSA, Venezuela’s national oil company, that same day. The agreement, which allows Continental Resources to develop and operate 126,000 acres of oil fields—an estimated 30 billion barrels of oil—was presented by Hamm, with Wright beside him, at this week’s G20 energy summit in Houston.


Hamm is in Trump’s inner circle and has advised the president on energy issues to benefit his business ventures, including fracking, and personally contributed $4.3 million to Trump-aligned PACs for his 2024 election campaign.


The deal comes after Chevron became the first known major US oil company earlier this month to expand production in Venezuela since the Trump administration seized President Nicolás Maduro in January, investing $7 billion over five years to more than double its production to 600,000 barrels a day.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics...ntal-oil-deal/

[Winehole23]

[Winehole23]

Cuba invasion on deck

The U.S. Army Reserve is examining whether it can provide the military's Southern Command with police forces, medical personnel and other support units within the next four months, according to an internal Army message reviewed by CBS News.

www.cbsnews.com/news/u-s-gro...

[Winehole23]

Army Reserve headquarters is seeking feedback from subordinate commands on the possible availability of six types of formations that would fall under the authority of U.S. Southern Command. The units would 'possibly [be] needed in 90-120 days

[Winehole23]

details of the secret deal come out

ProPublica has reviewed a copy of the 18-page strategic partnership agreement signed for the United States by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The do ent reveals carefully constructed terms that favor U.S. interests at every turn and cements the power of a small group of people handpicked by the Trump administration to govern and profit from the deal. The role of the Venezuelan government and the potential benefits to its people are largely absent from the text.

One of the most criticized aspects of Trump’s announcement has been his choice of a partner: Alejandro Betancourt, a globe-trotting Venezuelan oligarch who has faced money-laundering investigations in three countries.

The Trump administration is taking a 35% stake in Betancourt’s firm, North American Blue Energy Partners, by acquiring shares in a Barbados-registered parent company. The deal do ent provides little information about the owners and investors behind the parent company, who could receive enormous wealth from the arrangement.

The agreement also safeguards Betancourt’s position as chief executive of NABEP and says the U.S. government will work with the parent company to appoint a powerful seven-member board to govern the venture for an initial 15-year term. Those aspects of the deal, according to people with knowledge of how it came together, were designed to prevent future U.S. and Venezuelan leaders from dismantling the enterprise.

Orlando Alvarado, a name not disclosed by the Trump administration as a party to the accord, signed the agreement on behalf of the parent company, alongside Betancourt, Hegseth and Rubio. Alvarado has held senior roles in multiple Betancourt businesses, including as chief financial officer of an energy firm that became embroiled in scandals a decade ago. According to the Miami Herald, federal prosecutors identified Alvarado as an unindicted co-conspirator in a scheme to embezzle money from Venezuela’s national oil company.

https://www.propublica.org/article/t...greement-terms

[Winehole23]

and of course Trump is lying about the details

Key aspects of the plan differ from the Trump administration’s public pronouncements. Trump has said the deal will secure America’s energy dominance for the next century. But the text indicates that U.S. purchasing rights expire in half that time and that the underlying operating rights appear to run afoul of Venezuelan laws limiting oil concessions to 25 years.


The agreement does ensure the United States a deep discount from fair-market value on 20% of NABEP’s oil, as Trump has said. It does not, however, explicitly guarantee that Betancourt’s company is obligated to pay the estimated $200 billion in royalties and tax payments to Venezuela that the White House has said would benefit the country.


There are also significant caveats related to Trump’s central selling point to Americans — that the deal will bring a gusher of low-cost oil imports.


The agreement gives the U.S. the right to purchase 20% of NABEP’s oil at a discounted rate of $30 a barrel, or less than a third of what oil has sold for in recent months, according to one of three supporting do ents reviewed by ProPublica.


But this fee does not account for the cost of getting Venezuela’s oil out of the country. Much of Venezuela’s raw crude is so thick that it won’t flow through pipelines unless it is first blended with 20% or more of oil thinner products. Under the deal, the potentially significant cost of importing millions of barrels of those blending materials is not included in the price.

[ChumpDumper]

All this will equal zero savings for US consumers.

[Winehole23]

would-be Cuba Gauleiter Rubio stirs the pot

[Winehole23]

snap take, there won't be a US occupation of Cuba, Trump doesn't want the influx of Cuban refugees

[Winehole23]

CIA corrects the spelling

[ChumpDumper]

How is recruiting via social media in any way discreet?

[Winehole23]

How is recruiting via social media in any way discreet?

Trumpies are allergic to competence and discretion