Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is pulling out all stops in his effort to undermine the US, even calling on the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to back his country against ExxonMobil Corp.
This is just the latest ploy in the Venezuelan leader’s heavy-handed efforts at oil diplomacy. Chavez has been using his country’s oil to secure allies in his war against the US, and Ecuador—which Venezuela recently helped return to OPEC—is clearly one of them.
But Chavez’s OPEC gambit failed as Sec. Gen. Abdalla Salem el-Badri said the organization would not take sides in the dispute between Venezuela and the US firm.
“We will not side with Venezuela against Exxon nor with Exxon against Venezuela,” he said, adding that OPEC would try to respect the entitlements of both parties. Their fight concerns assets nationalized by the Chavez administration last year in the oil-rich Orinoco River basin.
Proxy wars
Chavez attempted to enlist the world’s premier oil organization in his own personal proxy wars against the US. Could anything be more likely to fail? OPEC is highly unlikely to do anything to undermine the world’s largest buyer of oil.
The decision of the OPEC secretary-general is hardly surprising as, time and again, the organization has insisted it will not be politicized by Chavez or anyone else. OPEC has an economic mission, but some people just don’t listen.
Failing in that bid, Chavez has turned on Colombia, calling its president a “pawn” in a supposed US plot to invade Venezuela. Last week, along with fellow OPEC member Ecuador, now an ally in his causes, Chavez said he would take war to Columbia, if necessary.
“We are not going to permit the North American empire, which is the ruler, to allow his lapdog, President Uribe and the Colombian oligarchy, to divide or weaken us. We will not permit it,” said Chavez, referring to the supposed alliance between the US and Colombia.
Going after FARC
Chavez was responding to a Mar. 1 incursion of Colombian military forces into Ecuador, where they killed a Columbian rebel leader named Raul Reyes, considered the second most senior commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
Ecuador was not slow to join the rhetorical attack, nor was Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega—whose country plans to import and refine Venezuelan crude oil. Ortega accused Colombia of defying a recent World Court decision on his country’s maritime dispute with Colombia.
Using what is clearly a pretext for war, Ortega warned that Nicaragua will use any means available to defend its own sovereignty—along with help from Venezuela. “We are strong and they [Columbians] must respect us,” Ortega said.
Respect? It is hard to generate any respect for the likes of Chavez and his cronies around the world. Respect comes from developing the oil and gas industry for peaceful purposes, not using it as an instrument of war.