President Donald Trump said he believes the U.S. oil industry could get expanded operations in Venezuela "up and running" in fewer than 18 months.When Trump says the oil companies will "get reimbursed by us," he means your tax dollars subsidizing their oil drilling.
"I think we can do it in less time than that, but it’ll be a lot of money," Trump told NBC News in an interview Monday.
"A tremendous amount of money will have to be spent, and the oil companies will spend it, and then they’ll get reimbursed by us or through revenue," he said.
The entire Democratic Party should (but probably won't) unite around a simple message: not one dime in subsidies.
Yeah, I know that Democrats are trying to win a Senate race in Texas. So the message there could be that we thought the Republicans believed in domestic energy production. Or is Venezuela now the 51st state?
Trump knows absolutlely nothing about this subject except what he learns from Fox News, which tells him that more oil is better than less oil because oil is manly and all non-fossil fuels are effeminate. But the people who are actually in the oil business approach the question of Venezuela based on actual knowledge of the country, its oil, and the global market:
... industry sources tell CNN that American oil executives are unlikely to dive headfirst into Venezuela for multiple reasons: The situation on the ground remains very uncertain, Venezuela’s oil industry is in shambles and Caracas has a history of seizing US oil assets.Democrats shouldn't worry about appearing "anti-business" -- much of the country holds the oil and gas industry in fairly low regard. (According to a Gallup survey conducted last summer, 35% of Americans have a positive view of the industry, and 49% have a negative view. Dallas went off the air a long time ago.)
Perhaps the biggest problem is that oil prices are too low today to justify spending the gobs of money – possibly tens of billions of dollars – that would be required to revive Venezuela’s decaying oil industry.
“The appetite for jumping into Venezuela right now is pretty low. We have no idea what the government there will look like,” one well-placed industry source told CNN on Monday. “The president’s desire is different than the industry’s. And the White House would have known that if they had communicated with the industry prior to the operation on Saturday.”
... Just to keep Venezuela’s oil production flat at 1.1 million barrels per day – roughly equal to what North Dakota currently produces – would require about $53 billion of investment over the next 15 years, according to estimates published Monday by consulting firm Rystad Energy.
However, to return Venezuela to its glory days of 3 million barrels per day from the late 1990s, total oil and gas capital spending would need to reach a staggering $183 billion through 2040, according to Rystad’s analysis.
That huge figure reflects not only Venezuela’s aging infrastructure but the fact that most of its oil is considered “heavy,” a blend of crude that is harder and more expensive to refine and process than the lighter oil found in the Permian Basin of West Texas.
I'm naive to iamgine that Democrats will go on offense now, but a guy can dream, can't he?
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