Venezuela Oil: US Declares War on 'Narco-Terrorism'

Commenting on the US capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro:
Comedy.jpg

Trump's response:
Yr.webp


Meanwhile:

The Pentagon said it is thirsty for more blood after at least 40 people, including civilians, died in the US attack on Caracas.
 
Niall said:
Here's what I don't get: why take Maduro out, only to leave her - and thus 'regime continuity' - in?
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Trump's "deal" with Putin and Xi - The Trio - was apparently not such clearly drawn and planned out. Maybe The Trio expected worldwide resistance and just planned to voice a theatrical protest at UN, which will be toothless anyway. But which Proxy Army will Trump use in Venezuela to not let the world see the US Army losing badly? Probably The Sheeple will accept that they will go the way of Syria, so nobody serious will do any kind of civilian unrest in Venezuela.

These angry Venezuelan politician remnants like VP Rodriguez were probably expected by the Trio and determined they don't have power, they bark, but cannot bite.
Nobody else matters in the world anyway. Least The People matter, nobody consults The People in The West anymore.

What we want doesn't matter. So The People must take the reins in their hands and not ride the speeding cart - like nowadays with the reins thrown away with the horses speeding uncontrollably.
 
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So the West can simply deny the legitimacy of any head of state, call on him to resign, and warn him of the consequences, which would be that the West itself would either attack or kidnap this head of state?
The Western world dictatorship then calls this human rights, democracy, and a “rules-based” order...
Perhaps the Europeans are shooting themselves in the foot. Who still believes that there are limits in this big game? Trump sees Europe as a great danger—and who can promise Merz, Stamer, Macron, Leyen, or Tusk that they will not suffer the same fate? The Europeans feel far too secure. The message that regime change can be implemented legally and cheaply by removing the leadership if one credibly assures that one's own country is in danger is a dangerous development. We in Germany should give this serious thought, as we still have the enemy state clause. Theoretically, our occupiers, the US, Russia, Great Britain, and France, could take over immediately. Many Germans are not aware of this. There are no longer any taboos.
 
Analysis demonstrating that Venezuela's "vast oil reserves" are nowhere near as economically viable as media headlines suggest:

https://twitter.com/x/status/2007505384429191617

There has been lots of talk about the current situation in Venezuela and what it could mean for global oil markets, so I just wanted to provide some nuance on this.

When people say “Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves,” as you undoubtedly have seen being thrown around a lot on here, they are technically referring to a specific accounting definition, not to a stock of easy, cheap barrels ready to flood the market. To unpack that, you need to get into what those reserves are, how they behave in the subsurface, what it costs to turn them into marketable liquids, and how price, technology, and above-ground risk interact.

That's a lot to cover, but let’s give it my best shot. On paper, Venezuela has roughly 300–303 billion barrels of proved reserves, about 17 % of the global total and slightly more than Saudi Arabia. The critical detail is that around three quarters of that booked volume is extra-heavy crude from the Orinoco Belt in eastern Venezuela. These are bitumen-like oils with API gravity typically in the 8–14° range, extremely viscous at reservoir conditions and with high sulfur and metals content. So the statement “largest reserves” is really “largest booked volumes of very challenging heavy and extra-heavy oil.”

Technically recoverable versus economically recoverable is the first big distinction. The USGS has long estimated that the Orinoco Belt contains on the order of 900–1,400 billion barrels of heavy crude in place, with perhaps 380–650 billion barrels technically recoverable using existing technology.

Venezuela and OPEC only book a subset of that as “proved,” but even those proved numbers are sensitive to the assumed oil price and development concept. When prices were strong in the 2005–2014 window, a large portion of Orinoco volumes became economic on paper and were reclassified as proved, driving the headline reserves from ~80 to ~300 billion barrels.

Geology and fluid properties are the second big differentiator. Orinoco crudes are extra-heavy, with densities up around 934–1,050 kg/m³, high asphaltene content and sulfur on the order of 3–4 wt% or more, depending on the block. This is a completely different animal from a 33–40° API, low-sulfur Arab Light-style crude. In plain English, that means it's much harder to handle at various stages and each step adds capex, opex and energy use.

In other words, the “barrel in the ground” in Venezuela is inherently worth less and depends on a narrower set of buyers.

Surface systems and institutional capacity are another constraint. Before the 2000s, PDVSA had a reputation as a technically capable NOC. Since then, you have had a combination of mass layoffs and politicization, under-investment, sanctions, corruption and brain drain. The result is decayed gathering systems, chronic power shortages, refinery fires and upgrader downtime.

Finally, integration with global refining and logistics matters for strategic value. Venezuela’s crude slate is optimized for complex “coking” refineries in the US Gulf Coast, parts of Asia and a few European plants. That's a story for another time though, because the length of this analysis is getting out of hand.

So when you hear that Venezuela has “the world’s largest oil reserves,” the technically accurate part is that the country has extremely large volumes of extra-heavy oil in place, and a big subset of that was once judged economically recoverable at high price assumptions and booked as proved. The more relevant questions for energy strategy are how many of those barrels are genuinely economic under realistic long-term prices, how quickly they can be brought onstream given infrastructure and institutional constraints, what netback they deliver at the refinery gate, and how exposed they are to being left in the ground if demand peaks. On those metrics, Venezuelan barrels sit much further out on the cost and risk curve than the headline “largest reserves” soundbite suggests. I hope this provided some good context.
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Approaching Infinity said:
That's something leftists who either don't know what they're talking about, or want to obfuscate, say. Even sympathetic researchers acknowledge antifa is a real group composed of real people for political purposes (e.g. see Vysotsky's American Antifa). Andy Ngo's book is a lighter, journalistic account, but demonstrates the same thing. They are a terrorist organization.
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I don't necessarily disagree but I would need to reflect on what should be legally termed terrorism versus what shouldn't due to the implications of what the security state is allowed to do in the case of the former.
 
Pat said:
My question is, why would the USA , Trump show Maduro in that state. This is a strong picture showing huge disrespect for a president of an other country.
Why take also the president wife, what is behind all this. This is mind-boggling!
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Humiliation ritual and exercise of power by the strong. It happens a lot by powerful people who are low in conscience and empathy.

I believe Julius Caesar introduced something that was alien to the powerful in his time - mercy. The strong don't always need to exercise their power to the nth degree once they have achieved their objective.
 
Niall said:
Analysis demonstrating that Venezuela's "vast oil reserves" are nowhere near as economically viable as media headlines suggest:

https://twitter.com/x/status/2007505384429191617
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Yeah i did see this a few months back, their oil requires alot of processing,
Still oil

Strategic for sure.

SOTTREADER said:
Humiliation ritual and exercise of power by the strong. It happens a lot by powerful people who are low in conscience and empathy.

I believe Julius Caesar introduced something that was alien to the powerful in his time - mercy. The strong don't always need to exercise their power to the nth degree once they have achieved their objective.
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It made China look terrible.
And they played the "american might" card here.

More than ego or morale, this type of thing is like a stock, if there are indications of weakness or uncertanty people pull from the stock and it downtrends.
 
There’s a total of 7 US Boeing C-17 military transport aircraft that landed in RAF Fairford airbase in the UK. People are speculating as to the purpose of that move.

Venezuela owns 31 tons of gold which are stored in the Bank of England’s vaults. In the past, Venezuela tried to repatriate its gold but was denied by the UK likely due to US pressure.

Wonder if, now that the US will be running the country for some time, they are going to take the gold to the US.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2007590405521715684
 
Niall said:
The silver lining today was this moment:

https://twitter.com/x/status/2007505777456492722

Trump sidelining María Corina Machado with one deft dismissal. Ms. Nobel Prize Winner probably woke up thinking she'd hit the jackpot, only to be summarily shafted.

It's interesting that Trump demonstrates he has objective data to hand about Venezuela: Machado would indeed have insufficient popular support to replace Maduro, not even in the short-term.

Her promise to "move Venezuela's Israel embassy to Jerusalem" got her precisely nowhere!

This difference may yet prove significant, indicating that Trump's vision for Venezuela's future is not identical to 'the globalists'/Israel's.
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Another whopper baked into this sh*t sandwich:

Trump acknowledges that Machado doesn't have sufficient popular support in Venezuela to lead the country... yet the entire basis for Maduro being a dictator was that he stole last year's election, in which, we were told, the opposition candidate 'actually won'... thanks to Machado's amazing grass-roots popular appeal:

2024 presidential election

Although Machado was not the presidential candidate in the 2024 Venezuelan presidential election, she remained the leader of the opposition to Chavismo during the electoral process. The majority support that candidate Edmundo González received in various polls was due to the boost given to him by Machado's support. Regarding the role that Machado would play in a González Urrutia government, The Telegraph commented: "Should the opposition win, Ms Machado is widely expected to be the de facto leader of a government formally led by Mr González." The newspaper compared the massive popular movement around Machado with the rise of Hugo Chávez to the presidency in 1998, in terms of the "fervor" it generated in citizens, in a context of both political crisis and systemic decadence.
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Niall said:
Another whopper baked into this sh*t sandwich:

Trump acknowledges that Machado doesn't have sufficient popular support in Venezuela to lead the country... yet the entire basis for Maduro being a dictator was that he stole last year's election, in which, we were told, the opposition candidate 'actually won'... thanks to Machado's amazing grass-roots popular appeal:
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The Trump admin just can't decide whether they want to drop the propaganda or not. Sometimes, he's like - "we just wanna take the stuff in our backyard", then they revert back to "muh drugs, muh dictator, muh liberation"... Seems like they have to satisfy both "camps".

Gawan said:
This is wishful thinking, nonetheless 😆 :

View attachment 114825
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Regime change I can get behind! Liberate us, daddy!
 
Gawan said:
This is wishful thinking, nonetheless 😆 :

View attachment 114825
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Why that guy in the 2nd row in suit? Few thoughts on the topic.
  • Maduro is easy target, precedence and warnings are there for years and desperation exist for US to do it wants ( economic competition with China - Silver blockage from China, Beijing's dependence on the Venezuela for Oil, makes Venezuela good bargaining chip). And, we have those Chosen people that can't be named wants to fulfill their God's mission against Iran. In that bigger context, it is inevitable and happened before new year drowsiness faded away.
  • They did it in such a way US always done but with much less bloodshed. Hopefully, the common Venezuelans don't need to face too much 'Shock Doctrine', but I am not counting on it though.
  • Silver AI 'Asian guy' says there was a migration of 847 tons of silver in 3 planes from Venezuela around Dec. 23rd. One Russian, another Chinese and last one to the Miami. Grok summary ( based on comments, take it with grain of salt) says Miami Plane contained counterfeit one's. If that is true, it is natural to get pissed off by God saved president to "Show off".
  • I find it interesting that the high level people in these countries blaming Israel openly. Rumor is that, Bibi gave the green light as a hedge against Iran's possible blockade of its straight (in case of God's war in Middle East).
  • Recently, I watched a video in which the creator mentioned about importance of Venezuelan heavy crude oil. Though US has LOT of light oil from its 'Frack baby Frack' initiative, most of the US refineries are built in 50's and they can only handle heavy crude oil. It looks, it takes a decade to repurpose or modify these refineries. So Venezuela works as a good stop gap.
  • There were rumors that heavy duty American planes landed in Britain to confiscate the Venezuelan gold from UK ( aka Bank of India) and they put the value at $3.1 billion. That is expected and they did the same in Iraq.
  • Some doubt whether interim president will act as per USA's dictate or not . If she doesn't follow the line, they can always Noble "peace prize" and praise her "Zionist" credentials. At least it says, Trump don't want to go full Zionist slave mode and wants to have some leverage. In any case, "God's chosen people" take what they want, whenever they want telling whatever one wants to hear.

As a whole, US seems to got some reprieve. Perfect opportunity for Chosen people for finish "God's business", so that they can be rulers forever over the rest of "Inferiors". Well, we will see how it goes.
 
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