Regime change for profit: Chevron, Halliburton cheer on US Venezuela coup

If Guaidó comes to power and privatizes PDVSA, U.S. oil companies — with Chevron and Halliburton leading the pack — stand to make record profits in the world’s most oil-rich nation, as they did in Iraq following the privatization of its national oil industry after U.S. intervention.

by Whitney Webb

Part 7 - Washington’s gift to Big Oil: privatize PDVSA, no matter the human cost

As with Iraq, Libya and other U.S. oil-motivated interventions of the past, the destruction of Venezuela’s nationalized oil industry and its privatization to American oil companies — especially Chevron and Halliburton — is the guiding factor behind the U.S.’ current regime-change policy targeting Caracas. While past administrations attempted to obfuscate their “wars for oil” as “restoring democracy,” Trump administration officials and other “coup architects” have recently “gone off script” and overtly stated the guiding principle behind its Venezuela policy.

However, the timing of the Trump administration’s regime-change push in Venezuela is key. While companies like Chevron and Halliburton have been hemorrhaging profits in recent years, they have so far withstood the fallout due to the record high production of U.S. shale oil. Yet, the “golden age” of U.S. shale is quickly disappearing, with top industry insiders like Harold Hamm along with Halliburton’s rival company, Schlumberger, expecting shale output growth to slow by as much as 50 percent this year. Hamm is a close confidant of President Trump.

If this comes to pass, American oil companies will be in a bad way. Yet, if Guaidó comes to power and privatizes PDVSA, U.S. oil companies — with Chevron and Halliburton leading the pack — stand to make record profits in the world’s most oil rich nation, as they did in Iraq following the privatization of its national oil industry after U.S. intervention.

Worst of all, as the U.S.’ past interventions in Iraq and Libya and elsewhere have shown, Washington stands willing to kill untold thousands of innocent people in Venezuela — either through direct military intervention or a proxy war — to benefit American oil companies.

Will the American people let yet another presidential administration destroy an entire nation for Chevron, Halliburton and other powerful American corporations?

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Source, links:

https://www.mintpressnews.com/venezuela-coup-regime-change-chevron-halliburton/254595/

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