LOL Your joking right? The US has NO friends left in the world. Your all alone now and you can thank your president for that !!!
Who is saying anything about friends??? Who has any? Russia? China? Germany? France? Japan? Please tell me.
China will buy all the oil he produces. But if China buys all the oil he produces, they will buy less from somewhere else as a result. The only other factors affecting it are the cost to ship and the ability of refineries to handle VZ's sour crude. Other than that you have made a complete idiot out of yourself with your childish posts. Chavez doesn't CARE what the effects are at home. He is basically a dictator that can do whatever he pleases at this point, and to be honest, longer term, as fast as we are printing the dollars to pay for imports, he'd be a lot better off getting any other currency than dollars, save maybe yen, for his oil.
Watch and learn ThriftyBob. You are quick to insult and totally under estimate the US Government. If Chavez cuts off the US oil supply he is finished.
*HOW* will he be "finished"? Are we going to attack and take over Venezuela? Assasinate him? Imagine the price of oil if we attacked... Look what it took to get rid of Saddam in terms of lives, time, and money, and its STILL not over. I think the bag of tricks is about empty because we are totally DEPENDENT on oil and negotiating from a position of weakness rather than strength on so many different accounts. The US government has PROVEN their complete lack of competance in my book. I feel sorry for our troops that have been sacrificed as their pawns.
Can't you big talking, yanks just get one of those whizz bang super weapons and blow Chavez to Kingdom come? You know, launch it from one of those B-52 space-o-fortress things from a 1,000 miles away under cover of darkness and stuff. JUST GET THIS CHAVEZ IDIOT OUT OF THE GAME FOR GOOD WILL YA! Stop just talking about being a "superpower" JUST DO IT!!! Stop piss-farting around Iraq and do something useful!
Yes it took so many lives and time to get rid of Taliban and Saddam. Have you ever heard of WW1,WW2? I don't think Venezuelans would need babysitting like Arabs do. Reg. dependence on oil, it takes much less oil today to produce $1,000 worth of GDP than in seventies. Position of weakness: 10+trillion most productive economy in the world against commie asshole who has got nothing else to sell than oil? There was a long article in NR explaining in detail why oil is almost completely useless as an economic weapon. How the hell do you form your opinions????
It's rhetoric, the US is Venezuela's largest customer and we're one of the few that can actually refine their low grade crap. 90% of Venezuela's export earnings are from oil. (The sulfur smell wasn't the Bush(devil). It's all about his election and most importantly Chavez's term limit restrictions being lifted. He's got some cards to play and a short term stoppage wouldn't surprise me. He could say we bowed to his will and make himself look even better. The question is, what does he really want? We have a 15% dependency, rather large but not fatal. Ethanol or other alternatives? Not going to happen anytime soon and was never in the plan. It was merely a distraction just in case someone actually started thinking during a commercial break of dancing with the stars or whatever the hell else we american zombies opiate ourselves with. So by all means Chavez, cut off your nose to spite your face. That'll learn 'em.