Why in the world would America pistol-whip Mother Nature to bring oil to Texas? I mean, it’s just plain weird to suck heavy tar oil out of Canada, drag it across the entire middle of the USA to import it into the oil-exporting Lone Star State.
Here’s where a little lesson in oil chemistry comes in. You can’t just throw any old crude oil into an oil refinery. These giant filth factories are actually quite sensitive. The refineries of the Texas Gulf Coast are optimized for heavy crude.
It would cost billions of dollars to rebuild the giant Flint Hills Corpus Christi Refinery, owned by Koch Industries, to use the less-polluting Texas oil drilled nearby.
The Kochs need heavy crude. But the Brothers Koch have a problem. Heavy crude is controlled by a heavy dude – President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.
In case you haven’t heard, the US Department of Energy now says Venezuela, not Saudi Arabia, has the world’s largest petroleum reserve--including the overwhelming majority of the planet’s heavy crude.
And Chavez is not giving it away. “We are no longer an oil colony, Mr. Palast,” Chavez told me in one of our meet-ups in Caracas.GregPalast.com
The Koch Brothers, Hugo Chavez and the XL Pipeline
Greg Palast
It is necessary for the US to ensure oil price stability, and one which is affordable to the world. The dollar's usefulness to the US's trade partners, who have trade surpluses with the US, is only good so long as commodities such as oil may be purchased with those surplus dollars.
ReplyDeleteIn many ways, the lack of funding in Venezuela, in the Orinoco belt, is leading to the finance of unconventional oil plays in the US and Canada. That is the substitute for Chavez's defiance against dollar hegemony.
Chavez would be remiss if he were to completely abandon US influence; which is why, even after the failed 2002 coup, Venezuela continues to export oil to the US.
IMO the CIA will take Chavez out and put a favorable banana republic in place again, probably done under the disguise of "War on Drugs", or some other bullshit reason. Just like the Koch Brothers Legacy: Thier legacy is to improve thier positions in life and thier families. Nothing wrong with that if you don't mind the fact that MONEY IS THIER GOD. If you don't mind the fact thier Grandfather was an SS General who murdered 450,000 known Poles, Jews, Urkrainians and his with cut the tattoes out of the skin of her victims. Also is you don't mind thier Father Fred Koch helping Stalin (not Russia) defeat the Nazis by training engineers to do oil industry. Of course when Fred returned to the US now Communisim was very dangerous to all of us? The Koch brothers are a poster child for what is wrong in the US, too much power concentrated into the hands of too few at the expense of all. Remember this "Profit and any Price" will bring us down. The valuations of what real worth of a company needs to be changed in the eyes of the investment community. That will not happen in my life time.
ReplyDeleteWhat a disgusting family of psychos.
ReplyDeleteMost likely the Bros inherited these sociopathic traits too.