Sunday, June 29, 2008

As Petrobras becomes the top Latin American oil company, we can't accept new blacklists that bar the best from working for Venezuela Reading about Petrobras this weekend, I could not help but be envious about the different routes the two state oil companies Petrobras and our PDVSA have taken in the last few years. Petrobras, the one time oil importer has managed in 30 years to make Brazil not only self-sufficient in oil, but a company for which Brazilians can feel proud about. The article I was reading in Barron’s (by subscription, but you can read it here: http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/drilling-deep-flying-high/story.aspx?g uid={6D03B92C-4F04-431F-936B-F03D73F5877C}) paints the company as self-sufficient and competent and sitting on top of what may be the biggest oil find in 30 years, the Tupi field. The article praises Petrobras and its people saying: "They've been deepwater drillers for 40 years and have the people and have the processes in place," she adds. "They've got top-line people. Are they credible? Absolutely." This contrasts with our own PDVSA who not only lacks the people required to do the job, but has in fact sent them over to the competition, principally Canada where they are shining and demonstrating how good they were. Meanwhile in Venezuela, production goes down and recently PDVSA signed a contract with Schlumberger as it realized how it has lost technological capacity to sustain operations. Those that were part of PDVSA, 22,000 strong, were not only fired, but to this day remain blacklisted whether they work in oil or they make food, their ID numbers are checked at every step so that not only is it that they can’t sign a contract with PDVSA, they can not even have access to PDVSA buildings to sell, as one example I know, prepared food to PDVSA workers. And as Carlos Blanco says so well today,( http://opinion.eluniversal.com/2008/06/29/opi_34919_art_tiempo-de-palabra_92 3103.shtml) our tolerance of earlier blacklists allows new ones to surface. PDVSA fired 22,000 for participating in the 2002-2003 strike, but in the end got rid of any one suspect of not being “rojo-rojito”. The 22,000 were not only fired illegally, but their personal savings and voluntary pension plans have been confiscated and there is not a Court in the country that will hear their case.  The illegality remains in place backed by Chavez, his Prosecutors, the Courts, the Comptroller and the People’s Ombudsman. And while we hear the stories of success, we don’t hear the many cases which as Blanco calls them today in his article: “Detrás de cada excluido hay un drama humano de inmensas proporciones; pero, desde el punto de vista social hay otro drama que es el de una nación que se priva de la participación de mucha de su gente mejor preparada” (Behind every excluded person there is a human drama of inense proportions but, from the social point of view there is another drama of a Nation that blocks itself from the participation of many people who are better prepared) And the drama is worse the lower level the person fired from PDVSA. The engineers and technical people, the managers found jobs, left the country or started their own businesses, but the secretaries and messengers, the field workers with careers in PDVSA, have suffered the most. Lives destroyed by the whims of Hugo Chavez and the approval of his sorry cohorts. And thus, it is Brazil with a quarter of Venezuela’s reserves, which has become the great Latin American oil company. as PDVSA has had even trouble trying to certify that it has the reserves that it has been known for years it has. But in the simple mindedness and ignorance of the President at PDVSA that certification ahs become the only purpose, never mind that he has no clue if we can ever get it out of the ground. Certainly not under his leadership. Which proves once again how powerful the concept of The Devil’s Excrement is. Brazil had to build its oil company under negative circumstances, lacking even the most basic source for its business. But it not only exploited ethanol in the lean years, but has now developed all of the country’s oil needs. And in contrast to Venezuela, Brazil has actually increased gasoline prices in the last few years, not as much as they have to but enough to make the subsidy irrelevant in contrast with the irresponsible policies of our Government. And we keep chugging along, using up as much as 800,000 barrels of gasoline a day, used to run subsidized automobiles for the wealthy classes of Venezuela. A subsidy close to US$ 14 billion a year which represents a perverse subsidy given away by a Government so that autocrat Hugo Chavez can remain in his position, literally screwing his constituency without them knowing about it. And some of those that ignored the PDVSA firings and subsequent blacklist are now victims of the new list disqualifying their candidates. And if we don’t do anything, there will be new lists, new abuses, new exclusions and new discrimination in a Government that does not pretend to include every one. And the excluded are needed to make a better Venezuela. We need every competent person. We need inclusion. We need everyone, independent of its political beliefs, as long as he/she is there to do a job and not to turn the job into a political project. And at the pace we are going it seems Chavez may have to exclude every single Venezuelan before we actually do something about it. And so many have been excluded because they were not loyal, that few competent and independent thinkers are left yo help a Government that hates "experts". Without the, we will never get Venezuela out of where it is. People have to wake up and realize they can be next. 11:39:24 PM    comment []

Random Bits from the revolution Passionate about money: Remember when the Minister of Justice dismissed the murder of RCTV’s anchorman Javier Garcia as a “crime of passion” that should not affect society? Well, as usual the Minister was talking without knowing anything about the case. Yes, the murderer was caught, but the only passion so far in the case was that of the murdered for money as the police said the motive was robbery. Another triumph for the stupidity and incompetence of Minister Rodriguez Chacin! In any reasonable country he would have resigned six cases ago. Supreme Switch: Venezuela must be the only country where the Supreme Court issues a decision, the decision is published on the Court’s webpage and sawn into the Court’s records (A strange custom in itself!), only to be modified when the Government calls the Court and tells it to change it. This happened this week with the decision by none other than the former President of the Venezuelan Electoral Board (remember the one that could barely speak?) on what is considered taxable and when it will be applicable. The original sentence said it was only regular salaries, which is the case in the new one, but the old one said it would apply from the original decision by the Supreme Court, while the new one says starting next year. The difference is important, as it would imply a credit to all those that paid taxes this year. This creates a loophole in that companies may give workers special non-regular bonuses as a way of giving them non-taxable income and thus a salary increase. Of course, the original decision was filled with revolutionary intent, which can backfire when reality hits.  Failed Plan: Two weeks ago General Manager/Chief Justice/Commander in Chief/President Chavez had the brilliant idea of stopping crime by placing two National Guardsman with FAL rifles on every public transportation bus in the country. As everything in Venezuela, this was simply improvised on his live reality show Alo Presidente, but clearly the President had no clue that this would require more National Guardsmen that the country had, without taking into account the danger of untrained, armed soldiers on every bus. Some eager beavers took the President’s words as an order and for one day many buses in Caracas carried the two guards until someone realized what a stupid idea it was (I am sure they never told Chavez). On top of that crime did not go down that day in Caracas. The idea was dropped and the new “program” lasted only twenty fours hours. Don’t complain, that is longer than many other programs started by Hugo Chavez. 1:01:34 AM    comment []