The Biden administration is looking to replace Russian oil with Venezuelan oil.
And that became clear when U.S. officials traveled to Venezuela
to meet with Venezuelan officials on a potential deal.
Now, this is a fascinating development considering the fact that
the Biden administration came into office with statements about how
Juan Guido is the real leader of Venezuela.
And of course that is not true, Juan Guido was the figure that the U.S.
tried to install as a replacement to Maduro but our coup attempts failed,
right, so that conflict is very relevant to these new updates.
However, Nicolas Maduro was open to having these conversations and it looks like
he's even willing to privatize some of their resources to make this deal.
So let me give you the details as it's reported by The Wall Street Journal and
the new york times.
The weekend's developments in Venezuela is welcomed by Wall Street firms,
I'm sure it is.
And other investors who have been talking to emissaries from Venezuela about
a possible restructuring of $60 billion dollars in debt.
That's debt that Venezuela has of course, the regime is offering infrastructure
concessions, oil and gas reserves and asset privatizations while pressing
the investors to coax the United States to consider lifting sanctions.
So in return for these resources, Venezuela is hoping that the United States
will lift sanctions that were implemented against it by the Trump administration.
To give you more information about that,
the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Maduro and closed its
embassy in Caracas in 2019 after accusing the leader of electoral fraud.
The Trump administration administration then tried to topple Maduro's government
by sanctioning Venezuelan oil exports and the country's senior officials.
And by recognizing the opposition leader Juan Guido as Venezuela's lawful
president.
No one voted for Juan Guido, it's not like there was an election and
Juan Guido was like the rightful winner of that election and the U.S.
is supporting him as a result of that.
There were multiple failed coup attempts and that was disastrous and
we should be critical of the United States for attempting to do that multiple times.
Now, lifting the sanctions is something that Venezuela clearly wants.
So lifting the sanctions would also put an estimated 23 million barrels
of Venezuelan oil that is in storage tanks and oil tankers onto the market.
This would add 750,000 barrels a day to global supply in the first
month of sanctions relief on top of any incremental production.
So, just to understand what's going on here, the Biden administration is
getting a lot of heat for not implementing sanctions against Russian oil.
And part of the reason why Biden is hesitant to do that is because as you guys
can all ready notice oil prices all ready incredibly high and
he's getting battered in regard to coverage regarding gas prices at the pump.
And so he's looking for a solution here.
There are other solutions that he could turn to which we can talk about in just
a second but I wanna hear what you think first Jake.
>> I think this is a really good solution,
even though some people have questionable motives for pushing it.
And I think that unfortunately the media will fall hook line and
sinker for any Fox news talking point.
So Fox News has been yelling at the administration about how and
making it appear that gas prices are all their fault.
And now CBS and all the other media outlets are asking, Jen Psaki 24
07 basically with the implication of why did you raise the gas prices?
Well, they were against Russia invading Ukraine.
But Russia invaded Ukraine anyway.
You don't think that affects gas prices.
Well, if you don't, you just don't know economics, you don't know anything so
you should be quiet and formulate a real question and
then ask it because you apparently know nothing.
So now, the deal with Venezuela would be great for a number of reasons.
Number one, you're releasing 23 million barrels of oil as Anna
just explained from the reserve, that's gonna make an immediate impact.
And then in the long term, you restart the oil coming in from Venezuela that's gonna
take a while to catch up but
we were had about 540,000 barrels that were importing from Russia.
And that's only because the oil here is being exported to other countries.
>> Exactly, yeah.
>> Right? And, but we can import 540,000 to replace
that from Venezuela so that would solve that kind of problem.
But yeah, I know why they're doing it.
Chevron is the major U.S. oil company left in Venezuela.
If we restart oil distribution from Venezuela to U.S.,
Chevron is going to make an unreal amount of money.
And those Wall Street bankers that are sitting on $60 billion dollars in
Venezuelan debt have tons of power in Washington so
they're gonna push for a resolution.
But should we reengage Venezuela?
Yes and not on behalf of those guys and the corruption, but because we shouldn't
have put sanctions on Venezuela in the first place, we shouldn't have tried to do
a coup on that country for no reason, it's not our business at all.
And yes, we should re establish relationships for
the benefit of the Venezuelan people and the American people.
>> So the fact that Maduro is now willing to privatize certain things
that he was unwilling to privatize previously makes me worry.
With that said though, I wanna go back to your point in
regard to exporting oil to other countries.
So the United States, as we've talked about before is the top oil producing
country, the top natural gas producing country.
But that doesn't matter because we don't have nationalized natural resources in
this country.
Everything is privatized, which means that corporations run everything and
of course they're gonna export our natural resources if
they can increase their profits by doing so.
Now the Biden administration doesn't have its hands tied behind its back.
If the Biden administration wanted to under an emergency order for
up to one year, it could unilaterally prevent these corporations from exporting
oil to other countries, but it's unwilling to do that and I think that's telling.
>> Yeah, and by the way,
we should also add that there's some American detainees in Venezuela.
They're tryna orchestrate a trade for that as well and some of that makes sense.
Some of it was probably people.
>> Who did the coup or tried to do.
>> Who did the coup and I don't know if Venezuela is gonna let those particular
detainees off or if they should, but certainly America wants those folks back.
And so they're doing a very rational negotiation here on behalf
of both the citizens and yes, some of the powerful, right.
And the real answer of course, is renewable energy.
>> Yes >> So we don't have
to keep trading between Russia, Iran and Venezuela and Iraq who were invading and
who were supporting and who were getting oil from,
you can't turn off the sun and you can't turn off wind.
If we had real renewable energy in this country, we wouldn't need any of those
countries by the way again to Anna's point, we don't need them now.
We produce enough oil and gas here in America, but we don't control our
corporations if they make a dollar extra exporting it somewhere else, they will.
And that's what our American media owned by corporations never clarifies for you.
>> Exactly, now you're100%.
And just to really highlight that point about renewable energy, it just,
it amazes me that this moment doesn't make it abundantly clear to people how insanely
vulnerable we are, because of the fact that we don't rely on renewable energy.
The takeaway is like we live in this topsy turvy world,
where the takeaway is, we're not drilling enough.
Again, top oil producing country,
top national natural gas producing country in the world, we're number one, okay.
The fact that anyone makes the argument that we're not drilling enough,
we're not fracking enough blows my mind, it's absolutely inaccurate.
All right, and then they bring up the pipeline that Biden scrapped [CROSSTALK].
>> Let's save it for Stephen Moore.
>> Okay, we'll talk about that later, then.