The fight for oil sovereignty is to defend Venezuela's future

The fight for oil sovereignty is to defend Venezuela's future
ABN 22/02/2008


Maracaibo, Feb 22 ABN.- “The battle we are currently fighting in Venezuela is for the oil sovereignty, to defend the future of the country, to defend the biggest oil reserve of the planet, for our Orinoco Oil Belt”, said the Minister of the People's Power for Energy and Petroleum, Rafael Ramírez.

The statements were made this Friday, in Maracaibo, Zulia State, during his speech to a mass meeting of workers of the oil industry organized to support country's oil sovereignty.

Rafael Ramírez, who is also the President of the state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), pointed out that the revolutionary Government and the President of the Republic, Hugo Chávez Frías, have made a call to all oil industry workers as well as the rest of the population to make public acts supporting our oil sovereignty. “that's why we are here today”.

“Transnational companies have to know and understand that this is a national sovereignty problem and we are not going to adjust or give up to any of their interests. Our Government will not surrender in its fair expectations to defend our interests”, he stressed.

Furthermore, he stated: “Even if they try, with international legal actions, to present the country as it were totally collapsed and that our national company is diminished, we have already proven the contrary: our PDVSA is stronger than ever and our workers, the soul of the company, have a very high level of conscience, great morals, and training”.

He warned that the economic war is not just on the oil side, the oligarchy has attempted against the fields, food production and distribution.

However, “the Government has answered effectively: National production has increased, the right utilization of the lands is supported, it fights against the monopolies and oligopolies, the Food Market Network has been strengthened, and PDVAL (governmental food plan) has been created through PDVSA”.

“I make a call to all the workers of the new PDVSA to support PDVAL, because PDVSA is PDVAL and PDVAL is PDVSA. Remember that revolutions are made with extraordinary works and a permanent daily task has to be to support Bolivarian Government to defeat the enemies of our people”, he emphasized.

Ramirez took advantage of the opportunity to remember that the old PVSA was under the control of the enemies; “they gave away our docks, drills, control machines, they removed our workers and they wanted to keep contractors”.

He pointed out that 500 thousand barrels of our oil industry were delivered to private companies through the so-called operative agreements.

Ramírez said that once Bolivarian Government started to execute Venezuelan laws, most of these transnationals had to migrate to the figure of joint ventures, which are now under the control of PDVSA.

“We have say it to the world: Here, our laws and Constitution have to be respected, so companies that cannot do that, they can leave the country”, he emphasized.

Likewise, he mentioned the lie told to Venezuelan people when some companies tried to label the Orinoco Belt as bituminous, arguing that there was not oil in the Belt, but bitumen and it had to be commercialized as it.

“Well, now it is called the Orinoco Oil Belt, the world's biggest oil reserve, where there is not only big oil reserves, with an accumulation of more than 235 billion of oil barrels, but gas also”, he noted.

“This is what North American imperialism wanted: to own the biggest oil reserve of the world. The IV Republic was giving it away and the old PDVSA was allowing it”, he assured.

Ramírez stated that the National Government pulled apart what they called strategical associations. For example, the royalty rate, which is what the State charges as the owner of the resource, they decreased it from 16.6% to 1% and taxes for oil incomes decreased from 67.7% to 34%.

He pointed out that since 2002, when oil sovereignty started to be implemented, Venezuelan State recovered 40 billion dollars for Venezuelan people.

“Our oil economy consists on who gets the oil incomes. Before, it was the imperialism who got it, the national oligarchy, and now, it is the people, and that is what they do not forgive to President Chávez”, he added.

He explained that ExxonMobil is carrying out an arbitration against PDVSA because they do not accept our sovereign conditions: Venezuelan State having control of our own resources.

Ramírez denounced that when the IV Republic and the old PDVSA approved the agreements on the so-called oil opening, they drafted some dispositions, which they approved, where our sovereignty and decisions of our controversies were give in to transnationals.

“Our resource and sovereignty, in jurisdictional matter of courts, were give in. That's where the arbitration figure comes from”, he said.