Vanguard News Network

[Chavez keeps talking and preparing against the Yankee, and rightly so. Here he takes delivery of the first of 33 helicopters from Russia, will also buy 100,000 Kalashnikovs. He claims the U.S. is spreading rumors about his going after Dutch Antilles. Here gWaPo on the seizure Cienfuegos analyzes below; here overtly marxist view of the ‘Bolivarian Revolution.’]

“The Bolivarian Revolution”: President Chavez
expropriates French and Italian oil fields

by Ernesto Cienfuegos
La Voz de Aztlan

Los Angeles, Alta California – April 4, 2006 – (ACN) Venezuelan Minister of Energy and Oil Rafael Ramirez Carreño announced yesterday that state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA had taken control of French and Italian oil fields in his country. The oil companies affected are the Paris based “Total SA” and the Italian “Eni SPA” which together were producing about 117,000 barrels of oil per day. The oil fields expropriated are the “Jusepin Field” and the “Dacion Field” that were under the control of Total SA and Eni SPA respectively.

The two expropriated oil fields are among 32 others that the Venezuelan government has seized from foreign companies by voiding their oil-pumping contracts and replacing them with new contracts that give Petroleos de Venezuela SA a 60 to 80 percent ownership. President Hugo Chavez Frias has redefined the terms under which foreign companies can operate in Venezuela, which has the largest oil reserves outside of the Middle East. This new policy is part of the ongoing “Bolivarian Revolution” which is now sweeping Mexico, Central and South America..

Minister of Energy and Oil Rafael Ramirez Carreño, also President of Petroleos de Venezuela SA, said, “We’re not going to trample over anybody but we can’t accept being trampled on either. Companies that don’t adjust to our laws, we don’t want them to continue in the country.”

Sixteen foreign oil companies have already agreed to President Chavez’ new terms. Among these are Chevron Corporation, British Petroleum and Shell Oil Company. Exxon Mobile, the world’s largest oil company, however decided to sell its holding in Venezuela instead.

President Hugo Chavez Frias of Venezuela is leading the “Bolivarian Revolution” within many Latin American countries. The name given to the powerful and far ranging revolution is derived from General Simon Bolivar (1783-1830). General Simon Bolivar was one of South America’s greatest generals. His victories over the Spaniards won independence for Bolivia, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela. Bolivar was born in Caracas, Venezuela. He is also known as “El Liberador”. General Simon Bolivar’s greatest dream was to some day “unify under one flag all the countries in the new world that were once under Spanish rule.”

Today, Mexico and Latin America are very different from the time the USA told Europe, “The region is ours to exploit, stay out” through the so-called “Monroe Doctrine” of 1823. Since then, the US has overthrown or undermined around 47 Latin American governments. It has replaced these governments with despotic “puppet regimes” as it did recently in Afghanistan is presently attempting to do in Iraq. The USA has lost ground in Latin America largely because it has been too busy fighting wars against Islam. Many Latin American countries have now elected leftist governments and relations with the United States are at an all time low. Presently there is a huge amount of deep-rooted anti-American feelings from Aztlan to the Antarctic.

http://www.aztlan.net/chavez_expropriates_oil_fields.htm