The differences of opinion between the president of the United States and his counterpart from the Chevron oil company, regarding the policies that should guide the hydrocarbon industry, reveal strategic contradictions that distance the solution to the inflationary problem and, on the contrary, move it to the countries that gravitate around the world's still strongest economy.
The RT news channel reports that the US consumer price index increased 8,6% during the last 12 months, including May, which represents the largest year-on-year increase since December 1981. The increase was widespread, with housing indices, Gasoline and food were the ones that most influenced the rise.
It details that the average price of regular grade gasoline in the North American country also broke a new historical maximum, standing on June 14 at 5,016 dollars per gallon (3,785 liters).
Meanwhile, year-on-year inflation in Germany reached new records for the third consecutive month, reaching 7,9% in May, due to rising energy prices. The reduction in Russian gas supplies led German authorities to declare a "gas shortage" alert level for the country.
Inflation, which was already on the rise, has been accelerated by sanctions that hinder oil exports from Russia, one of the largest on the planet. Last December, it shipped nearly 8 million barrels of oil and other derivatives to world markets. Five million of that total were crude oil.
Although very little of that oil made its way to the United States, with Europe getting 60% and 20% going to China, in 2021 the price of crude is trading on global commodity markets, so the loss of Russian oil it affects prices around the world, no matter where it is used.
And with regard to Venezuela, a sanctioned country, the increase in gasoline in the US and Europe raises the incidence of inflation in those countries, which is transferred to the rest of the nations, raising the costs of their exported products. That is why the BCV strengthened the already progressive increase in the exchange rate, dollar, to prevent a cheaper currency from being the object of speculative purchases that determine prices of imported goods artificially low.
Even so, as is the case globally, external inflation is added to the sanctions to intensify its incidence on internal prices in Venezuela, which was revealed with the jump from 1,4% in March to 6,5% in May, while the dollar climbed in rhythms of small steps, from 4,40 bolivars to 5,50.
Let's recap. EFE reported last week that Chevron responded to US President Joe Biden, urging him to collaborate with oil companies and not "demonize" them in the face of its growing pressure campaign to produce more fuel and lower prices.
The oil company executives are responding to the letters Biden had sent to the seven major companies demanding "immediate" action amid historic fuel price increases that have contributed to overall inflation.
President Biden has criticized the profit margins of oil companies and even accused Exxon Mobil, the largest company in the country, of not using the land it has leased to produce energy in order to keep production low.
Chevron CEO Mike Wirth responded to Biden by attributing the price increases to a market imbalance "aggravated by Russia's invasion of Ukraine" and criticized him for generally seeking to "criticize, and sometimes demonize," his industry.
Wirth called on the White House to "change its approach" and provide more "clarity and consistency" in regulating leases and permits on federal lands necessary for his business.
Asked about Chevron's response, Biden said the company's CEO "is a bit sensitive. I didn't know his feelings would get hurt so quickly. Look, we need more refining capacity. This idea that they don't have oil to drill and extract is just not true," the president told reporters at the White House.
Chevron's letter follows the line of the one Exxon Mobil sent to Biden a few days ago, in which the country's largest oil company asked the government for better leasing policies, regulation for infrastructure and, in the short term, emergency measures.
Oil companies have shown reluctance to execute new investments as well as reluctance to resume oil production at pre-pandemic levels, amid concerns about the prospect of tougher environmental rules that could reduce future demand. Many of those stricter rules have been relaxed or not signed into law.
Furthermore, CNN points out that it is not just oil production that is lagging behind pre-pandemic levels. There is also less refining capacity in the US Today, about 1 million fewer barrels of oil per day are available to be broken down into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other petroleum products.
“State and federal environmental regulations are prompting some refiners to switch from oil to lower-carbon renewable fuels. And some companies are shutting down older refineries, rather than spend the money it would cost to keep them running. Especially with massive new refineries opening overseas in Asia, the Middle East and Africa in 2023.”
Paradoxically, the positions of the US oil majors are in line with the responses given by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who, according to RT, has repeatedly stated that the current boom in food, energy, and other commodity prices "didn't happen yesterday" and has nothing to do with Moscow's military operation.
"It's the result of several years, the result of many years of irresponsible macroeconomic policy by the G7 countries, uncontrolled issuance, and the accumulation of unsupported debt," the president said, noting that these processes were only accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Putin's words also find support from The Wall Street Journal columnist Holman W. Jenkins Jr., who in an article published on June 21 stated that "US President Joe Biden's repeated statements blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin for the drastic rise in prices in the United States are 'triple-counter false advertising.'"
The author points out that the current surge in oil prices did not begin with the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine. "For all the talk about Ukraine, 55% of the current increase since last December occurred before the Russian invasion. More importantly, the rise in retail gasoline prices has been disproportionately large relative to the underlying rise in oil prices," Jenkins noted.
Neither blacks, nor idiots, nor communists, nor gypsies
In 1936, the Venezuelan Congress passed a new Immigration and Colonization Law, which excluded as immigrants people who were not of the white race, over 60 years of age, prisoners, cripples, idiots, gypsies, street vendors, and all those who professed ideas contrary to the Government and the Constitution, reviews the text Oil Rentistic Formation and Immigration Policy of the Venezuelan State: 1936-1958, published by the National Open University.
The extensive study prepared by the historian Humberto Trompiz Valles, a graduate of the Universidad de los Andes, introduces in the chapter on the immigration policy of the governments presided over by Eleazar López Contreras and Isaías Medina Angarita, the interest that from the independent life of Venezuela has public power to increase migratory flows to the country.
It highlights that between 1832 and 1888 there were many laws on immigration with insignificant results, since during that period the entry of foreigners was barely 26.090, an annual average of 465, which shows the little significance of Venezuela as a pole of attraction, if compares with Argentina: 6.4 million between 1856 and 1932; Brazil 4.4 million between 1821 and 1932.
"Among the reasons could be the pre-capitalist relations in agriculture, which determined the absence of a free labor market, which was unattractive for Europeans coming from a strictly capitalist production regime."
During the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gómez (1908-1935), between 1905 and 1932 the migratory balance was 14.613 people, induced by oil exploitation. However, Trompiz points out that Gomecism showed little interest in promoting the entry of immigrants.
The researcher points out that after the death of Gómez, in 1936 the State becomes interventionist with the purpose of opening the way to capitalist development through the capitalization of oil income, under the leadership of a bourgeois political elite. However, he clarifies, the producing bourgeoisie was more a wish than a reality.
"For this reason, between 1936 and 1945, in addition to seeking to diversify the sources of social wealth, he also sought to create entrepreneurs in order to extend worker-management relations beyond the oil sector."
It is at this moment when an immigration policy is formulated with the objectives of renewing agriculture, overcoming the mining nature of the economy and developing the manufacturing industry. This is where Alberto Adriani intervenes, who, gathering the purposes of the immigration policies of the XNUMXth century, states: “educate, which is the function that Bolívar attributed to immigration; and increase and improve our white population.”
