So the official line is that this whole deal is about stopping the pipeline for oil from Venezuela to Russia and Iran. Is that actually legitimate? I’d think Russia and Iran have enough domestic oil for their own use that they wouldn’t have to bother with Venezuela’s heavy sour. Are they just taking the opportunity to seize any ship that wanders into the Western hemisphere that could be used to illicitly transport oil exports from these countries maybe? If so, that could actually hurt Putin’s interests - I gotta figure TACO would come into play on a move like that.
In my opinion seeing this through the lens of nations is nearly meaningless.
What is happening is the end of oil has begun and the Ukrainian war has made it very difficult to keep oil prices high. China is moving towards alternative energy and massively investing into EVs, the writing is on the wall. If you don’t secure a buyer for your oil even if you have lots of oil it is going to become harder and harder to sell it.
The way I see it, Trump is at the end of the day attacking Venezuela and seizing tankers in order to try to introduce enough instability into the world oil markets that prices don’t crash further for the oil companies actually running all of this. I don’t really even see this as a true hostile action against Russia, it feels like a purely cynical price manipulation move that Russia just happened to be the convenient target of.
All of the other context people are providing are the details built upon this core reality.
So the official line is that this whole deal is about stopping the pipeline for oil from Venezuela to Russia and Iran. Is that actually legitimate? I’d think Russia and Iran have enough domestic oil for their own use that they wouldn’t have to bother with Venezuela’s heavy sour. Are they just taking the opportunity to seize any ship that wanders into the Western hemisphere that could be used to illicitly transport oil exports from these countries maybe? If so, that could actually hurt Putin’s interests - I gotta figure TACO would come into play on a move like that.
In my opinion seeing this through the lens of nations is nearly meaningless.
What is happening is the end of oil has begun and the Ukrainian war has made it very difficult to keep oil prices high. China is moving towards alternative energy and massively investing into EVs, the writing is on the wall. If you don’t secure a buyer for your oil even if you have lots of oil it is going to become harder and harder to sell it.
The way I see it, Trump is at the end of the day attacking Venezuela and seizing tankers in order to try to introduce enough instability into the world oil markets that prices don’t crash further for the oil companies actually running all of this. I don’t really even see this as a true hostile action against Russia, it feels like a purely cynical price manipulation move that Russia just happened to be the convenient target of.
All of the other context people are providing are the details built upon this core reality.