Oil-Venezuela-USA: An Uncertain Future?

Major league baseball and the best basketball in the world receive the attention of millions of Venezuelans, as do the technological feats of NASA. However, this is not the case for the electoral confrontation for president every four years, which this time is between President Barack Obama (Democratic Party) and candidate Mitt Romney (Republican Party). The election will take place on November 6, a month after the Venezuelan elections. Additionally, the heat of the extremely important Venezuelan contest of 2012 captures, as it should, the attention of the Venezuelan people. However, some topics discussed in the North are relevant to Venezuela in the short- and long-term. One cannot forget that the Venezuelan state and the web resource-distribution through its ministries, provincial governments, mayors’ offices, businesses, missions, etc., feed on the dollars provided by the practically exclusive sale of oil to the U.S. Also, a good part of the goods imported by the state and private sector alike come from that country, including – who would have thought – gasoline!

Highlighting the energy issue, at almost the same time that candidate Romney announced his plan to make the U.S. independent of imported oil by 2020, President Obama signed the Corporate Average Fuel Economy regulation, which requires automakers to produce vehicles with a standard performance of 54.5 miles per gallon (about 22 km per liter) for the North American market by 2025. That measure and the previous one signed by Obama in 2011 (34.1 mpg by 2016) will reduce the emission of greenhouse gases in the U.S. by 6 billion tons of carbon over the next 13 years. This is the most significant measure to alleviate global warming taken by the second-most polluting nation in the world. (China is now first.) However, the other consequence of this measure has a more direct interest for Venezuela, and that is that each North American driver will save $8,100 in fuel in the lifetime of his or her vehicle, for a total of $1.7 billion. Put another way, the politics of energy independence (the reduction of dependence on imported oil) are politics of the state, shared by both parties. The same can be said of technological innovations to save fossil fuels, the substantial increase in the internal production of gas and oil, the change from gas to thermoelectric plants and the drive toward alternative energy technologies (solar, wind, ethanol and hydrothermal).

The United States will not import more oil between 2020 and 2025; it is easier than going to the moon. That idea significantly helps make the next presidential period in Venezuela (2013-2019) the most crucial in the nation’s 200-year history. The challenge for Venezuelans to unite and progress in all fields with gigantic steps will be, more than necessary, essential and urgent. It should continue to accelerate between the years 2019 and 2025. As Venezuelans, we should embark on reviving the country, re-establishing unity of purpose, working productively, managing efficiently, administering financial resources meticulously and [the pursuit of] justice. All of this should decrease the divide between political parties present in administration of the state, thus enriching the state through healthy politics regarding the national development of diversification and sustainability in the frame of the world economy.

In that context, our electoral campaign seems as if we had grabbed God by the beard. Therefore, we can reduce the campaign to the stupidity of insults, to the memory of what Bolívar did or did not do 200 years ago, or to promise and promise things in bulk. Please, let us be aware that we are out of bread to break. The flow of easy petrodollars is not guaranteed for much longer, and we are obligated – Yes, now! – to put on long pants and roll up our sleeves. We need to organize, educate and prepare ourselves to compete in the global markets through the diversification of manufactured products. To summarize, already in 2013, we should begin to industrialize ourselves with high technology. That will be simply impossible with the political plan implemented by Mr. Chávez for the past 14 years, which follows the Cuban model. To show a single aspect, the world will have a surplus of 85 million workers with training in medium and high-skill technology (graduates from technical schools and high-level universities) in 2020. But in these 14 years, Mr. Chávez’s budgetary focus for the nation’s most important universities, for political reasons, has seriously injured the academic platform to train professionals capable of competing with their Latin American rivals, let alone with their Asian, European or North American rivals. (Primarily, the university students do not agree with his personal purpose to govern the country for life.) The national academic decline has been enormous and criminal.

The entire country of Venezuela is witness to the situation of Petróleos de Venezuela and of basic business caused by politicking equal to that of the private manufacturing sector. Every reasonable Venezuelan, regardless if he or she works for the state or is enlisted in a mission, should make the effort to overcome the noise of the campaign and reflect upon the immediate future that is already knocking on our door. That way, we can make the right decision on October 7. That day, the country will stop walking in reverse toward the abyss and will begin to ascend to a better future. Even those who claim to be Chavists today will understand and join the required effort to unite!