{"id":43582,"date":"2019-02-07T06:26:55","date_gmt":"2019-02-07T11:26:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43582"},"modified":"2019-02-07T06:26:58","modified_gmt":"2019-02-07T11:26:58","slug":"venezuelas-collapse-is-a-window-into-how-the-oil-age-will-unravel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43582","title":{"rendered":"Venezuela\u2019s collapse is a window into how the Oil Age will unravel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Protestors clash with police in Caracas (Source: REX \/ Shutterstock<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Venezuela\u2019s collapse is a window into how the Oil Age will\u00a0unravel<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

For some, the crisis in Venezuela is all about the endemic corruption of Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, continuing the broken legacy of Chavez\u2019s ideological experiment in socialism under the mounting insidious influence of Putin. For others, it\u2019s all about the ongoing counter-democratic meddling of the United States, which has for years wanted to bring Venezuela\u200a\u2014\u200awith its huge oil reserves\u200a\u2014\u200aback into the orbit of American power, and is now interfering again to undermine a democratically elected leader in Latin America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neither side truly understands the real driving force behind the collapse of Venezuela: we have moved into the twilight of the Age of Oil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So how does a country like Venezuela with the largest reserves of crude oil in the world end up incapable of developing them? While various elements of socialism, corruption and neoliberal capitalism are all implicated in various ways, what no one\u2019s talking about\u200a\u2014\u200aespecially the global oil industry\u200a\u2014\u200ais that over the last decade, we\u2019ve shifted into a new era. The world has moved from largely extracting cheap, easy crude, to becoming increasingly dependent on unconventional forms of oil and gas that are much more difficult and expensive to produce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oil isn\u2019t running out, in fact, it\u2019s everywhere\u200a\u2014\u200awe\u2019ve more than enough to fry the planet. But as the easy, cheap stuff has plateaued, production costs have soared. And as a consequence the most expensive oil to produce has become increasingly unprofitable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a country like Venezuela, emerging from a history of US interference, plagued by internal economic mismanagement, combined with external intensifying pressure from US sanctions, this decline in profitability became fatal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Venezuela\u2019s collapse is a window into how the Oil Age will\u00a0unravel For some, the crisis in Venezuela is all about the endemic corruption of Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, continuing the broken legacy of Chavez\u2019s ideological experiment in socialism under the mounting insidious influence of Putin. For others, it\u2019s all about the ongoing counter-democratic meddling of the United […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[150,6113,14695,2422,5331,827,851],"class_list":["post-43582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-geopolitics","tag-collapse","tag-insurge-intelligence","tag-naffed-ahmed","tag-nicolas-maduro","tag-oil-age","tag-united-states","tag-venezuela"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43582"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43583,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43582\/revisions\/43583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}