Silly Little Country

Morning mirth from the perpetual clown

The CBC is credulously reporting Chavez's threats of cutting off oil exports to the US. Chavez seems to be missing a couple of points - 1) that oil is pretty much fungible, and 2) Venezuela's oil is NOT so fungible, as this article points out.

Here's the problem for Venezuela: The country has no alternative market to the US for much of its crude. One useful measure in this regard is a refinery's complexity index . Refineries that are able to run heavier, more-sour feedstocks are said to be more complex than refineries that can only run light, sweet crude.

No doubt Chavez' main goal is to whip up some support internally.

The sad thing is that people do vote for clowns. (Heaven knows, I have.)

posted by Alan Adamson @ 8:38 AM