Obama to offer alternative to Venezuelan crude on Caribbean swing

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Agence France-Presse

Obama to offer alternative to Venezuelan crude on Caribbean swing
AFP
April 8, 2015, 1:00 pm

Washington (AFP) - Barack Obama will become the first US president to set foot on Jamaican soil in more than three decades Wednesday, as the United States bids to check Venezuelan influence in the Caribbean. Obama will arrive in Kingston for a meeting with the 15-member CARICOM Caribbean bloc, the first time a sitting US president visits the island since Ronald Reagan in 1982.

Obama will be keen to offer an alternative to cheap Venezuelan oil, which has enticed many of the region's struggling economies, but looks set to end. Obama will have to woo countries that while geographically close to the United States, sometimes feel politically distant.

. . .

If the US has not always made its presence fully felt in the Caribbean, that vacuum was filled by Petrocaribe, an initiative by Caracas' state-owned PDVSA -- Petroleos de Venezuela. The program offered Caribbean and some Central American nations the opportunity to defer payment for oil under low interest rates.

. . .

Piccone, now of the Brookings Institution, said the cuts to Petrocaribe are estimated to be anywhere between ten and thirty percent of supply. "The goal of the United states now is to try to break up Petrocaribe and offer in particular the Caribbean states that are so vulnerable and so dependent on energy imports some extra special attention."


Read more: https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/world/a/27012764/

[Dont call me Shirley]

1. Better yet, promote clean alternative energy.

[Fred Sanders]

2. So Obama is on a historical Caribbean visit...and the mass media wants to talk...oil? Really?

Because gasoline prices is what is really in the minds of folks in Jamaica....as opposed to the message of hope President Obama represents and brings to common folks everywhere.

It would be funny mass media stuff if it was not so pathetic.

[hack89]

4. This is a huge deal in the Caribbean

their economies have grown dependent on cheap VZ oil. Their economies will suffer if they can't find a replacement as the VZ economy collapses. Hope is one thing - real economic help is even better.

[Zorra]

3. Capitalists have been engaging in economic warfare to destroy Venezuela's economy.

And this is another wave of attacks.

[Marksman_91]

7. The Carribbean nations seem to be aware that Venezuela won't be able to subsidize them soon

They're just being pragmatic is all.

[daleo]

5. The U.S. helping the Carribbean

That's so sweet. I can't think of anyone with cleaner hands.

[Judi Lynn]

6. During Bush's occupation of the White House, Bermuda had made a deal with Cuba

to sell them some of their used buses to use for Cuban people.

Bermudan officials were contacted in no time at all by the US State Department, I believe it was Roger Noriega, who told them in blunt terms that they'd better forget about that contract for the buses, or they would lose financial aid from the U.S.

Yes, indeed, the U.S. has always been that lovable Uncle Sweetie who has looked out for Latin American best interests, so necessary, as it seemed to Henry Kissinger, who complained he didn't see why the US should just stand by and allow the Chilean people to act so irresponsibly in electing their socialist President Allende. They didn't keep him long, either, after the US under Nixon got finished with their fast track obliteration of the man.

So many people don't realize the US CIA controlled the news media in Chile, pouring millions into Chilean newspaper, El Mercurio, owned by Augustin Edwards, and his magazines, his radio and tv stations, and sending CIA personnel to work in the news outlets. That was during the 1970's. One can only guess how much they have fine-tuned and streamlined that process, by now, so that, as Nixon insisted, "our hand doesn't show."

On edit:

Oh, yes. They also "made the economy scream" in Chile, as Nixon demanded of his CIA chief, Richard Helms. Backed up ships in harbors with rotting food, trucks parked on the highway as the drivers walked away, containing food, empty liquor stores, no cigarettes, grocery store hoarding, all the crap alert people have seen elsewhere.

Don't really know if idiots at the time looked at the empty stores and soiled themselves laughing that the people had no toilet paper back then, but the right-wingers no doubt acted the same as they do today.