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The usurper Nicolás Maduro declared an “oil emergency” in Venezuela and assigned Tareck El Aissami to “defend and restructure” the state-owned PDVSA, giving him even more power to control the country’s economy.
Since 2018, El Aissami has been the vice-president of the economic sector and the usurping Minister of Industries and Production of the Venezuelan regime. Nevertheless, he is a fugitive from U.S. justice because of his links to drug trafficking and international terrorism.
El Aissami is already the external director of PDVSA and will join former Energy Minister Asdrubal Chávez as vice-president of the commission, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino, and Armed Forces Strategic Operations Commander Remigio Ceballos, who are also sanctioned by the United States, among others.
#EnVideo?| Pdte. @NicolasMaduro: La verdadera Pdvsa Roja Rojita, fue la de Alí Rodríguez Araque, lo demás que vino después, fue corrupción, pudrición, descomposición
Algún día le pondremos los ganchos, algún día los traeremos a las cárceles de Venezuela#SoberaníaEnergética pic.twitter.com/gHfws11uzP— VTV CANAL 8 (@VTVcanal8) February 19, 2020
Maduro’s decision shows once again that he is not willing to leave power peacefully, and he is challenging the government of Donald Trump. The usurper claimed that the measure seeks to counteract sanctions imposed by the United States against a subsidiary of the Russian state oil company, Rosneft, because of its commercial operations with the regime. Russia is helping the dictatorship get access to gold and oil markets.
“I am declaring an energy emergency in the hydrocarbon industry to take the urgent and necessary measures to guarantee national energy security and protect the industry from imperialist aggression,” Maduro said hours after the U.S. government-sanctioned Rosneft. “Either we produce, or we produce. Venezuela has to be an oil power,” he added.
According to the usurper, the sanctions are intended to “bankrupt” PDVSA and were imposed at the request of the interim president, Juan Guaidó, whom he called “a sewer rat who is selling his country.” However, it was the same Chavista regime that was responsible for the destruction of the state oil company, and for pushing it to its historic lows.
Recently, Venezuela, the country with the largest oil reserves in the world, closed down the only two refineries that were still operating, a situation that puts the South American country’s crude oil industry in “checkmate” amid illicit negotiations by Chavismo to try and privatize the company.
Economist José Toro Hardy, who until 1999 was a member of the PDVSA board of directors and together with a team of specialists managed to position the company as the second-best in the world, condemned the state-owned oil company for “sinking” into unpaid debt to bondholders, contractors, and suppliers. He added that all this happens while the default grows, and the refineries stop operating.
“PDVSA has destroyed Venezuela’s oil industry. From producing three and a half million barrels in 1998, today it is in the order of six hundred and forty thousand barrels a day, production is in free fall,” he told the PanAm Post.
