Versión Español
Spanish – The second of the three Iranian tankers that will supply oil to Venezuela arrived after the country ran out of the barrels that Iran sent a little over four months ago.
Maduro’s tyrannical regime has no way of dealing with the shortage of gasoline and has turned to Iran to refuel itself, completely dependent on that country. If the scenario does not improve, the South American nation will enjoy a few weeks without shortages and then fall back into the same crisis.
The Forest and the Fortune, each carrying about 300,000 barrels of fuel, were loaded at Iran’s Bandar Abbas terminal last month. In total, the ships loaded about 825,000 barrels of gasoline, slightly more than what they supplied between May and June.
Maduro’s tyranny seeks to mitigate the shortage for at least a few days. But the supposed relief will be temporary, considering the regime’s inability to produce its own gasoline despite having the world’s largest oil reserves.
The shortage of gasoline is not new for Venezuelans. Although Nicolás Maduro attributes it to the “tightening” of sanctions imposed by the United States, the truth is that the shortages have emerged sporadically for years due to the precarious state of Venezuela’s refineries and low oil production.
Maduro’s regime is in charge of the distribution and production of gasoline. Chavismo manages refineries and exports. So only the dictatorship is responsible for what happens to the fuel and its severe scarcity.
Whenever the shortage of gasoline worsens, the situation becomes so unsustainable that Venezuelans buy gasoline by smuggling it from Colombia and Brazil. In other words, the country with the largest oil reserves in the world imports the fuel clandestinely and then resells it.
We must remember that on February 20, Maduro decreed an “oil emergency” in Venezuela and assigned Tareck El Aissami to the “defense and restructuring” of the state-owned PDVSA. Meanwhile, he sent fuel to Cuba. However, the results are not yet visible.
Recently, Iran admitted that the Nicolás Maduro regime has paid in gold in exchange for the logistics, technology, and weapons provided by Iran.
According to the publication Mehr, Major General Seyyed Yahya Safavi, assistant and high advisor to the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of Iran, revealed that the country received payment in gold for the support it has offered to Venezuela. “We gave Venezuela gasoline, and we received gold bars that we brought to Iran on planes to avoid any incident during transit,” he said.
