Oil has the name of black gold, which is not an exaggeration, because it is the gold of the energy world, and the place with the most oil is in the Middle East, where there are many well-known oil powers. Among them, Venezuela has a population of only 30 million, but the oil reserves are more than Saudi Arabia, and it is conceivable how amazing it will be to be able to suppress Saudi Arabia, a major oil producer.
Venezuela's oil ups and downs
However, Saudi Arabia has always been rich by selling oil, while Venezuela has become poor because of oil, but it has a yellow sorghum dream, and even fell into the poorest place in South America, which is also the world's notoriously poor. Venezuela's success and failure are inseparable from the oil thing, in recent years the price of oil has risen and risen, and countries that rely on oil for their livelihoods have made a lot of money.
Venezuela was once rich, the people lived happily and richly, even more comfortably than the Americans, and with the emergence of oil price fluctuations, the Venezuelan economy was severely affected and life became worse and worse.
In order to solve the problem, the Venezuelan authorities have carried out a series of strange operations, which have caused Venezuela to encounter a greater crisis, which has directly led to more difficulties in people's lives. One second in heaven, the next in hell, so why is Venezuela so miserable?
This has to talk about the structure of Venezuela, the oil industry is its main support point, export oil accounts for more than 80% of the revenue, if there is no oil this point, basically there is no export revenue. Because Venezuela's industry and agriculture are not developed, except for some light industries, other aspects are very poor, there are 30 million hectares of arable land in agriculture, in fact, only 3 million can be used.
In fact, Venezuela is urbanizing too fast, and many of the remaining land in the countryside is not planted, resulting in inability to be self-sufficient and needs a large amount of imported food to support, which is a waste of local resources.
Of course, the oil factor is very large, in 1970 when crude oil was still very cheap, by the first oil crisis it doubled 10 times, the second oil crisis was renovated again, and it has been soaring in just a few decades. Venezuela, a big oil country, has made a lot of money by taking advantage of this torrent, and it can be said that it is counting money in dreams.
However, this is a trap, because the price of oil and crude oil will fluctuate, and there will be a sharp decline when it surges, and Venezuela, which has long relied on oil revenues, will be absolutely affected by the impact in the end. Under the financial crisis, the international oil price came to a cliff-like plunge, and the Venezuelan economy bore the brunt of it, relying too much on oil to put its life in the hands of others, and it was easy to be choked on the lifeline and toyed with.
Venezuela's false prosperity and development
There is also Venezuela's oil reserves are large, but the quality is not the best, can only be regarded as medium quality, extracted from below to transport, but also stuck to the well platform, if you want to successfully transport out, you have to add some light oil. Venezuela does not have this mixed material and needs to be bought from abroad, and the increased cost of crude oil handling and transportation has actually left Venezuela with a big loss.
Like Saudi Arabia, where the reserves and quality are high, find a place to drill out of the oil is light and good oil, saving a lot of cost processing. Moreover, Venezuela's oil extraction needs to be deep underground, and there is a big obvious gap between the two sides in either way. Saudi Arabia can make money at any time, but there is a difference between making more and making less, while Venezuela can only really make some money when oil is expensive.
In addition to these reasons, Venezuela's transition from rich to poor is mostly human, and in 1999, Venezuela's leader, Chávez, became the 52nd in office, and three fires came as soon as he came up. One of the most critical is the oil aspect, from entrusting foreign exploitation to getting it himself, Chávez announced the recovery of a piece of paper, and all the oil exploration and exploitation was taken back.
And this person also happened to be in a hurry, just in the upper position to make a big move, but also encountered the third oil crisis, less than ten years oil prices rose more than ten times. This time Chávez filled the treasury with most of the income from the recovered oil industry, and he was determined to establish an organization of the poor, implement the style of poverty alleviation, and implement welfare when he had money, which made the people's lives easier.
Not only is health care free, housing and so on are also free, but also various insurance and welfare subsidies, in 2003 the Chávez authorities planned to get 3 million housing units by 2019, free of charge for those poor people to live, to realize the dream of everyone having a house. In fact, these need money to support, and Chávez's plan is to use subsidies to stabilize domestic oil prices, a set of high welfare subsidies, the proportion of Venezuela's poor declined, the effect is very significant.
Taking this opportunity to make the people live well, the happiness index has skyrocketed, Chávez's image of being close to the people is very profound, winning the support of the Venezuelan people, and those poor people are an indispensable force. Since then, Chávez has been successively replaced, and if it were not for the cancer accident, Chávez might have continued to be re-elected, in the actual sense of death.
In order to take better care of the poor group, Chávez also opened up to foreign investors, bent on becoming the boss of the alliance, and led the establishment of the oil alliance, that is, Venezuela paid for cheap oil, which cost a lot of money to support.
Venezuela's development shortcomings and frustrations
On the surface, Chávez's route is very smooth and beautiful, but behind it there are very huge hidden dangers, first of all, it excludes the injection of foreign capital and controls all the oil industry itself. However, in the absence of advanced technical support, oil production has been greatly affected, oil production reduction means that income will become less, and then there is no money to spend, and they have engaged in a high hat for people-friendly welfare, and where do they end up getting money?
Moreover, Chavez's actions have drawbacks, many welfare subsidies have to flow through officials, and some or even many are coveted, which is actually common. In addition, for the lazy people in Venezuela, those who do not have the skills to do rough work actually have very little income, and the welfare subsidy is simply lying flat, anyway, there is a money to spend money on relief.
The immediate consequence of this is that Venezuela has a high crime rate, and Chávez may not have thought that these criminals have made a bad move to profit by smuggling oil. After the death of Chávez, the newly appointed Maduro did not change, but inherited the advantages and disadvantages of his predecessor, and did not expect that the oil price plummeted later, which caused Venezuela to suffer a huge impact.
Venezuela can get high income, relying on the high oil price base, and now that it has lost the basic conditions, it will certainly not have so much income, and how can it maintain high welfare subsidies without money? At this time, Maduro thought of printing money to relieve the pressure in order to stabilize the situation, but he forgot the important point, Venezuela's influence on the world.
A large number of banknotes appeared in the country, so that Venezuela suffered a serious crisis, in just half a year the price of things soared, to eat a meal to a pickup card banknote, such a banknote is scrapped. This situation has been deteriorating, the day before you can buy an apple to eat, the next day can only buy half of it, resulting in raw materials can not be bought, products can not be sold, many people are unemployed and hungry, equivalent to squeezing the people.
The happiness index of the past has declined wildly, the poverty rate is higher than before, and the shortage of various materials to maintain food and clothing is a problem, and many people can only choose to leave their homeland and go to a strange place to survive. Venezuela became the poorest country in South America, and there was chaos everywhere, as the world's largest oil reserve country, a good hand was broken by two big men.
Even if the quality of the oil here is not good, but the victory is large, as long as the introduction of technology is released, the increase in development costs is also very good, if it is not crazy death, now Venezuela should not be so miserable.