A Stitch in Haste

...and the loon taketh away:

Hugo Chávez threatened Sunday to halt oil exports to the United States if the oil giant Exxon Mobil succeeds in freezing billions of dollars of foreign petroleum assets controlled by Venezuela.

The warning ratchets up a fierce legal dispute between Venezuela and Exxon after Mr. Chávez's move to exert greater state control over the nation's oil industry last year. Rather than submitting to Venezuela's terms, Exxon withdrew from a major production venture, intensifying the feud.

To review: Chavez literally stole the Venezuelan oil industry from its private owners, including foreign investors such as Exxon. Exxon is now simply trying to recoup some of its stolen property, as would any other victim of any other petty mugger. This is not complicated.

Meanwhile, Chavez -- in classic socialist propagandist fashion -- tried to convince the ignorant that he was really a nice guy. He paid Joseph Kennedy $366,000 a year to prostitute himself as a Chavez spokesman for a program under which the poor oppressed people of America would receive low-cost Venezuelan oil (i.e., would received the plundered wealth of poor oppressed Venezuelans).

So much for that idea.

Mr. Chávez has repeatedly threatened to cut off oil supplies to the United States, but has never done so. In fact, despite a deterioration in political relations, the United States remains Venezuela's top trading partner. Venezuela is the fourth-largest supplier of crude oil to the United States, sending 1.2 million barrels a day to American refineries, according to the Energy Information Administration in Washington.

Of course, it will be much easier for the United States to find other sellers of oil than it will be for Venezuela to find other buyers.*

Read that passage again: We are Venezuela's largest trading partner; Venezuela is only our fourth largest oil supplier (and in terms of overall trade, they're far lower down the list than that). So who is going to dictate terms to whom here? For Chavez to threaten us with an embargo is about as meaningful as Ken Hutcherson threatening to bring down Microsoft.

Finally:

Declining oil production at Petróleos de Venezuela has allowed other countries in the OPEC oil cartel, notably Saudi Arabia, to gain a greater share of the market in meeting the expanding global demand for oil. The problems at Petróleos de Venezuela, a major revenue source for Mr. Chávez, are occurring amid growing discontent over food shortages and galloping inflation.

It's easy to seize a refinery -- all you need are some guns and a cheering mob. Running the refinery after you've stolen it is another matter altogether.

Eventually, Petróleos de Venezuela will collapse while the looters head for the exits, Chavez will make some speeches about how he was betrayed by this or that Enemy of the Revolution, and then flee to live in exile in Bolivia or Cuba or some such socialist wasteland. Then the rebuilding (probably by Exxon) of Venezuela's oil industry can commence -- until the next two-bit dictator comes along.

Thus ever with tyrants -- and the mobs who spawn them.

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*More thoughts from Samizdata, including this (unverified) comment:

Venezuelan crude is particularly heavy and tarry, and most of the refineries capable of processing it are in the US. The US will have less difficulty buying crude from elsewhere than Chavez' [sic] will have ... selling it elsewhere.

Not my area of expertise, but if that's true then Chavez really is a light crude moron.