Monthly Archives: September 2011

This comment deserves to be elevated to its own post, since it’s the first more-or-less response from Arevenca. The comment in Spanish is here, but since most of this site is in English, I’m posting a translation here. My name … Continue reading →

I heartily recommend Tom O’Donnell’s “The Global Barrel,” a blog full of smart, very well informed thinking on the oil industry, especially as it relates to Venezuela and China. This is the kind of stuff we are very lucky to … Continue reading →

Today, Caracas Chronicles has a long post about why the Orinoco Belt in Venezuela remains underdeveloped, stifling that country’s economic development and risking increased fealty to China, which has become Venezuelan’s biggest lender. I don’t think that China is as … Continue reading →

Arevenca, the scam company I described in the last post, replaced its home page sometime in the last day with a static image, basically a screen grab of the home page with no active links. Could it be they took … Continue reading →

Good news! Arevenca and China signed an oil deal for $200 billion a year over 10 years. That press release also has a video report. If you are asking, “who is Arevenca,” all I can say is, don’t you know? … Continue reading →

One thing I don’t quite get is why almost every day, I get several hits from people who used search engines to look up William Kallop. I previously mentioned him here. Just a question for those of you who are … Continue reading →

It’s World Car-Free Day! Stop driving. It feels great. It’s mostly a coincidence of timing, but I came across news about these protests in Bolivia. It’s a good chance to look a bit at one of those parts of the … Continue reading →

Not long ago, I was surprised to see this bit of news: Ramon Illarramendi wanted to buy some shares in nuclear plant developer NuScale Power from a U.S. receiver. The receiver has control of those shares after seizing them from … Continue reading →

Today’s Wall Street Journal says (subscription only) Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has had documents drawn up to withdraw his country from the World Bank’s International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). This comes after foreign companies have lodged … Continue reading →

Kudos to Associated Press for this weird, weird scoop. Father of disgraced Venezuelan-American proposes to buy company left teetering by son’s fraud HARTFORD, Conn. — The father of a disgraced Venezuelan-American financier says he is assembling an offer to buy … Continue reading →