President of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, has said the country is ready to export fuel to the US & Europe.
Speaking on Saturday 10th September at the PetroCedeño Industrial Complex, Maduro said “Venezuela is ready and prepared to export our products to any market that need it”, claiming that Venezuelan exports could help stabilize the increasingly precarious global energy market.
Maduro also hailed the recovery of Venezulea’s state-owned gas and oil company, which has been subject to sanctions and asset freezes by the US and EU amongst others, which have exacerbated Venezuela’s deep economic crisis.
“Thanks to the workers’ power, the capacity and the love of the workers, today PDVSA is being reborn”, he said. “We are in the territory of the future. The working class has reinvented itself with a lot of passion and intelligence”.
Maduro’s offer comes as Western nations prepare for a winter of energy rationing, in the face of the artificial scarcity created by Western sanctions on Russia.
Just last week Ukraine’s PM, Denis Shmyhal, made a similar offer to help fill the apparent void in Europe’s energy supplies by providing gas from Ukraine’s reserves in exchange for increased military aid, which itself has exacerbated the West’s looming recession, and energy crisis.
However, with Venezuela’s frozen foreign assets amounting to $8 billion, and many companies and individuals still sanctioned, it remains unclear whether Maduro himself may have more than reasonable conditions to this offer, should the US and EU be interested in negotiations.
In arriving at this point in the current crisis, the US and EU nations have systematically blockaded and sabotaged relations with a number of major energy producing nations, including Venezuela, Iran, and now Russia.
The measures of sanctions waged against these nations, are ostensibly premised on promoting democratic reform, by targeting supposedly corrupt political figures insubordinate, and consequently undesirable to the West.
Yet throughout history, sanctions and blockades have always devastated the lives of ordinary citizens, a far cry from a display of democratic ideals, more accurately amounting to an act of economic war.
As winter looms in the northern hemisphere, and the energy crisis looks set to deepen, the ball is firmly in The US & EU’s court. With offers on the table, there is increasing demand from Western publics that their governments resume trade relations with global energy providing nations, as the hypocritical justifications of suffering austerity as the ‘price of defending democracy’ wear thin.
