Reply #88: BULLSH*T!! Selling CITGO my arse... that's US and Oligarch PROPAGANDA [View All]

[Say_What]

Oil Minister: “Venezuela Will Not Withdraw from the U.S. Market”

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....“It is our greatest interest to continue in a market that is natural for us,” said Ramirez, referring to the U.S. With regard to the possible sale of the gas station chain Citgo, which Venezuela’s state-run oil company PDVSA owns, Ramirez said, “Opposition sectors want to connect the Citgo subject to a political decision. We will maintain the refineries with which we have supply agreements for Venezuelan crude, where we have a good business.”

In the past few weeks, news stories had been circulating in the U.S. press that Venezuela was considering the sale of Citgo, which has over 14,000 affiliated gas stations five refineries in the U.S. Ramirez said, however, that this is not true. "I want to reiterate that we will maintain a position in Citgo, we are revising some positions that are not convenient to us. There are refineries that don't refine a single barrel of Venezuelan crude and it is not viable sending our crude to some refineries because of the distance," he said.

Neither the Citgo-owned refinery Lemont in the U.S. nor Ruhr Oel in Germany “refine a single Venezuelan barrel, so one must ask: Was PDVSA made to buy Mexican, Russian, and Canadian crude? This is not a good business,” said Ramirez. It would be uneconomical for the Lemont and the Ruhr Oel refineries to take Venezuelan crude, according to Ramirez, so holding on to them makes little economic sense.

...Similarly, in a press release issued yesterday by Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry, Minister Ali Rodríguez said that any suggestion that Venezuela is interested in decreasing oil exports to the U.S. in favor of China is “an enormous falsehood.” “PDVSA’s plan is to increase its production, both to supply new North American demand and that of other countries,” said Rodriguez.

http://venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=1518


"We will maintain the refineries with which we have supply agreements" said Venezuelan oil minister Rafael Ramirez.
Photo: Venezuelanalysis.com archive.