Some more resources...

A couple other resources I used:

http://www.beg.utexas.edu/energyecon/new-era/case_studies/Apertura_in_Venezuela.pdf

The Economics, Culture, and Politics of Oil in Venezuela | venezuelanalysis.com

Orinoco Belt on Development

Here we can find an initial forecast of the production capacity of the Carabobo and the Junin areas of the Orinico Belt. These areas are being developed by PDVSA in the company of various international companies.

Here's a link to the site where the original article can be found: http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/02/11/venezuela-carabobo-idUSN1123338520100211

FACTBOX: Venezuela development plan for Orinoco oil belt

Venezuela has launched a massive plan to develop the nation's vast Orinoco heavy crude oil belt, considered one of the largest in the world, that is slated to add 2.1 million barrels per day of new production.

The OPEC nation on Wednesday awarded stakes to private companies in two oil projects in the Carabobo area of the Orinoco belt. It has also granted four projects to partners in the Junin area.

The projects operated by state oil company PDVSA are mostly set to begin producing tar-like Orinoco oil by 2013, with total investment of $80 billion. Upgraders to turn that crude into lighter synthetic oil will be ready several years later.

Chavez Responds to U.S. Sanctions

Here we can find an article from the Oil and Gas Journal on the responses of some Venezuelan political leaders to the recent U.S. sanctions after the Bolivarian Goverment supporting actions for Iran:

Irked by sanctions, Chavez threatens to curb oil sales to US

May 25, 2011

Eric Watkins
OGJ Oil Diplomacy Editor



LOS ANGELES, May 25 -- Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, irked by new sanctions imposed by Washington on state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela SA, said the firm may not be able to guarantee all future shipments of oil to the US.

“The true impact of this new gringo aggression will be to strengthen the nationalist and patriotic morale of Venezuela,” said Chavez who has often threatened to cut off supplies of his country’s oil to the US.

Chavez’s remarks came after the US yesterday imposed economic sanctions on PDVSA and six other foreign companies for working with Iran’s energy industry in ways that might bolster the country’s illicit nuclear program (OGJ Online, May 25, 2011).

A growing Mirage?

Since Chavez's Nationalization of the Venezuelan Oil Industry for the securization of fuding to his sovereign developing projects, increasing default risk had become a major concern for many of the investors of PDVSA.

Here we can find an opinion article from the online version of "The Economist"; The author offers us not a shining forecast for the years to come in the Venezuelan State.

http://www.economist.com/node/18233412

Research Resources

Here we can some links to the different research papers which I may like to address in the final paper/presentation

http://www.iadb.org/res/publications/pubfiles/pubWP-534.pdf

http://www.indiana.edu/~spea/pubs/undergrad-honors/honors_vol.2_no.7.pdf

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2005/wp05237.pdf

http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/etext/llilas/vrp/coronil.pdf

http://www.feem-web.it/ess/ess07/files/bulte6_ln.pdf

http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/ross/paper.pdf

http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/venezuela_update_2008_02.pdf

http://ideas.repec.org/a/ecj/econjl/v94y1984i373p41-55.html

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2005/01/pdf/chapter4.pdf

Resource: "Sowing the Petroleum"

This is an article I found in my research of Juan Pablo Perez Alfonso, the self-proclaimed "oil guru" of Venezuela. It provides a ton of helpful and interesting information not only on Perez Alfonso, but also about Venezuela's abundance of oil and its effect on the country's democratic processes.

Click here to read

At the end of the article, you'll find a link titled "The Marginal Man". This article has less emphasis on the Venezuelan oil industry but is still pretty interesting.

OIl Market Report

In the link below we can find some useful charts for the upcoming presentation:

http://omrpublic.iea.org/countryresults.asp?country=Venezuela&Submit2=Submit

More than a Decade of Promises

Here follows an opinion article by Steve Ellner whom makes a brief summary on the advance of the Bolivarian Project during Chavez's first decade on Power. The neo-nationalization of the oil industry in Venezuela played a central role on the first stages of the socialist revolution, as well on the development of Venezuela's central plan. Ellner elaborates on Chavez's plan focusing on what he seems to consider the three core economic objectives of the Venezuelan State in the last decade:

1.-The diversification of commercial relations in order to overcome dependence on the U.S. oil market.

2.-The assertion of national “sovereignty” by increasing the nation’s independent productive capacity, specifically severing dependence on capital and technology from the advanced capitalist nations.

3.-The government seeks to challenge oligopolistic control of the economy by opening opportunities for new sources of competition.

The Complete Article here follows:

The 21st Century Socialism by the Numbers

An interesting report on Venezuelas's Market Economy and Transformation Management can be found on the "Shaping Change - Strategies of Development and Transformation" Website:

http://www.bertelsmann-transformation-index.de/93.0.html?L=1\

While the current Venezuelan State pursues the establishment of an hegemony based on social equality, great dependence on oil prices seems still to be a major obstacle for the progress of the Latinoamerican Nation, whom according to the statistics from the link above clearly remains far away from reaching a dominant role in the world's economy.

US sanctions against PdVSA

In recent news, the US announced sanctions against Venezuelan oil company PDVSA. These sanctions came as a result of PDVSA supplying Iran with petrochemicals and other sources of energy, which is unsettling for the U.S. government due to fears of Iran stepping up its nuclear program. The opposition to the U.S.'s decision feels that this is just another imperialist decision and that if the U.S. were really mad, they would have enacted an oil embargo in Venezuela.

Click here

Venezuela Crude Oil, Petroleum and Politics

Here is another resource I've found very helpful in my research. James L. Williams from WTRG Economics partnered with Venezuela's Petroleum World to provide a site with up-to-date information on Venezuela's oil industry, political situation and their impacts on the international oil market. He also compiled a lot of links to news stories and other sites.

Click here

OPEC: Venezuela

Here is a link to Venezuelan facts and figures on OPEC's website. According to the site, oil revenues account for 94% of export earnings, with the other 6% coming from natural gas, iron ore, gold, bauxite, diamonds and other minerals. OPEC's website also has information on other member countries, as well as a brief history of the organization, OPEC in the news, and data and graphs.

OPEC: Venezuela

**(note to self: post proper citations)

Research Outline

Here is an outline of my research on Venezuelan Oil- please feel free to comment with any questions/suggestions!

(**Note: I will be posting more research with references pertaining to my outline later in the day.)

Venezuela's History of Oil and Role in the Global Market

_Venezuela's history of oil

-Economic dependence

-Other industries of past/present importance to Venezuela and how they have been affected by the oil industry

-Nationalization of oil

-Rents on concession

_OPEC

-Importance

-Past/present roles of Venezuela

-Juan Pablo Perez Alfonso and the Texas Railroad Commission (TRC)

_Petroleos de Venezuela Sociedad Anonima (PDVSA)

-Role in Venezuela

-Global importance

_President Hugo Chavez

-Influence on the Venezuelan oil industry

-Support and opposition

_Present and Future Role in Global Oil Market

-Future key players

-Current relations with China and India

-Remaining reserves

A Brief History of the Venezuelan Oil Industry

This is a website I found pretty interesting- it gives a short history of the Venezuelan oil industry, a brief description of their current oil relations under Chavez, and discusses Venezuela's future relations with China and India.

http://www.freewebs.com/npre480venezuela/index.htm

Research Paper Outline

Rentismo is the tendency of monoculture economies, particularly those whose economic base is in the production and exportation of oil, to subsidize state projects with the excess yields of their main industry. Such tendency creates dependency, and diminishes creativity and competitiveness. Although many related examples of all the consequences of Rentismo issues are found all through history, today it is an issue most notoriously present in countries of weak economic and politic structure. A republic which clearly has being diminished by the ill of Rentismo is Venezuela. On this time, Venezuela remains a state whose strategies are mainly base on the development as well as on the stability of the oil industry and market. Being among the greatest oil economies of the world, an active member of OPEC, and having an eclectic endowment of natural and geographical resources, Venezuela, in principle, posses an enormous potential to ignite the inception of an integral and sustainable economy.  What strains are keep in it then, from achieving such potential? The following research project will focus on the issues associated with Rentismo:

• It will first draw a picture of the Venezuelan oil industry, to understand the political and economic causes for its current structure.
• Then, it will elaborate on present studies and forecasts of the Venezuelan potential and actual production of oil, in order to give some insides of the capacities of a mono-producer state.
• Finally, it will analyze Venezuela’s role in the oil global market.

Over-all this examination is expected to return a solid understanding for the reasons of Venezuela’s Magical State, as well as some suggestions of how to fade of the vicious cycle of Rentismo.

During the Times of Chavez

Here is a brief summary of the changes in the dynamic structure of the Venezuela's Oil Market, as published in the website of the Council of Foreing Relations.

Overview of Venezuela's Economy

Here follows a very interesting article by Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of the Center of Economics and Policy Research (CEPR), and Rebbeca Ray.


Oil Prices and Venezuela's Economy
By Mark Weisbrot - CEPR, November 21st 2008

China to Lend Venezuela $20 Billion

This is a pretty interesting article I found that discusses China's growing relationship with Venezuela. Although the article is brief, it's pretty clear that China's economic and political power has a huge influence on Venezuelan oil; China has become Venezuela's second-largest importer of oil (next to the U.S.), and they have also helped Venezuela launch satellites and purchase military aircraft technology. It will certainly be interesting to see how this warming relationship will affect the future of the Venezuelan oil industry.

Link:

"Chavez Says China to Lend Venezuela $20 Billion"- NY Times

EIA Report on Venezuela

As argued in class, Venezuela remains as important economic actor for the world's oil market. Below follows a link to the U.S. Energy Information Administration most recent executive summary on Venezuela's primary energy resources.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/countries/cab.cfm?fips=VE

The EIA's report gives critic attention to the recent halts in Venezuela's Oil Industry, while underlying a plausible association between such overall production decline and the Central State oriented policies implemented during the ongoin President Chavez's Administration.

Brief History Recount of the Role of Oil in Venezuela

In his multi-award-winner novel: "The Prize", Daniel Yergin elaborated a concise description of Oil's history. Firmly, Yergin argues how the 20Th century was an era shaped by the global necessity of accessing and assuring the most efficient development of oil resources. And certainly, it was a century which defined the Venezuelan State as no other before. With the awakening of the oil industry, Venezuela experience for the first time modern economic growth. Closely, nationalism policies were born in the need to consolidate the nation; underlie remains the question of who's interest were really represented by such state projection.

As it follows, the link below provides a brief review of the major points which characterized the establishment of the Venezuelan Oil Industry, mostly from a political point of view. The review author's sings as Sarah Gilbert, who in turn claims that her post "summarizes the events an ideas lay out in The History of Venezuela by Michael Tarver and Julia C. Frederick (Palgrave McMillan: 2006)."

http://venezuelanoil.blogspot.com/2011/04/brief-history-of-role-of-oil-in.html