If You Give Chavez An Oil Industry, He’s Going To Want A Steel One Too…
Hugo Chavez just keeps gobbling up more and more industries in Venezuela, like an insatiable Pac-Man. This time it’s the steel and cement industries. This comes after his nationalization of the telecommunications and utility industries, as well as renegotiating the contracts of the last few private oil production projects.
The thing is, this time Chavez can’t play the anti-U.S. card because the steel company, Siderurgica del Orinoco, is owned by an Argentine-Italian conglomerate. Wait a minute, I thought Argentina was supposed to be one of Hugo’s friends. No friends in this business, it appears.
Chavez should take note of the old Soviet playbook and see just how well government-run businesses operated. I can only think of the horrors P.J. O’Rourke faced when visiting Poland in the 1980s. The crummy runway his plane landed on, the cheap cement-slab buildings–man, can you imagine what the roads in Caracas will be in for in the coming years?
–Stephen Payne, Editor, Oil and Gas Investor This Week; spayne@hartenergy.com
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