This Carbon Based Life

By David Glenn Cox

Despite the rhetoric. Despite the pronouncements of a madman. There are some facts which are irrefutable. No matter what the paid-for media might say. Not all oil is created equal. There is light sweet crude and there’s heavy crude. There are tar sands, and there is oil from fracking. It may all end up as the same thing, but it doesn’t begin so. A barrel of oil isn’t magically processed into forty-five gallons of gasoline. Some oil is better for gasoline, and some is better for heavy lubricants such as tar, grease or asphalt.

The administration is all sweet songs and picnic lunches. The ravings of a degenerate grandpa. The wishes and wannabes of a delusional empire, but math doesn’t care about your political persuasion. The oil from Venezuela is a heavy oil, almost tar. It is the opposite of Saudi Arabian crude. The world price for WTI crude stands at $59.12. Venezuelan crude is considerably less than that. It’s harder to refine and more expensive to transport. The oil doesn’t care about politics; it just is.

Oil industry experts say the break-even point for Venezuelan oil is around $80.00 dollars a barrel. Hence the less than enthusiastic reception of oil industry executives for Mr. Trump’s stolen oil bonanza. No one is excited by the prospect of lining up to lose $21.00 per barrel.  That $80.00 figure is the break-even point. To earn a decent return on investment, the oil must sell for over $100.00 per barrel. Currently, that price is unobtainable.

The same experts say the Venezuelan oil infrastructure is a crapshoot. No one has seen it in over six years. It may need just a few pipes and some new valves, and then again, it might all need to be replaced with all-new facilities. Estimates range from $100 billion to $180 billion dollars. Calm down, fellas, and line up here! First come, first served. You don’t want to miss out on a great opportunity like this!

Venezuela currently produces 200,000 barrels of oil per day. Chevron says they can up that production by 30% to 260,000 barrels in two years. But that is a best guess without looking first. President Dribbles says Venezuela will graciously provide us with 30 to 50 million barrels of stolen oil. Or 150 to 192 days of total Venezuelan production. A chance for oil companies to lose $10 billion dollars. Hurry, hurry, don’t be late! If you snooze, you lose! Rational experts say restoring Venezuelan production will take from five to ten years.

Haliburton, yes, the famous Dick Cheney Haliburton, had a one-word comment on Venezuelan oil opportunities. Safety! Currently, in most oil fields around the globe, petroleum can be extracted without being shot at or hacked the death with machetes by angry locals. Employee deaths and military mercenaries really cut into those imaginary, effervescent profits. Now, I want you to put on your business-school thinking cap and think like an oil company CEO for a moment. If you are losing $21.00 per barrel, and it’s going to cost you in the neighborhood of 100 to 180 billion dollars to cash in on this oil bonanza. And it might never be safe. How long will you remain the CEO by saying yes?

There is just no way to put a pencil to it where you can make any money. It’s fool’s gold. Even for free, the oil costs $40 to $45 dollars a barrel to refine, and then there is Texas to consider. And even as red and dependable as the one-star state is. It might not remain so if Texas oil producers are suddenly in competition for refinery space in Houston. Suddenly in competition with Venezuelan oil being championed by the America First president Donny Dribbles. Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we use the military to thieve.

It suddenly comes into sharp focus how President Dribbles goes broke all the time. Act in haste, repent in seizure. Currently, as a part of the president’s campaign “Enduring Stupidity,” the navy and the coast guard are chasing and seizing rogue oil tankers at inestimable cost across the oceans blue. Taking oil for free only to lose money on it. Trying to make a political point no one cares about. Money is no object when it’s someone else’s. But President Dribbles needs to make a dictator’s point, that he is omnipotent and none will escape his wrath.

President Dribbles has bought Venezuela, and it now hangs around his neck like a burning tire. History teaches us that as unpopular as the president’s actions are now. They will be even more unpopular in six months. Republicans on Capitol Hill are said to be jumping up and down, hopping mad. As President Dribbles with a cobra in each hand says, “Here, take one!”

President Dribbles wanted to deport Venezuelans, but the court said he couldn’t use the Alien sedition act unless we were at war. SHAZAM! We’re at war. Attacking Venezuela to get Epstein off the headlines. The administration is about three weeks late in delivering 99% of the Epstein files as ordered by Congress. Now, Venezuela has blown up in their faces. A bozo, bungling ICE agent has murdered a civilian, inciting another firestorm. What to do? What to do? I’ve got it! Let’s attack ISIS with airstrikes in Syria! Nothing takes the bad taste of military adventurism out of your mouth quite like more military adventurism! It will knock that dead woman and those protests right off the headlines. But it didn’t.

Have you ever noticed how this misadministration plays whack a dope? Percolated Pete Hegseth storms around like a psychotic boy scout troop leader until his press gets so bad or his fuck-ups become so obvious they have to put him in the deep freeze. Kristi Noem reached terminal stupidity and is now is in time out until the heats off. RFK Jr. is so toxic, he’s rarely ever seen in public anymore. He releases his nonsense and then hides under the lectern. They each take a turn at bat and then go hide in the dugout after striking out.

Poor little Marko Polio has dreams of running for president himself one day. But has proven to be incompetent as the Secretary of State. J.D. Vance also dreams of the top job but history has other plans. He will be dispatched to Dan Quayleville and Mike Pence Acres. Shady JD Vance also suffers with a face made for radio and an ambition soiled by his own ambition. It is JD Vance who stands in the way of JD Vance’s career ambitions. But it’s time to sharpen up the knives for the upcoming midterms.

President Dribbles is looking out the window dreaming of his empire. While the pirates scheme to disown him and throw him overboard. Already the Republicans have been reaching into their pants hunting for a nut sack. Soon, this president will turn toxic and the crowd will all shout. “I never really liked him much, anyway.”

“It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.

Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter’d your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?

Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil’d this sacred place, and turn’d the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress’d, are yourselves gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors.

In the name of God, go!” – Oliver Cromwell