Will President Chavez order an oil embargo against the United States anyway, despite the results of the election in his country?
Would he do it out of spite against the USA, and just claim that the CIA interfered as he said they would?
Go ahead. Most other countries can’t refine his oil.
Just to put things in persective, my country is already under embargo by Venezuela - not to mention Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE and Bahrain - and yet, there never seems to be a shortage at the pump. Petroleum is fungible stuff. Once it leaves his borders, Vhavez will have absolutely no control over it.
Doesn’t Israel get most of its refined product from the US? What doesn’t matter for Israel might matter for us. I think the issue at hand here is that it’s a major source of non-Arab oil, increasing our dependence upon Arab oil.
I’d be very interested at what light you can shed on where Israel gets its oil from.
I found this article: Where does Israel get its oil?
U.S. refineries are one of the few places where Chavez’s oil can be refined. Not to say Venezuela won’t sell oil if it refuses to sell to us, but it will have to sell it at a lower price because there’s a very limited market of countries that can refine Venezuelan Crude and we are by far the biggest buyer at present.
While it will hurt us, I think it will hurt Venezuela’s economy much more which will directly undermine Chavez’s popularity with the people. A demagogue without the support of a majority of the population is in trouble. And considering Venezuela rejected Chavez’s bid for constitutional dictatorship I think some of them are starting to tire of his antics already.
Unless Chavez can convince other oil-producing countries to join him in an embargo, it’s a non-starter. The United States is Venezuela’s main customer - we could find other sellers a lot easier than he can find other buyers. We’ll just buy slightly higher priced oil from Mexico or Indonesia or the Middle East. And the Venezuelan economy will collapse.