Iván Agüín, Axis of Logic, May 21st 2020
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_87837.shtml
Introduction:
The US has done everything imaginable to literally paralyze Venezuela: sabotage of the national electrical grid; cutting us off from the international banking system (e.g. SWIFT); sanctioning any state or financial institution doing business with us; downgrading Venezuela's credit rating to discourage foreign investment; manipulation of the bolivar, the Venezuelan national currency producing hyperinflation; robbing our foreign assets such as Citgo and Venezuelan refineries in Louisiana, Texas and Illinois; sabotage of the water system in Caracas and distribution of potable water to households in towns and cities; interrupting the supply chains and distribution of food, medicines, cooking gas and materials needed to maintain infrastructure; weaponizing food and medicine; denying imports of the materials and additives needed to repair and maintain our own petroleum refineries inside the country and blowing up the biggest one at Amuay (2012).
Now the current attempt to bring life in Venezuela to a standstill, paralysis, is the elimination of gasoline. Without gasoline for cars people suffer, but the final paralysis is with the distribution of food, medicine and all the materials needed to supply and govern the country. Washington may think this will be the final blow to oust the Maduro government and finally bring the people to their knees.
The situation in our city, La Victoria is typical of what is happening across the country. We have 8 gas stations here and for a little more than a month gasoline has been delivered only to one, and only 3 times a week. The queue has hundreds of cars and trucks 1-3 kilometers long, 7 days a week with people waiting waiting 2-3 days and sleeping in their vehicles at nights waiting to fill their tanks.
As everyone now knows 5 Iranian ships are currently on their way with gasoline, catylists and other equipment needed to get the two inactive Amuay and Cardón refineries back in production. The first Iranian oil tanker is expected to arrive in the international waters of the Caribbean tomorrow or Saturday.
The following article by a well known Venezuelan investigative journalist, Iván Agüín, is widely circulated (in Spanish) across Venezuela with technical and political details that go beyond anything I've read in the international media. We have translated it into English for Axis of Logic readers.
- Les Blough in Venezuela
GENTLEMEN, GET READY TO SEE IN THE COMING DAYS THE MOST IMPORTANT DIPLOMATIC/MILITARY CRISIS OF RECENT YEARS. in the next 96/192 hours the rerun of THE CRISIS OF RUSSIAN MISSILES IN CUBA OF 1962 will take place that put the world on the verge of the start of a Thermonuclear War, with a remake that, as far as possible in the future, historians will review as the CRISIS OF THE IRANIAN VESSELS IN VENEZUELA OF 2020.
For those who do not know, a little more than 15 days ago, a pair of Iranian Transport Planes landed at the Josefa Camejo International Airport in the Paraguaná Peninsula, Falcón State, with equipment and spare parts (catalysts, cracking unit catalytic, valves, etc.), necessary for the re-opening of the Paraguaná Refinery Complex (Amuay Refinery + Cardón Refinery) which was, until 2011, the largest Oil Refining Complex in the World (refining capacity of 1,000,000 barrels of daily oil and converting it into 66,000,000 million litres of gasoline + oils and other daily derivatives, more than enough to supply all of Latin America or the eastern USA with gasoline). Currently, it only surpassed by the Jamnagar Refinery of India with the capacity to process 1,200,000 barrels.
Previously, 10 days earlier, the El Palito Refining Complex was reactivated in Carabobo State, but it has a limited processing capacity of 140,000 barrels due to unresolved failures in its catalytic cracking unit. It is only producing diesel fuel which does not require distillation and, therefore, does not need inputs or catalysts. Gasoline is a mixture of hydrocarbons that is obtained through a fractional distillation process with the addition of chemical catalysts for its qualification, octane and purity. Diesel, on the other hand, is not a mixture of refined hydrocarbons; it is a hydrocarbon itself, with a single density that is made up of paraffin and which does not require distillation for manufacturing, but rather the separation of crude oil which only serves to satisfy national consumption. This has been the reason that the country has not been totally paralyzed, and able to maintain food supply lines, the mobilization of military equipment, and other essential materials as it is the fuel used for heavy transport vehicles.
So once the Paraguaná Refining Complex has been repaired it only requires the arrival of the catalytic chemical inputs that are needed to put it into operation which, like any large industry, requires a gradual reactivation in phases up to reaching its full activation. Hence, in addition to the inputs, processed gasoline is required to fill our tanks and inventories, and thus gradually satisfy the consumption cycle without affecting inventories, which have gradually been depleted by the sanctions and blockade with which the US has managed to lead us to near-total collapse. And it is here when the vital help of Iran enters, having loaded 5 ships March 30 at the Port of Bandar Abbas (Port located in the Persian Gulf in front of the Hormuz Strait in the Iranian province of the same name).
Each of the 5 Iranian ships (Fortune, Petunia, Forest, Faxon, and Claval) has an approximate capacity of 800,000 barrels of petroleum (127,000,000 litres of gasoline). If we project 4 ships now on their way carrying 508,000.000 litres of gasoline it will satisfy Venezuela's daily consumption of about 2,000,000 litres of gasoline for the rest of the year, more than enough capacity to supply 70,000 cars a day, about 500,000 vehicles a week - that is to say around 25% of the national automotive fleet. And if we modestly add to that the start of gasoline production in Paraguaná at a minuscule 10% (the worst of the estimates), 7,000,000 litres of gasoline per day would be added, it would supply 100% of our automotive fleet with a surplus of 15%. That is, the gas crisis would come to an end in its entirety.
Moreover if we add to that a cargo ship filled with 80,000 litres of chemical inputs and catalysts to distill gasoline to enable us to distill gasoline at full capacity from Amuay and Cardón together for three years of uninterrupted production of about 72,270,000,000 litres of gasoline, an amount that Venezuela cannot consume by itself even in 50 years. In other words, the Iranian contribution would practically break the blockade, Venezuela could never again be suffocated - at least in energy matters - which denotes the great importance of this shipment, practically the future of the Maduro government, of the Revolution and, in effect, Venezuela.
This imperative need is known by the US, Venezuela, Iran, Russia and, China; hence the high stakes poker game that's being played out. This gives each of them an explosive sense of what will be defined in the coming hours. The Global Geopolitics of at least the next 30 years is at stake and ,hence the relevance that I give it, putting at the level of the Missile Crisis of 1962, which defined the Global Geopolitics of the planet until 1991 when the "Iron Curtain" fell, the Berlin Wall and USSR ended - practically 30 years of history, the elimination of the Gold Standard, the creation of Fiat Money, the arrival of man on the Moon, the birth of Neoliberalism, the end of Stalinist "communism", etc.
The United States knows that the fate of its policy of a total blockade of Venezuela is at stake, hence its threat to search and seize any oil tanker that tries to enter or leave Venezuela through the use of its Fourth Fleet on the limits of the territorial waters of Venezuela (see information from Reuters, and from the Twitter of the US 4th Fleet - (here, here, and here) and in turn the immediate and energetic response from Iran. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said, "I warn Washington that if it deploys its Navy against oil tankers from the Islamic Republic that are heading to Venezuela with fuel, the freedom of trade, international navigation and the free flow of energy is seriously threatened, and Iran reserves the right to take all necessary and reciprocal appropriate measures, including decisive actions, to secure their legitimate rights and interests against similar harassment policies and unilateral and illegal practices." Iran immediately summoned the Swiss ambassador to Tehran to convey to him directly the consequences of the detention or boarding of its ships in international waters (Switzerland represents the interests of the United States for the Islamic Republic, since these two countries have not had diplomatic relations for four decades - see here).
What does this mean? It means that if the USA stops, boards, searches and/or seizes Iranian ships, Iran will immediately stop, board, and retain US or allied oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, more specifically in the Strait of Hormuz, This would represent a conflict of great dimensions with worldwide repercussions, collapsing the free transit of energy trade at a global level (the transit of Oil Tankers in the Strait of Hormuz represents 75% of the transit of oil in the entire world).
What is stated in the previous paragraph represents the beginning of a conflict for which there are no predictable results, one which could escalate into a world-wide military diplomatic conflict. Iran does not play with its words, “it does not play carrito (ed. trans: "As we say in Caracas, we don't play with our words)".
Already last year when an oil tanker bound for Syria in Gibraltar held was detained, Iran in turn held two British ships in retaliation in the Strait of Hormuz and anchored them in their ports, thus forcing the release of their ship ending the delivery of its cargo at its destination. The last time before this latest call to the Swiss ambassador to Tehran, it was precisely hours before he ordered the destruction of a pair of US Military Bases in Iraq in retaliation for the US drone murder of General Suleimani in Baghdad. Iran doesn't hesitate - it follows its warnings and threats with action, and Washington knows this. So before taking any step or action against these ships the United States will have to think very carefully. This is the difficult situation as the next few days and hours arise.
I compare this with the Cuban Missile crisis of 1962 because the chronology of it at that time is very similar to what is happening today. Like the failure of the US mercenary raid of May 3, (the already well-known Operation Gideon, or the Macuto Bay Fiasco), months before the 1962 Missile Crisis, the Bay of Pigs Fiasco occurred and immediately the USSR began working on the installation of one of its bases on the Island with the intention to deploy medium and short-range Nuclear Missiles there, a situation that came to a head on October 22, 1962. As President Kennedy decreed and established a quarantine and "naval siege" around the island, with US warships and aircraft deploying accordingly in the Caribbean Sea beginning on October 23, this escalated to the threat of stopping, boarding, searching and seizing Soviet ships. USSR authorities warned that any attempt against their ships would be considered an act of war, putting the planet in suspense of a war of great dimensions, a reciprocal thermonuclear attack. In the end the USA did not dare touch any Soviet ship, but the Russians deployed in Cuba shot down a U2 Espionage Plane, culminating in an agreement between the powers, the withdrawal of the Missiles from Cuba on the one hand, the withdrawal of the Missiles deployed in Turkey on the other, and a non-invasion pact on Cuba which has been fulfilled and followed to this day.
If the USA acts against the Venezuela bound Iranian ships, the consequence will be a conflict of huge dimensions with an unpredictable escalation, not only of a Military and Diplomatic nature, but also of disastrous economic repercussions in the midst of the recession and economic crisis caused by the Covid-19 Pandemic. If the ships do not arrive at Venezuelan ports, the result could be the definitive collapse of Venezuela and consequent fall of Maduro and hypothetical end of the Bolivarian Revolution. If this happens, the fall of Maduro by coercion, a state of siege, harassment, blockade and stalking will no longer be possible, definitively taking on the Bolivarian Revolution directly, just as happened with the Cuban Revolution in a similar situation in 1962. This is the decision that the USA has to make, and where strategically Venezuela and Iran, with Russia and China behind the scenes, has taken the US today. The results of the 2020 Iranian oil tanker crisis will define the future of Nicolás Maduro. .
Note: Already the first ship, the Fortune is crossing the Atlantic, arrival in our waters is expected Friday (tomorrow) or Saturday.