A Different View Of Venezuela's Energy Problems

It would be easy to write a story about Venezuela’s energy problems and, in it, focus on the corruption and mismanagement that have taken place. This would make it look like Venezuela’s problems were different from everyone else’s. Taking this approach, it would be easy to argue that the problems wouldn’t have happened, if better leaders had been elected and if those leaders had chosen better policies.

I think that there is far more behind Venezuela’s financial and energy problems than corruption and mismanagement.

As I see the story, Venezuela realized that it had huge oil resources relative to its population, back as early as the 1920s. While these oil resources are substantial, the country misestimated how high a standard of living that these resources could support. To try to work around the issue of setting development goals too high, the country chose the path of distributing the benefits of oil exports in an almost socialistic manner. This socialistic approach, plus increased debt, hid the problem of a standard of living that could not really be supported for many years. Recent problems in Venezuela show that these approaches cannot be permanent solutions. In fact, it seems likely that Venezuela will be one of the first oil-exporting nations to collapse.

How the Subsidy from High-Priced Exported Oil Works 

Oil is a strange resource. The cost of oil production tends to be quite low, especially for oil exporters. The selling price is based on a world oil price that changes from day to day, depending on what some would call “demand.” The difference between the selling price and the cost of extraction can make oil exporters rich. In a sense, this difference might be considered an “energy surplus” that is being distributed to the economies of oil exporters. The greater the energy surplus being distributed, the greater the quantity of goods and services (made with energy products) that can be purchased from outside the country with the hard currency that is made available through the sale of oil.

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Venezuela Surpasses Weimar As Hyperinflation Expected To Hit 1,000,000% By Year End

Some readers may recall this headline from January 2018 "IMF Projects Venezuela Inflation Will Soar to 13,000 Percent in 2018."

This, it turns out was just a little bit off, because as we reported only two weeks ago, Venezuela's annualized inflation hit an annualized rate of 482,153%, with food prices soaring 183% in just one month.

Fast forward to today, when it's time for another "slight revision" because according to the latest IMF forecast released today, Venezuela’s hyperinflation by the end of the year will hit, drumroll, 1,000,000% as the government continues to simply print money to in hopes of filling the void of what was once the country's economy. Putting that number in perspective, the IMF believes that Venezuela inflation hit only 2,400% in 2017, according to a report published Thursday by Alejandro Werner, head of the IMF’s Western Hemisphere department.

The revised forecast means that as of right now, Venezuela's hyperinflation has officially surpassed the Weimar Republic's, where the highest recorded monthly inflation was a timid 29,500% (resulting in prices doubling ever 3.7 days).

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Venezuela's Gold Liquidation Accelerates; Will Be Out Of Gold In One Year

On Friday, Turkey unveiled its latest unorthodox financial surprise, when a local newspaper reported that Ankara will repatriate all of its gold held at the NY Fed. The stated reason: an attempt to circumvent the dollar. "Why do we make all loans in dollars? Let’s use another currency" said Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a speech at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress in Istanbul on April 16, according to Hurriyet. "I suggest that the loans should be made based on gold."

In what some saw an appeal for a gold standard by the Turkish president and a bid to sever ties with the US Dollar, Erdogan added that “with the dollar the world is always under exchange rate pressure. We should save states and nations from this exchange rate pressure. Gold has never been a tool of oppression throughout history."

While Erdogan may have had honest, and even noble, intentions (yes, one can smirk here) it is worth noting that Turkey is hardly the first country to demand its gold back from western nations, having been preceded in recent years by Germany, Austria and the Netherlands.

But the most notable, and ominous for the people of Turkey, example of gold repatriation is also the first one in the post-crisis period, when Venezuela's then-leader Hugo Chavez demanded all Venezuela gold located in offshore central banks be returned to the motherland. At the time, Chavez said he did it for the people, and since he died shortly after, there was no way to gauge what his real intentions were.

The problem is what happened later.

Conveniently, last week Russ Dallen of Caracas Capital wrote inform his clients what Venezuela has been doing over the course of the past several years regarding is repatriated, and now swiftly dwindling gold reserves.

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Oil Producers Turning To Crypto To Solve Sanctions Problems

Last week, Venezuela announced it would develop a national cryptocurrency backed by its oil reserves, the Petro.  Now there is a report that Russia is considering the same thing.  Iran will likely follow suit.

As of right now this is just a rumor, but it makes some sense.  So, let’s treat this rumor as fact for the sake of argument and see where it leads us.

The U.S. continues to sanction and threaten all of these countries for daring to challenge the global status quo.  There is no denying this.  And so much of what we see in the geopolitical headlines are knock-on effects of this challenge.

The Geopolitical “Why”

From the Middle East to North Korea, the Dutch changing their laws to block Nordstream 2 to the Saudis breaking off relations with Qatar, everything you read about in the news is a move on the geopolitical “Go” board.

Because at the heart of this is the petrodollar. Contrary to what many believe, the petrodollar is not the source of the U.S. dollar’s power around the world, but rather the U.S.’s main fulcrum by which to keep competition out of the markets.

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