From the Financial Times:

Future supplies of oil from Latin America are at risk because of the spread of resource nationalism, a study by the US military that reflects growing concerns in the US administration over energy security has found.

An internal report prepared by the US military’s Southern Command and obtained by the Financial Times follows a recent US congressional investigation that warned of the US’s vulnerability to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s repeated threats to “cut off” oil shipments to the US. The Southern Command analysis cautions that the extension of state control over energy production in several countries is deterring investment essential to increase and sustain oil output in the long term.

“A re-emergence of state control in the energy sector will likely increase inefficiencies and, beyond an increase in short-term profits, will hamper efforts to increase long-term supplies and production,” the report said. So far this year, Venezuela has moved to double the level of taxes levied on oil production units operated by multinationals, Bolivia has nationalised its oil and gas fields, and Ecuador has seized several oilfields from Occidental Petroleum, the largest foreign oil company in the country.

The report also noted that oil production in Mexico, which faces elections next weekend, is stagnating because of constitutional restrictions on foreign investment.

This is a fascinating story, because it suggests that the US military is adopting the doctrine that a rejection of neoliberal economic policies, as in Venezuela and Bolivia, constitutes a threat to the US justifying military action, especially when it involves oil and natural gas production.

Otherwise, why would the Southern Command be undertaking studies of Venezuelan tax policy, Bolivian nationalization and Ecuadorian oil field seizures? In 1942, the Wehrmacht felt compelled to seize the oil fields of the Caucasus. Does the US military perceive a similar urgency when it comes to the oil and natural gas of Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and, the great unmentionable . . Iran? And, if so, to what extent has the loss of the war in Iraq, and the inability to open Iraqi oil fields to US investment and exploitation, accelerated this sense of urgency?

Finally, as an aside, observe that the article references the military's concern that Chavez has threatened to stop oil exports to the US, without clarifying that Chavez has consistently conditioned such threats upon a US military attack. If Chavez was inclined to stop exports because of policy differences with the US, he has certainly passed on several opportunities to do so. It is tiresome to have to repeat the obvious, but it becomes necessary when both the media and the military persist in creating the false impression that Chavez has threatened to stop oil exports for any reason other than self-defense.

Labels: Bolivarian Revolution, Bolivia, Hugo Chavez, Neoliberalism, US Military