By Monica Showalter April 19, 2018
Venezuela arrested two Chevron employees in Caracas Monday on trumped up charges of corruption.
On the surface, the act looks just plain insane: Venezuela's oil industry has cratered into a heap of rubble. Production of oil has fallen to 1949 levels, and five-digit inflation is destroying the value of the currency. Those two events are related: some 25,000 highly skilled state oil company employees have walked away from their jobs, unable to stand working for worthless currency that won't even buy them a cup of coffee.
Oil is responsible for 90% of Venezuela's export earnings and pretty well finances the Chavista government. The only hope this disastrous oil-collapsed country has left for any reprieve is in its foreign investors, such as Chevron.
Even the Chinese and the Russians, who had been Venezuela's great white sugar-daddy hope, aren't touching them. There's just Chevron and a few other companies, hedging their bets that the Chavistas won't last by their willingness to wait them out.
And now Venezuela is arresting them............
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