Venezuelan unions estimated on Saturday that nearly 22,000 oil contractors stood to lose their jobs after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s government seized the assets of 60 local and foreign-owned oil firms.
“This law does not benefit us,” Bernardino Chirinos, leader of the Union of Oil Workers in the state of Zulia, told El Nacional newspaper. “There are 35,000 workers on the east coast [of Zulia state] and only 8,000 will be absorbed. There are 22,000 workers without guarantees.”
Venezuela, the Americas’ largest oil exporter, began on Friday to expropriate some oil service providers, a day after the National Assembly passed a law extending the state’s control to all activities related to the oil industry.
Shortly after the law’s passage, the government announced that private contractors servicing wells, transporting workers and providing other services in the oil-rich Maracaibo Lake area in Zulia state would be taken over by the state-run Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA).
Some 8,000 workers there were confirmed to become PDVSA employees.
“We are liberating the homeland, building socialism with workers,” Chavez said.
Opposition lawmakers have criticized PDVSA for running up debts and being unable to meet payments despite a months-long windfall from high oil prices. As of September, PDVSA had US$7.858 billion in debt to its suppliers.
STILL COMMITTED: The US opposes any forced change to the ‘status quo’ in the Strait, but also does not seek conflict, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said US President Donald Trump’s administration released US$5.3 billion in previously frozen foreign aid, including US$870 million in security exemptions for programs in Taiwan, a list of exemptions reviewed by Reuters showed. Trump ordered a 90-day pause on foreign aid shortly after taking office on Jan. 20, halting funding for everything from programs that fight starvation and deadly diseases to providing shelters for millions of displaced people across the globe. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has said that all foreign assistance must align with Trump’s “America First” priorities, issued waivers late last month on military aid to Israel and Egypt, the
France’s nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and accompanying warships were in the Philippines yesterday after holding combat drills with Philippine forces in the disputed South China Sea in a show of firepower that would likely antagonize China. The Charles de Gaulle on Friday docked at Subic Bay, a former US naval base northwest of Manila, for a break after more than two months of deployment in the Indo-Pacific region. The French carrier engaged with security allies for contingency readiness and to promote regional security, including with Philippine forces, navy ships and fighter jets. They held anti-submarine warfare drills and aerial combat training on Friday in
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CHANGE OF MIND: The Chinese crew at first showed a willingness to cooperate, but later regretted that when the ship arrived at the port and refused to enter Togolese Republic-registered Chinese freighter Hong Tai (宏泰號) and its crew have been detained on suspicion of deliberately damaging a submarine cable connecting Taiwan proper and Penghu County, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement yesterday. The case would be subject to a “national security-level investigation” by the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, it added. The administration said that it had been monitoring the ship since 7:10pm on Saturday when it appeared to be loitering in waters about 6 nautical miles (11km) northwest of Tainan’s Chiang Chun Fishing Port, adding that the ship’s location was about 0.5 nautical miles north of the No.
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