1 Next the National Guard raids Walmart warehouses for food...

2 Any chance we'll send a squadron of helicopters to seize the rigs?

Can they be towed back to the US, maybe to drill off the Mass. coastline?

3 He put a good bit of the oil within our reach.He can't make us use it though.

4 We may send them a strongly worded letter. As far as where god put the oil, Howard Stern used to say : Drop the nukes, turn the sand to glass and then we can see where to drill for the oil.

5 Well, theres 11 rigs that will be iinoerable (at best) in 90 days.

6 Barry nods with approval

7 Pattern. Practice. Surprise level?

Obama.

8 It's about time for a remake of "Diamonds are Forever", and Hugo seems to be asking for a starring role in the closing scene.

9 I saw this earlier. If we had a man in charge we would go kick Venezuela's ass.

10 I recall reading somewhere (possibly here) that Venezuela oil is so bad (too high in sulfer?) that it can only be processed in a few refineries, almost all of which are in the US.

11 I believe that H&P is not suprised by this.  Nor, do I believe that Hugo has the capacity to activate these rigs without foriegn assistance.  Who?

12 #10: Valero is one of the few refiners set up to economically process high-sulfur crude

13

Watch for Soros' assistance as he builfs his South American socialist state.

Michelle Malfin will connect it first.

14 I'm not sure the effeminates in the White House could actually seize anything. But they sure can write them some laws!

15 Nationalize a foreign State's (it's citizens and/or corporations) assets.

Isn't that normally done when at war with that foreign State?

16 Bams will take him out for a Ray's Hell burger now.

17 All the American oil company CEO's need to get together and put up a $20,000,000 bounty on Chavez's head. During deer season, when the boys already got the guns out and zeroed.

18

There are exactly three refineries in the world that can process Venezuelan heavy crude year round (most could do it for a stretch).

Two are in Texas and one is in Illinois.  But I'll bet you a paycheck China is retooling at least one.

19 good to know i can have shoes

20 lace wig///

21

This is bullshit-

In better times we would kick his ass and take them back.

 

22 11 I believe that H&P is not suprised by this.  Nor, do I believe that Hugo has the capacity to activate these rigs without foriegn assistance.  Who?

Posted by: Geopolitical analyst at June 25, 2010 11:03 PM (WPwt4)

The Chinese will be happy to come in and operate those rigs.  They won't take any shit from Hugo, either, and he knows it.  So they might be the right people for the job.

23 6 Barry nods with approval

Posted by: TheQuietMan at June 25, 2010 10:55 PM (UpcLv)

No he's not.  Chavez is attempting to get oil and that just won't fly for Obama.  Sure Chavez is a leftist commie thug that is attempting to takeover privately controlled operations.  But he's doing it to actually produce oil from those rigs.  Obama is a leftist commie thug intent on preventing the US from producing oil period. 

How can you choose between the lesser of two evils when they're both really evil?

24 I'm all tapped out of sympathy for Helmerich & Payne, by the way.  This isn't exactly a surprise.

25 In better times we would kick his ass and take them back.

Why?  They don't belong to the US.  Let the people who own them raise a mercenary army if that's what they want to do.

26 You know what's particularly sad about this, Venezuela's entire Air Force, Navy and Army could be neutralized by just a single Nimitz-class and its battle group. We're dealing with the ultimate blowhard banana despotism, and we won't even call them on it.

27 I swore I'd stop doing this, but the man tasks me and the headline pains my eyes. RENEGES, not RENEGS.

28 See, this is the part where a red-blooded American should simply blow up the rigs.  H&P isn't getting them back short of getting US military backing (hah hah), and leaving them in the hands of Venasszuela can be nothing but a negative.  "If I can't have them, nobody can"-esque spite?  Sure is, and that's the best reaction they have against Thugo Chavez right now.  Do the right thing, H&P!

29 So .... this is what the US gets for its $2 billion?  Wow.  If Wee Wee had given them $4 billion, they'd have sunk a couple of our ships, too.

30 I would think seizing the assets of foreign companies like this would be considered an act of war.  They have taken assets by force from US citizens.

But since our government is not interested in performing any of the duties it was created to perform, and is only interested in acting extra-constitutionally while bankrupting us, then we cannot expect our borders or our assets to be protected.

This is the sign of a dying nation.

31 Posted by: See my belly? at June 26, 2010 12:42 AM (sfNbl)

Don't forget.  The Precedent is busy doing about the same thing to BP.  He already shook them down for $20 billion and 3 quarters of dividends long before anyone can even estimate the degree of responsibility each party has in the spill and lack of competent containment/cleanup efforts.

Even worse than that, the insane offshore drilling moratorium is a stealth destruction of private assets by Wee Wee.

This is the sign of dying world.

32 Hugo has just insured that no outside company will ever invest in Venezuela.  Good job, Hugo! 

33 Don't hate where God put the oil; regret where he placed the testicles.

When oil was found in Arabia, there were no "nations."  There were wandering tribes of nomads who made no claim to any particular patch of desert.  The fatal error was in assigning these barbaric peoples "ownership" of resources they had no claim to, and had nothing to do with discovering or extracting, and creating "nations" to allow some tribes to dominate others.

We should have just told the camel jockeys to stay the hell away from our oil rigs, or be shot - and they would have, happily accepting whatever small peace offerings we might throw their way.

34

I hope H&P has a self-destruct button they can push in Tulsa.  Nothing too explosive, just a bunch of thermite to melt it into a useless pile.

And will they keep coming to Hugo's Venezuela.  This will be lesson #25 in unintended consequences for the commie dictator as he forces away talent an know-how, his fields will produce less and less.

35 Hugo has just insured that no outside company will ever invest in Venezuela.  Good job, Hugo! 

Posted by: Wild bill at June 26, 2010 02:12 AM (9hOJe)

If only that were true.  I am often amazed at how big business thinks "this time it will be different - we can control this!"  When it comes to business management, the Peter Principle is alive and well.  And destroying companies regularly.

I can hardly wait for the lights to go out in Venezuela.  It will be sweet, sweet schadenfreude. 

36

#25 - wrong-o. The cause of environmentalism is nothing but a front for these marxists. Barry doesn't believe in it, anymore than I believe in the tooth fairy. It is simply a tool with which they can extend state power.

When 'the cause' becomes worthless (either because it is disproven, falls out of favor, or they ride it to its useful end), they'll toss it aside and move on to the next 'big thing', becoming sudden ardent believers in it, while claiming that it was always something they held dear.

If you've ever noticed, these scumbag marxists are always 'believers' in a cause that increases government power (and by proxy, their own), and represses the people. They never find causes that would increase individual freedom. Why is that?

Face it, folks. Citizens are now viewed to be property of the country and the people who run Government. We're no better than slaves. You and I, our children and grandchildren are being used as collateral for financing the building of yet another Communist state. When I came to the realization that we are collateral, I became truly sickened.

This is why blood has to run in the streets periodically if we wish to keep our freedom. It's why the truly intellectual men who founded our country enshrined our rights in law and wrote that our rights come from God, not from Government.

37 Government seizures....it's all the rage!

38 perhaps Obama gave him the signal it was Ok, what's a dictator to do?

39 Government seizures

Not funny.

40 I see this, and I just try to imagine how the left's collective heads would have exploded trying to figure out the proper spin if Citgo had been the company operating the Deepwater Horizon rig.

41 Big Government should definitely intervene on behalf of corporations. I mean isn't that the constitutional responsibility of government ?

42 wws @ 19:  not as big a deal as it sounds - those rigs are mostly worthless.  H & P will get more from it's insurance policy than those rigs are worth now that they've been rotting for a year.

You seem pretty damn blase about other people being robbed of a few million bucks worth of equipment.  Why do I think you'd have a far different tune if you'd owned a few thousand shares of H&P stock?  Or if your dad owned a small factory in Venezuela--responsible for giving you a $50K dividend check every year, and Chavez had nationalized that?

If you were trying to make the point that drilling rigs are pretty sophisticated critters (even if they don't look like it to the casual eye), and that if H&P had stopped maintaining the 11 rigs a year ago, when they stopped working for the deadbeat government oil agency, they'll need quite a bit of mx to get 'em operational again, I agree. 

But do you know when H&P gave up on the possibility of either getting paid or shipping the rigs out of country?  If it was just a couple of months ago, they'd still be in pretty good shape.

If you're just trying to say, hey, it's no big deal 'cause they were insured, so H&P won't actually take any financial hit, see first comment above.  This is like saying if someone hits you with a car, it's no big deal because the insurance settlement makes you whole again.  If you're the guy who's hit, I suspect you'd disagree rather strenuously.

43

The answer is simple, since you can't move the oil, you move the dictator.

Geeze!  Do I have to spell out everything?

44 Try this little thought experiment:  As most folks know, gasoline retailer Valero is owned by the government of Venezuela.  Suppose the U.S. govt seized all Valero gas stations in the U.S. and sold 'em to various U.S. competitors.  Ya think the Leftists in this country and around the world would go ballistic?

Further, suppose the pretext for the seizure was that Valero had sold ten million bucks worth of diesel to the U.S. Army, but the gov't had never paid for it, and the company was demanding its contractual payment.

That doesn't make sense as a pretext, does it?  US govt owes *them*, refuses to pay what it owes, and then says 'Okay, we'll square accounts by seizing all your stations.'  Nutty, right/

That's essentially identical to the situation with the rigs.

45 Ought to rename them the San Sebastian Oil Fields.

46 Plenty of oil right here in the USA.  Drill baby drill, esp. in the Oklahoma panhandle.

47 I'm not sure the effeminates in the White House could actually seize anything.

I don't think Barry could effectively seize his own crank.

48

On the other hand, if they'd seized assets held by Bloomberg, Marriott, Fox News, Hewlett Packard, Boeing or all the other assholes pushing for the "private property for me but not for thee" Partnership for a New American Economy, I wouldn't have minded a bit.

Seize away, Hugo.

49

Hugo Chavez and CITGO have an EXCLUSIVE CONTRACT with the U.S. Navy and all Navy Exchange Gas Stations.

http://tinyurl.com/dkbt7d

The contract runs out this year - but I'm skeptical that it won't be renewed anyway.

50

So who in their right minds will ever consider making a capital investment in Venezuela with "the Idiot" in charge when he'll steal your stuff and run it into the ground.

Nice knowing you Hugo - or "you go" when you get overthrown.

Any coincidence with the current occupant of the White House is purely coincidental, as attested to by the GM and Chrysler bond holders.

51 But Baby Hugo has 'a really big heart' and is a 'man of the people' (though he doesn't apparently trust the people enough to have their own non state run media outlets, but I digress). Hugo's next target will be the major food companies. If I were the heads of these companies, I would have removed as much cash and assets as possible to safer environs. Hugo is Mugabe on methamphetamines.
But Obama likes him so we should be ok with him too.

52 I think God put some oil in the Gulf. Don't blame God.

53 Seems like foreign rig operators should simply mine their rigs like the refinery in "Road Warrior" so when they're abandoned to the "Lord of the Wasteland" they get a real whiz-bang welcome, complete with fireworks . . .

54

Where do all these frakking ad come from?  Who do we need to nutpunch here?