Venezuela’s government is prone to bouts of thuggery. In recent times, desperate for cash, it has resorted to gangsteresque oil debt-collection. “Pay up, you moron,” thundered Diosdado Cabello Cabello, Venezuela’s interior minister, in a fight over $350m in arrears with Luis Abinader, the president of the Dominican Republic, which relies heavily on fossil fuels (see chart). We are the ones who have the oil, he warned on another occasion. The alleged debt harks back to the days of PetroCaribe, a Venezuelan energy-assistance scheme that once offered cheap loans to Caribbean countries that bought its oil. It went bust in 2019. For Caribbean governments the spat is yet another stark reminder of the fragility of their energy supplies.
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Publish date : 2024-12-12 00:39:00
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