Venezuela, Ecuador Ink Refinery Deal. So What?

Yesterday, news from Latin America included headlines that Venezuela and Ecuador have reached an agreement to jointly build crude oil refineries. This is significant for two reasons:

1. Ecuador and Venezuela are the only two members of OPEC in the Western Hemisphere. They both export crude oil, and their largest customer is the United States.
   
2. Ecuador and Venezuela both have presidents that, although freely elected, are among the most radically socialist in all of Latin America. (This is a trend that is sweeping Latin America in the past few years. Nearly every country in South America now has a socialist government except Colombia, where the decades-long battle against narco-marxist guerillas has somewhat hardened the Colombian people against the poison of marxism.)
   Hugo Chavez and Rafael Correa, the two presidents of Venezuela and Ecuador respectively, in their statement, explicitly stated that their purpose in building the refineries was to stop sending crude oil to "the empire", as Hugo Chavez said, referring to the United States. Chavez indicated that they plan to help effectuate a collapse of "the empire".
   

This headline is significant for the United States because it means that within a few years, available supplies of crude oil from foreign sources will be reduced even further. What will be the implications for the price of crude oil here when that happens? The answer is obvious! They will have to move higher!

Between radical marxist philosophies rapidly expanding throughout Latin America, and the radical philosophy of global warming expanding in North America that seeks to limit fuel sources domestically, it appears that the future of crude oil in the United States may be coming to a close -- by coersion! Americans might also begin to prepare for a radical alteration in the quality of their lifestyles as well!