While talking heads on bubblevision insisted the invasion of Iraq would result in the takeover of Iraqi fields by US oil companies, which would flood the market with oil, driving the price down to $10/bbl, rant #1 held that the objective of the invasion was to take Iraqi production offline, tightening supplies, and raising prices, so US oil companies could book higher profits, while doing nothing. Remember what happened?

Latest word I have seen on the Pirate King's latest adventure is that the tanker seized was *not* sanctioned, but it carried sanctioned oil. So, effectively, any ship taking oil from Venezuela is subject to seizure by Shinyland. This takes some oil off the market.

(as if the Pirate King cared about "legality")

Trump's blockade of sanctioned Venezuelan oil raises new questions about legality

currently.att.yahoo.com - Trumps blockade sanctioned venezuelan oil

Interesting tidbit in Politico: seems the US regime has been trying to interest US oil companies in moving back into Venezuela. Big oil is telling the regime that Venezuela, even if Maduro is overthrown, is too unstable for them to risk capital.

Trump administration asking US oil industry to return to Venezuela — but getting no takers

The markets, glutted with supply and with prices at nearly five-year lows, are giving President Donald Trump an unusually free hand to tighten military pressure on the South American OPEC member, much the way they largely shrugged off U.S. and Israeli missile strikes on Iran in June. But those prices are also way too low to entice companies to take the risk of pouring huge investments into the crumbling Venezuelan oil facilities that former strongman Hugo Chávez seized decades ago, industry officials and analysts said.

politico.com - Trump oil venezuela return

This could go either way: Trump blows up the Venezuelan industry, to take it entirely offline, so big oil makes more profit from it's existing production. Or, big oil does what most "JCs" do these days: sit on their hands until Uncle Sugar pays for everything for them, and guarantees their profits.

I did a quick looksee at what Exxon and Conoco operated, 20 years ago, and who has those concessions now (yeah, should have kept those annual reports from 20 years ago) According to the net sifter, Exxon had two concessions. One now operated by Rosneft (Russian) and the other by Repsol (Spain). Conoco had three concessions, one now run entirely by PDVSA, one by Chevron, and one by ENI (Italy). Saddam had signed development contracts with several non-US oil companies, which the Bush regime declared void, so I fully expect the Pirate King to declare the interests of Rosneft, Repsol, and ENI forfeit, because the agreements were made with an "illegitimate regime, for stolen property".

Steve