Venezuela breaks up fuel smuggling ring, detains 9

Source: Associated Press

Venezuela breaks up fuel smuggling ring, detains 9
The Associated Press
Posted July 30, 2011 at 2:09 p.m.

CARACAS, Venezuela — CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - Venezuelan authorities say they have broken up a gang that smuggled subsidized diesel fuel out of the country to be sold abroad at a hefty profit.

Deputy Justice Minister Nestor Reverol says a Panamanian-flagged boat was seized as it was about to load more than 150,000 liters (39,000 gallons) of fuel from a hidden underground storage site. He says nine people are under arrest, including a Colombian and eight Venezuelans.

Reverol says the storage site in Venezuela's western Falcon state could hold up to 1 million liters (more than 260,000 gallons).

Fuel is heavily subsidized in oil-producing Venezuela and smuggling to neighboring Colombia is a problem.


Read more: http://www.vcstar.com/news/2011/jul/30/venezuela-breaks-up-fuel-smuggling-ring-detains/

Price of food in Cuba, North Korea are other examples.

Maby it's just the American in me, but I thought that once you buy somthing you own it. if you wish to take it some place else and sell it, shouldn't that be your buisness?

When your intent is to sell your product, you must abide by trade and business laws.

It's meant as a gift to the Venezuelan people themselves.

How moral would you imagine it is for people to sell food they got in the U.S. using food stamps outside the country for far more?

It may be the "American" in you, but not the right kind of "American" if it seeks to benefit royally from something meant to alleviate the hardship of poverty.

... to Colombia to be able to afford food. Perhaps a better expandature of resources would be to keep prices at a higher level and feed the people from the proceeds.

Venezuela is one of the few countries where gasoline is cheaper than water.

edit: BTW, I have no problem with people, eg, selling their foodstamps for cash to pay their light bill or other necessities that they have. DU had a huge discussion on this, it was 50/50.

FYI I have no problem with them coming down on this smuggling ring as it was clearly a big operation.

many times more people have cell phones than cars.

I find myself at odds with the framing. Is fuel really heavily subsidized in Venezuela, or is it just protected from the outside speculators, for the benefit of Venezuelans first, with only the nations extra being subjected to the crazy market outside the country?

A dollar or two will fill your car up, I believe the current rate is around 15 cents a gallon.

Most of the poor people don't have cars, so it benefits the wealthy people the most. The poor people take containers full of fuel to sell it in Colombia and other countries at a discount. There's an old joke that says "take a car full of gasoline to Colombia, come back with a carload of food and other necessities, if not a few luxuries."

How much is a gallon of petrol worth? If they had their current supply, and their current market for it, what would a fair market price be?

To hold what they will use in the country at that price is not, to my way of thinking, a subsidy. It is holding the national resource for the good of the nation. Or even to apply some of the profit from selling extra to other countries to further reduce the in country cost, still sounds a lot like propaganda to call it subsidizing.

1. a direct pecuniary aid furnished by a government to a private industrial undertaking, a charity organization, or the like.
2. a sum paid, often in accordance with a treaty, by one government to another to secure some service in return.
3. a grant or contribution of money.

Keeping your own oil (which costs, in reality, fairly little to pump out of the ground, probably net 0 or gain when you account for what they do sell to other countries) is not the same as if they went out to buy oil from, say, Alaska, and then the government ate a portion of the cost to Subsidize it for citizens. As I understand it, that's more what we do here in the US with our oil companies.