The US Government Is Not the Daddy of US Oil Companies

Among the many rationalizations that the Trump administration is using to initiate massive force and violence against the Venezuelan people is that the Venezuelan government nationalized American oil interests many years ago. The notion is that since “they stole our oil” several decades ago, it is entirely proper, U.S. officials say, for the U.S. government to retaliate against Venezuela, including, presumably, getting back the oil they supposedly “stole from us.”

But contrary to what many Americans now have convinced themselves is true, Venezuela never stole “our oil,” especially if one is referring to you and me and most other American citizens with the use of the possessive pronoun “our.” That’s because neither you nor I or the vast majority of other Americans ever owned Venezuelan oil.

For that matter, the U.S. government didn’t own any Venezuelan oil either. It was U.S. oil companies that were granted concessions from the Venezuelan government near the beginning of the 20th century to extract oil from Venezuela in return for payment of concession fees to the Venezuelan government.

The situation was similar to what happens when an oil company enters into a lease contract with a private landowner here in the United States. The oil company pays the landowner a bonus to sign the lease. If it later strikes oil, the oil company pays royalties to the landowner.

Essentially, the same thing happened with Venezuela, with the Venezuelan government serving as owner of the mineral rights. It should be pointed out that the terms of the concessions were extremely generous to the oil companies.

But there is one critically important point that we must keep in mind: There is always the risk of nationalization when it comes to operating in foreign countries. Every oil company executive knows that. Nationalization, of course, is impossible to defend on a libertarian basis. It constitutes a severe breach of contract. But the fact is that it happens, and everyone knows that. It’s a risk of doing business in a foreign country. If an oil company doesn’t want to take that risk, then it should simply limit its operations to the domestic United States.

In other words, oil company executives are big boys. They themselves choose to take the risk of nationalization if they decide to drill in a foreign country. If things don’t pan out and their operations are nationalized, they shouldn’t be looking to the U.S. government to be their daddy. They simply have to take their lumps.

And don’t forget: the U.S. oil companies made a lot of money with their oil concessions in Venezuela before the Venezuelan government nationalized their oil interests in 1976.

We also shouldn’t forget that it’s not only foreign countries that engage in nationalization. So does the U.S. government. In the 1930s, it nationalized privately owned gold coins, which had been the official money of the American people under the Constitution for more than 125 years. In other words, the U.S. government “stole our money.” When is it going to return “our money” to us?

It’s also worth reminding ourselves that we’ve heard this “they stole our oil” argument before. When the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh, nationalized British oil interests in Iran in 1951, British officials ran to U.S. officials to seek their help in getting “their oil back.” That’s what led to the CIA coup that ousted Mossadegh from power, installed the brutal, tyrannical, and dictatorial rule of the Shah, and destroyed Iran’s democratic system. That U.S.-installed and U.S.-supported tyranny led to the Iranian revolution in 1979, which brought the brutal theocratic regime in Iran that is now considered to be a permanent official enemy of the United States.

What happened in Iran was just another dark and sordid legacy of the U.S. national-security state and its foreign policy of interventionism, including coups, assassinations, sanctions, embargoes, ship seizures, freezing of assets, single-tap and double-tap killings, and military invasions. No doubt the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA are hoping to have better results with their interventionism against Venezuela.

Originally published by the Future of Freedom Foundation.