Lukashenko: your oil is in Lake Charles

A little nugget in my Inbox courtesy of a reader. You know how Hugo Chávez is always boasting that he wants to ship oil to other countries, how he...

A little nugget in my Inbox courtesy of a reader.

You know how Hugo Chávez is always boasting that he wants to ship oil to other countries, how he wants to find other markets, bla bla bla? That’s the reasoning behind his deal to send oil to Belarus, governed by ally and fellow dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko.

But it’s not all cut and dry. Belarus, you see, is a landlocked country, and getting oil to them from a place as far away as Venezuela is not easy, nor cheap.

Not to worry. Petroleum World is reporting that Venezuela, Belarus, Azerbaijan, and the US have reached a deal. Azerbaijan and Venezuela will swap oil. Venezuela’s sales of oil to Belarus will be supplied by Azerbaijan, via Ukraine. In exchange, US purchases of Azerbaijani oil will be shipped by … Venezuela, of course!

The end result? More Venezuelan oil will end up in the Evil Empire.

Only we’ll call it Azerbaijani oil – just so we can claim we’re “diversifying” our markets.