Introduction: Lifeline or noose
I shall outline the key details of the Venezuela PetroCaribe initiative in the next section of this column but upfront I wish to categorically assert that Guyana along with other members of this initiative have benefited greatly from it since its establishment in 2005 and for sure right up to the middle of 2014. As we shall observe the initiative provides benefits to its oil importing members that are directly correlated with the level of prevailing crude oil prices. Thus in practice as the world price of crude oil rises the benefits increase and vice versa when the price of crude oil falls. In this way PetroCaribe has been a vital lifeline for the region’s net oil importers.
As indicated in the two columns preceding this week’s crude oil prices have, unanticipated, fallen quite sharply over the past nine months