Re: Reply to Ted Glick

["Nestor Gorojovsky" <nestorgoro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

El Domingo 31 de Agosto de 2003 a las 17:48,
Louis Proyect dijo sobre Reply to Ted Glick que:

> I believe that
> privatizing the oil and selling it to the highest bidder goes hand in hand
> with making electricity and water scarce. That's what happened in
> Argentina, Bolivia and South Africa. Right?

As to Argentina and Bolivia, right. But not only that.

Privatizing the oil, in fact, means "de-Iraqizing" the oil thus
depriving the country not only of any hold on its own natural
resources but, worse yet, _on the build up of its own technical
personnel_.

In Argentina, for example, and before it was handed over to
imperialists, YPF -Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales, that is
"Oilfields of the Treasury" in verbatim translation- not only
explored, extracted and distilled our oil. It also generated domestic
know-how. And lots of it.

The history of Argentinean oil is quite telling as to the need for
that local know-how.  The first samples of Argentinean oil in the San
Jorge Basin (south-central Argentinean Patagonia) were sent for
analysis to the technical offices of the Ferrocarril Sud (that is the
Argentinean Southern Railway, a British owned imperialist company).
The results of those analyses were disappointing, it seems that they
found the oil of the worst quality available.  As to Argentinean oils
in the North, they were sent for analysis to the technical offices of
the Penn Oil (a Standard Oil company affiliate), and the results were
also disappointing. That oil seemed to be, also, about the worst oil
on the globe. Some years later, the Standard Oil and the Shell Oil
Company sent Bolivians and Paraguayans to a murderous war over an
area in the Northern Chaco where the same seams of oil seemed to be
crossing the frontiers, but for the "natives" the order was: you
don't have any useful oil.

Argentinean oil did not seem to be good by any standard. Same
happened with Argentinean coal from Río Turbio, even though the
plants of the London Energy Board used coals with still lower
percentages of carbon.

These experiences, together with many others, took Argentineans to
establish our own labs. The YPF labs were created in 1942 and further
enlarged in subsequent years. They ranked among the topmost labs in
the world, and of course they became the first target after
privatization.

Now we don't have labs, we don't have the slightest idea of the
results of new explorations, and so on.

And, worse yet, we don't have a single place where Argentinean
technicians, engineers, chemists, geologists, can develop their
skills independently from the necessities of imperialist outfits.

And yes, this is a wonderful situation to lose control of your water
or electricity, too... It's a grim trick of fate, for instance, that
the President of the International Association of Sanitary Engineers
is an Argentinean, who was formed and made all his experience in the
old Obras Sanitarias de la Nación (National Sanitation Works). Today,
we must pay an overhead to an inefficient and costly French outfit...
just because.

Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
nestorgoro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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"Sí, una sola debe ser la patria de los sudamericanos".
Simón Bolívar al gobierno secesionista y disgregador de
Buenos Aires, 1822
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