Expectedly the Lima Group just said it won't support military intervention in Venezuela. Nothing new there really. No South American nation is about to attack another, despite Venezuelans' baseless hopes to that effect. What puzzles is the lack of imagination that Juan Guaidó, Venezuela's opposition, and its coalition of friendly nations have shown thus far. U.S.

Last week I was asked to quantify the size of the loot at PDVSA during an interview. This site has been crunching some numbers in that regard. Whatever the approach, Rafael Ramirez's reign looks very grim. It could be owing to the fact that Ramirez was Minister of Energy and CEO of PDVSA -at the same time- for most of that period. That is, Minister Ramirez was responsible to keep PDVSA's CEO Ramirez in check, something entirely unfeasible.

There seems to be a degree of discrimination regarding international criminal investigations involving U.S. justice and law enforcement. The whole world was glad to see America putting Sepp Blatter out of business for a little while. When it comes to rampant corruption in oil companies, Petrobras seems to be on everyone's lips, due in our opinion to Sergio Moro's quixotic LavaJato (carwash) probe in Brazil.

Helsinge Inc, a little venture controlled by Francisco Morillo, Leonardo Baquero and Daniel Lutz that managed to win almost every single PDVSA bid in which it participated, stands accused of having defrauded billions of dollars from PDVSA. It did so for many years, through a remarkably simple method: it gained real time access to PDVSA's bidding system, which allowed itself and its partners (Glencore, Trafigura, Vitol, Lukoil, etc.) to place winning bids at the very last minute.