Golden Oldies

/ August 25, 2013

explosionAmuay02And so, one year on, the Winner in the Amuay Explosion Excuse Category, mención Transparently-Fabricated-but-Damnit-We’re-Sticking-With-Our-Story is…

[envelope-rustling…]

Sabotage!

Well how about that!

No surprise here, folks: Sabotage was the hot favorite for the prize from day one. And why shouldn’t it be?! The regime is sticking with the classics – no need to reinvent the wheel when you have a winning formula. Cuz hey, if it was good enough to wave-away interrupted championship basketball games, it’s good enough for Amuay!

First hatched mere minutes after the explosion in the absence of any evidence whatsoever by Evita Golinger herself, the sabotage theory of Amuay ticks all the boxes: comfortable side-stepping of awkward questions about competence – check – blame-shifting – check – confirmation of pre-existing conspiratorial narrative lines – check – denial of accountability – check…Sabotage has it all!

Ask for it by names, folks: it’s the excuse we love to live by. Sabotage!

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28 thoughts on “Golden Oldies”

  1. didn’t they promised to write a report on what exactly caused Amuay? And that thew would have it done 90 days after the incident?

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  2. Do they have a report about the 9 (9?) persons who were supposedly murdered by Capriles? Did they find the people who actually killed them? In any of the nine cases? Did we ask for the inquiry? Have we filed a formal inquiry for slander?
    I mean: here they are not saying it was María Corina Machado, but they are implying yet again anything they screw up is our fault. I think we should keep asking them to show us the proof or leave for Cuba.

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  3. The report has been written ( by at least 2 insurance surveyors) and pieces of what it contains have been reported by the press or by specialized internet publications, From these the inference can clearly be made that the accident was avoidable , that it was the direct result of lack of safety management and poor operating practices on the part of Pdvsa , that the underwriters have paid nothing of the insurance (if they have not refused to do so outright) evidently on the grounds that Pdvsa did not follow minimal safety practices in running the refinery and did not represent the poor state of their installations accurately to the underwriters ( otherwise why would Pdvsa intimate that they would be foregoing collection of the insurance they contracted and already paid for or why all of a sudden they fired their insurance brokers of 13 years and are attempting to replace with small time unknown firms from the middle east after being turned downs by two more serious brogerage firms) . Pdvsa’s safety record is so bad ( with the proliferation of accidents in their installations) that their insurance premiums are reported to have gone up 50% over what they used to pay before the accident ( the purported justification for firing their broker) The shout of savotage is hardly believable in places which for 10 years now have been under total control of rojo rojito managers and personnel in enclosed areas under the watchul vigilance of the glorious Bolivarian Army . Evidently the claim that savotage had something to do with the accident is a smoke screen thrown out to distract public attention from the fact that Pdvsa and thus the regime was guilty of the accident and its many victims !!

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  8. From a Veneconomy article on the Amuay accident:
    The Insurance Insider, a specialized magazine covering the insurance industry based in London, has reported that Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) has not yet submitted the application for the compensation of damages caused by the fire to its insurance companies. The industry reckons that damages represent some $320 million, three times as much the annual insurance premium PDVSA pays for.

    This lack of interest from the state-run oil company may be an indication that this is a self-acceptance of the word being said on the streets already: The blame for the explosion and resulting fire lies upon a bad management, which has ignored the importance of maintenance, the significance of properly training its staff, and that it has been unable to give continuity to industrial safety and contingency plans, which were a vital axis to the PDVSA back in the second half of the 20th century.

    The Insurance Insider also revealed that PDVSA would have been without coverage two months ago. It explains that the reason for that is that Cooper Gay, PDVSA’s insurance broker for the past 13 years, was unexpectedly fired and it hired in his place, without a tendering procedure, a Russian-based company ….., a France-based company …… and a Lebanon-based company ….., whose trajectories are little-known and whose representatives could not be reached for comment by the magazine.

    The alarms went off when RK Harrison, a highly respected broker based in London, turned down an invitation to take on part of PDVSA’s coverage over doubts on credentials, assets and trade relations of these Russian, French and Lebanese companies with which it was jointly to handle the insurance plans of the oil company.

    Now it turns out that, according to The Insurance Insider, the trio of brokers from Russia, France and Lebanon has not been able to contract the insurance policies required by PDVSA, something that would leave PDVSA in a limbo and also exposed to its well-known contingencies.

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    • I second that, great paragraphing :)

      More seriously, does this mean PDVSA is without insurance for it’s assets?

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      • Insurance cover is by trenches of risk , Some risks may still be covered , others not. What probably doesnt exist is a comprehensive insurance coverage for all Pdvsa assets and risks .

        Suspect Pdvsa doesnt even know what is covered because the insurance market is responding to the ongoing efforts of the 3 new brokers to renew lapsing policies by refusing to cover what they view as too risky . Also Pdvsa doesnt want to pay a higher premium . That’s unrealistic given Pdvsa’s recent accident record and the markets distrust of the new brokers. Probable result : Pdvsa will have to self insure huge trenches of risk .

        On another track : The insurance publication talks of Pdvsa possibly refraining from formally presenting its insurance claim for the Amuay Accident .

        More likely they have started the process and because they have been rebuffed by the Reinsurers on the grounds of Pdvsa’s responsability for the damage (or for missrepresenting the safety conditions at the refinery) they will forego the claim so as to try and hide the resulting scandal. This despite Pdvsa’s annual 2012 Report stating that the damages from the accident where fully insured and that the relevant insurance indemnity would be collected .

        In Venezuelan Law its a crime for a Govt official not to collect on a claim which it has the right to collect . So if Pdvsa Officals elect not to present the Amuay claim they can be held to be breaking the Law . Wonder if they’ve thought of that?. Not that it matters given the Regimes absolute indifference to the Rule of Law.

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    • Bill, very interesting to know about this trio of insurance brokers. I was staying one night at a very nice hotel in Paris about a month ago and by coincidence, it happens so that the floor I was in also had a conference room right besides the elevator. There was a screen besides the door of the conference room, on it, the program of that day was displayed: PDVSA Reinsurance Program. The screen also displayed the logo of four other companies. I have pictures to prove it…. So , your french insurance co. story fits with what I saw. Interesting.

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  9. Back to the sabotage angle, it does seem plausible, in a bolivarian way, that the same mechanism el Imperio used to spark el Comandante‘s cancer would also be used to spark a refinery explosion.

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  11. You better improve your reporting Quico, it was not exactly sabotage, it was 90% probability of sabotage, according to Rafael Ramirez. It has something to do with Schrödinger’s cat apparently.

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    • Brilliant! So, within that quantum fog of indeterminacy, Rafael Ramirez is not only not responsible for the accident, he isn’t responsible for the contents of his report either!

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    • Island Canuck said it best.. it is likely that they have reached such a level of incompetence that to a trained investigator it would appear to be sabotage. Explains everything.

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