🇺🇸🛢️ The US Needs to Refill its Dangerously Low Oil Reserves

The SPR today contains less than half the crude it had at its peak just over a decade ago. At about 350 million barrels, it's at its lowest since 1983.

To put what’s left into perspective, the US released about 270 million barrels over the last two years to cap oil prices. If the SPR is a revolver, it has a final round left in the chamber — and that’s it.

📎 Bloomberg

🇦🇷🗳⚡️⚠️ — The campaign of the candidate Javier Milei (libertarian) has filed a formal complaint with the Argentine Electoral Justice to report fraud risks and request a series of measures to ensure transparency in the elections.

In a meeting with the electoral official, the representative of Milei's party, La Libertad Avanza, requested that there are no missing ballots in the polling stations. According to the party, this type of fraud alone cost Milei between 3% and 5% of the votes in the August primaries.

Furthermore, the party raised concerns about the falsification of ballots for La Libertad Avanza. Therefore, the liberal candidate's campaign asked the electoral official to count the ballots with errors as valid, as they "clearly and accurately reflect the voter's intent."

The party also demanded the names of the "ten superusers" who can access the electronic system to be used in the provisional scrutiny and can modify the electoral dispute data at any time.

🇻🇪💥📑🇬🇾 — Venezuela schedules a referendum on the annexation of the Essequibo region, which accounts for 70% of the total area of Guyana.

📊 In the referendum, the Venezuelan population will be asked if they agree with the "defense of the disputed territory with Guyana."

🗣 "It is an initiative for justice, a peaceful assertion of the inalienable rights that the Republic of Venezuela has over the territory of Essequibo. There is no doubt that Venezuela's borders were established and should be respected long before the blatant attempted theft in 1899 with a tainted arbitral decision," said the President of the Venezuelan National Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez.

🛢 Currently, the Essequibo region is the site of various oil exploration operations, as it encompasses over 160,000 square kilometers of oil-rich territory.

Source 🔗

🛢 🇺🇸 🇻🇪 Chevron, Repsol Poised to Capitalize on Venezuelan Oil Opening

⬛️ Sanctions reprieve allows foreign oil explorers to resume work

⬛️ Venezuela holds one of the planet’s biggest crude endowments

🔶️ The second-largest US explorer is best-positioned to benefit from the reopening. Chevron adopted a patient approach across the tenures of three CEOs by maintaining a presence in-country after late President Hugo Chavez nationalized oil assets during the first decade of this century.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-21/chevron-repsol-poised-to-capitalize-on-venezuelan-oil-opening

https://archive.ph/9Bnd0

🛢 🇺🇸 🇬🇾 More than 20 companies including Exxon Mobil (XOM.N), a unit of Saudi Aramco, BP (BP.L) and Shell (SHEL.L) have submitted bids to compete for a contract to market Guyana's share of oil production, the government said on Tuesday.

The 12-month contract, which allows the country to export its portion of crude produced offshore by a consortium led by Exxon, had in previous years been awarded to Shell (SHEL.L), a unit of Saudi Aramco and BP.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/more-than-20-companies-including-exxon-competing-guyanas-oil-marketing-contract-2023-10-17/

https://archive.ph/Obuh6

⚠️ Confirmed: Metrics show a disruption to internet connectivity in #Venezuela with high impact to Caracas; the incident comes as polls close for Sunday's presidential election primaries, with state provider ABA CANTV claiming an issue with its energy backup system #22Oct 📉

Miguel Díaz-Canel, Xiomara Castro, AMLO, Ariel Henry, Petro and Nicolás Maduro