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How did the crisis in Venezuela start?Is inflation in Venezuela really going to reach 1 million percent?What will people do?Why is Venezuela suffering from high inflation?Venezuela started and got into troubles in 1973 with the first OPEC US -Middle East oil embargo of 1973,after oil prices on October 17 -1973 over the OLP and the Palestinian War and Israel, Syria and, along with it, increasing prices by 130% to the USA, UE; Henry Kissinger Secretary Of State in March 1974 negociated a agreement with Syria, OLP and Israel to stop the war, regain territory allowing a accord with OPEP ; The Embargo lasted (4) months.the price of oil had risen from US$3 per barrel to nearly $12 globally; US prices were significantly higher. The embargo caused an oil crisis, or "shock", with many short- and long-term effects on global politics and the global economy.It was later called the "first oil shock", followed by the 1979 oil crisis, termed the "second oil shock."On October 6, 1973, Syria and Egypt, with support from other Arab nations, launched a surprise attack against Israel on Yom Kippur.On October 12, 1973, US president Richard Nixon authorized Operation Nickel Grass, a strategic airlift to deliver weapons and supplies to Israel in order to replace its materiel losses, after the Soviet Union began sending arms to Syria and Egypt.In response to this, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC, consisting of the Arabmembers of OPEC plus Egypt and Syria) announced an oil embargo against Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States.Saudi Arabia only consented to the embargo after Nixon's promise of $2.2billion in military aid to Israel.The embargo was accompanied by gradual monthly production cuts—by December, production had been cut to 25% of September levels.This contributed to a global recession and increased tension between the United States and European allies who faulted the US for provoking an embargo by providing assistance to Israel.OAPEC demanded a complete Israeli withdrawal from all territories beyond the 1949 Armistice border.The Organisation of Oil Producing Countries' - OPEC.However, protection within the market and the promise of unfettered wealth arising from Venezuela’s immense oil reserves were undone by what economists came to term the 'natural resource curse'; the sudden influx of money would cause the national currency to dramatically appreciate, wages are driven up, prices inflate, manufacturing, imports and exports all slump. Though this was yet to occur for Venezuela during the early OPEC years, Alfonzo saw it all coming. In a prophetic 1975 speech he uttered the infamous lines: "ten years from now, twenty years from now, you will see; oil will bring us ruin. Oil is the Devil's excrement".Venezuelan government revenues, quadrupled from 1972 to 1974. The story of the “oil shock” is normally linked to that of the Arab-Israeli conflict in October 1973.The purpose was the ongoing common struggle by developing countries to gain control over natural resources, develop their national economy and reform the international economic institutions created . It also included forms of confrontation and acts of sabotage in the Middle East that made it possible to transform the networks that transported oil supplies into a political instrument. This instrument served a dual purpose: redirecting the flow of profits from oil, and attempting to the settle the 1974 Palestine question. Parties to the crisis used market devices in an attempt to frame its causes and possible solutions.However, the events of 1973–1974 exceeded the attempts to contain them as a matter of market forces. The question of supply opened up new fields of doubt about the possible limits to reserves of oil; the increasing difficulty of forecasting future demand and prices opened up new ways of mapping the future; and the inability to prevent catastrophic oil spills helped trigger the emergence of new matters of concern, in particular the preservation of the environment. Yet the events of 1973–1974 also triggered the unraveling of Keynesian economics, attacked by market technologies developed from the mid-1970s.This sudden and sizable increase in government income was historically unique in Venezuela . It allowed the newly elected president, Carlos Andrés Perez, to promise Venezuelans that Venezuela would become a developed country within a few years. His project was known as “La Gran Venezuela” ; from that point until 1996 corruption he was removed, impeached from power and the only way of business lead in 1998 to the great President Hugo Chavez …..!After years of economic crisis and corruption scandals, as well as the impeachment of Carlos Andrés Pérez, Venezuelans were becoming disenchanted with the traditional parties and Chavez the unique Populist became the new hero after Simon Bolivar the liberator of The Grand Colombia that lead the creation of Venezuela[ The Economics, Culture, and Politics of Oil in Venezuela][ Venezuela because it has shaped practically every aspect of the country, its history, its economy, its politics, and its culture. In what follows I will provide a brief history of Venezuela’s oil industry. Next, I discuss how the oil industry has shaped the economy, polity, and culture. Then, I examine the criticisms leveled against the oil industry and how the Chávez government has proposed to address these. Finally, I present what the opposition has done to prevent the reform of the oil industry and how the government has reacted towards this opposition.]Oil industry history[ Venezuela’s oil industry history can be roughly divided into four periods: the discovery and initial production of oil (1912-1943), Venezuela’s assertion of control over the oil industry (1943-1974), the oil boom and nationalization of the oil industry (1974-1998), and the government’s attempt to regain control over an increasingly independent oil industry (1999-2003).]Birth of the Petro-State (1912-1943)[ That Venezuela had abundant supplies of oil was already known since the earliest pre-colombian times, when the indigenous peoples of Venezuela made use of oil and asphalt, which seeped to the surface, for medicinal and other practical purposes. However, it was not until 1912 that the first oil well was drilled. Shortly thereafter, first Royal Dutch Shell and then Rockefeller’s Standard Oil became major producers of oil in Venezuela. Within a few years, by 1929, Venezuela was the world’s second largest oil producer, after the U.S., and the world’s largest oil exporter. Between 1920 and 1935 oil’s share of exports went from 1.9% to 91.2%.[1] This, of course, had an immediate and dramatic impact on the country’s economy, known among economists as “The Dutch Disease,” which will be explored in greater detail shortly. The most important consequence of the “Dutch Disease,” was that agricultural production declined to almost nothing and the country fell behind in industrializing, relative to other Latin American countries.]Strengthening of the Petro-State (1943-1973)[ In 1943 Venezuela passed a vast reform of its oil policy with the Hydrocarbons Act, which tied the Venezuelan state’s income even more tightly to the extraction of oil. While previously oil income was mostly based on concessions and customs, the new hydrocarbons act tied oil revenues to taxes based on income from mining. The law established that the foreign companies could not make greater profits from oil than they paid to the Venezuelan state. The continually increasing oil income led to an ever increasing reliance of the state on this source of income in lieu of individual income taxes.[2] By the 1950’s, however, the world oil industry began to feel the effects of the over-supply of oil, especially following the increased production of oil in the Middle East and the imposition of import quotas in the U.S. The consequence was a chronically low price of oil. So as to combat this problem, in 1960, the world’s main oil exporting countries, largely due to the prodding of the Venezuelan government, decided to form the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Also in 1960, Venezuela created the Venezuelan Oil Corporation, which later formed the basis for the nationalization of Venezuela’s oil industry.]Oil Boom and Nationalization of oil Industry (1973-1998)Juan Pérez Alfonso, Venezuelan, Regarded as Founder of OPECA sharp drop in prices posted by oil companies in August 1960 provided the catalyst to rally other nations to the cause he shared with the oil minister of Saudi Arabia. At a meeting in Baghdad, Iraq, the following month, their nations were joined by Iran, Iraq and Kuwait in forming the oil cartel. Eight more countries have since joined.“I may be the father of OPEC, but now sometimes I feel like renouncing my off. spring,” he said wistfully in an interview in 1976.Juan Perez expressed great concern that the flood of money entering Venezuela after oil prices quadrupled in 1974 had undermined the population's commitment to hard work and made the nation dependent on foreign imports.With the Middle East oil embargo of 1973, world oil prices and, along with it, Venezuelan government revenues, quadrupled from 1972 to 1974. This sudden and sizable increase in government income was historically unique in Venezuela (and would be to most other countries in the world). It allowed the newly elected president, Carlos Andrés Perez, to promise Venezuelans that Venezuela would become a developed country within a few years. His project was known as “La Gran Venezuela” and was supposed to “sow the oil” though a combination of fighting poverty, via price controls and income increases, and the diversification of the country’s economy, via import substitution. Part of this plan was also the nationalization of Venezuela’s oil industry, which became fully nationalized in 1976, with the creation of Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA). While the oil boom appeared to be a tremendous blessing to Venezuela, it did have some negative consequences, such as chronic inflation and, paradoxically, an increasing indebtedness.These problems were exacerbated when, in the mid-80’s the price of oil began to plummet, due to OPEC members’ breaking of their production quotas. By 1998, the price of oil had reached a new historical low of $3.19 per barrel (in 1973 prices).[3] This decline in oil prices had a significant impact on Venezuela’s economy, particularly on per capita income, which had been in a steady decline between the mid-80’s and the present. Venezuela was in a mongus economic cricis…waiting for President Hugo Chavez.Re-Founding of OPEC and Re-Nationalization of the Oil Industry? (1999-2003)CHÁVEZ AND CLASS VOTING To test for class voting in Chávez’s Venezuela, I examine the effect of household income on vote choice in fi ve surveys conducted around the time of the elections in 1993, 1998, 2000, and 2006, as well as the recall referendum of 2004.8 One could certainly imagine alternative indicators— or dimensions—of class, but I choose to use household income for three reasons. First, household income is commonly used as an indicator of class both broadly in studies of voting behavior (see Manza, Hout, and Brooks 1995) and more specifi cally in the previous studies of Venezuela cited here.9 Second, alternative measures such as occupation are inconsistent across the surveys, and as Portes and Hoffman (2003, table 4) show, occupational and income categories are correlated.10 Finally, the conventional wisdom of a class vote in Venezuela specifi cally refers to income differences rather than, say, market status or relations to the means of production. That is, scholars suggest that it is the poorrather than, say, unskilled workers—who disproportionately support Chávez.I begin with an examination of class voting in the 1993 election, the one prior to Chávez’s fi rst election.15 Until 1993, the Venezuelan party system was considered one of the region’s most highly institutionalized (Mainwaring and Scully 1995). But this changed when Venezuelans elected Rafael Caldera under the heading of a new party. After years of economic crisis and corruption scandals, as well as the impeachment of Carlos Andrés Pérez, Venezuelans were becoming disenchanted with the traditional parties (Molina and Pérez Baralt 1994; Morgan 2007; Rey 1998). In some ways, however, the 1993 election was consistent with the prior two-party system. An examination of survey data collected just prior to that election reveals no clear division of the vote along class lines. The results of a multinomial probit model are reported in table 1 and show that household income did not signifi cantly affect voter decisions (see also Molina and Pérez Baralt 1994).16 This is consistent with evidence from prior Venezuelan elections as well (Baloyra and Martz 1979; Coppedge 1994; Levine 1973; Molina and Pérez Baralt 1998).In other words, there was little class voting in Venezuela prior to the breakdown of the Punto Fijo two-party system, and the 1993 election, for all its novelty, was not exceptional in this regard. This suggests that if Chávez’s candidacy did generate a class vote, as is often claimed, it would indeed be a new phenomenon in Venezuelan politics. Figure 1 illustrates the proportion of respondents in each income category who voted for Chávez, voted for the opposition candidates, or abstained in each of the four elections.These proportions suggest monotonic class voting only in the case of the watershed election of 1998. Only in that year does it seem that poor voters were more likely to vote for Chávez than rich voters, and rich voters conversely were more likely to vote for the opposition than were the poor. Class voting appears nonmonotonic in the cases of the other three elections. In particular, the fi gures suggest that the rich were more likely to vote for the opposition, although these differences do not always appear particularly stark. The regression estimates reported in table 2 bear out some of these class effects.17 In 1998, even after including controls for gender, age, education, and state, income continues to have a signifi cant monotonic effect on voting for Chávez.18 In other words, the 1998 election does seem to have represented a break with Venezuela’s democratic past, witnessing the emergence of some form of class voting. But as already mentioned, what this analysis omits is the high rate of abstention in the 1998 election: 36 percent of eligible voters failed to turn out.If the Venezuelan electorate were indeed polarized along class lines, then we would expect poor voters to choose voting for Chávez both over voting for the opposition and over not voting at all. Put differently, if poor voters are just as likely to stay home on Election Day as they are to cast a ballot for Chávez, we would need to limit our claims about class polarization to those citizens who vote rather than the entire voting-eligible population. Adding abstainers to the analysis of the 1998 election, I find that income does not have a signifi cant effect on a Venezuelan voters’ choice between voting for Chávez and either staying home or casting a ballot for the opposition. Thus, while there was a class-based disparity among voters, there was no class-based distinction between those who voted for Chávez and all those who did not.Later elections, however, do not reveal even this pattern of class voting: for the 2000, 2004, and 2006 elections, I find no evidence of a monotonic class vote. Nor does the inclusion of abstainers affect these findings. One should be somewhat reluctant to draw stark inferences from the 2004 survey because the interviews were conducted almost a year before the recall referendum took place (see Appendix).19 To the extent that Chávez may have targeted policies at the poor and thereby persuaded them to vote against the recall (see Penfold-Becerra 2007), we might expect a class effect to have emerged in the year between the survey and the election. The 2004 results can therefore be only suggestive. But given their consistency with the findings for the other election years, they should not be dismissed altogether. These results are illustrated in fi gure 2, which shows the predicted probability of an individual from each income group (who turned out to vote) casting a ballot for Chávez in each of the elections examined here. In the interest of greater accuracy, and to impose the least structure on the data, the predicted probabilities are based on probit regressions using dummy variables for as many income categories as are available for each survey rather than the results reported in table 2.The latter results used the four-category income variable for the sake of comparability.20 If monotonic class voting appears absent after 1998, fi gure 2 nevertheless suggests sharp drops in the probability of voting for Chávez at the top of the income distribution in all four elections. This suggests that a focus on monotonic class voting would miss a potentially important feature of class voting in Venezuela. Let us therefore turn to tests of nonmonotonic class voting. Table 3 reports the results of analyses that replace the categorical income variable with a dummy variable for only the very wealthiest 10–15 percent of respondents (labeled “Wealthiest”).21 For the 1998 election, the coefficient is negative and signifi cant, which suggests that the very rich were highly unlikely to vote for Chávez.22 Indeed, this result is consistent with figure 2.For the 2000 election, the analyses are somewhat more complex. Recall that the raw association between class and vote choice illustrated in fi gure 1 suggested no signifi cant relationship between income and voting. Regression results for the 2000 survey indeed bore this out in table 2. As already mentioned, however, previous authors found a signifi cant (though substantively minor) negative relationship between income and voting for Chávez while controlling for other determinants of vote choice (Molina 2002; Molina and Pérez Baralt 2004).But my analysis suggests that even this weakly signifi cant fi nding is an artifact of measurement and sampling. First, these authors use a dichotomous measure of income coded 1 for the top 12 percent of income earners and 0 for the rest of the sample.23 Second, they do not weight their survey sample, which underrepresents voters with less than primary education and overrepresents those with secondary education, both by roughly 10 percent. Thus, previous authors simply isolated the very wealthiest respondents, as in my Wealthiest variable. Replacing the categorical income variable with this dummy variable and removing the education survey weight, my results are consistent with those of previous authors (table 3, column 3).24 Hence the effect on vote choice of being in the top 12 percent of income earners appears to show up exclusively among voters with only a high school diploma.Among voters with other levels of educational achievement, income appears to have no effect on voting for Chávez, even among the very rich. To confirm this, I split the sample by education and reran the regressions for the 2000 election. The results are reported in table 4.25 These analyses confirm that the reported class vote in 2000 is the result of overrepresentation of respondents with only a high school degree. This could be because high-income respondents who had completed only high school also disproportionately tended to be in the age group of eighteen to twenty-four years old—that is, they were most likely college students. And the university student movement has grown increasingly opposed to the Chávez government (The Economist 2007). For the 2004 recall referendum, there is no evidence of even this nonmonotonic class voting. In turn, the results for the 2006 election are similar to those for 2000: only the wealthiest seem to disproportionately vote against Chávez.26 Figure 1, however, appeared to show a different nonmonotonic class vote in 2006. There, both the rich and the poor appear less likely than the middle class to vote for Chávez.27 To test this, I recoded the categorical income variable dichotomously, coded 1 for individuals in either the poor or the rich categories and 0 for those in the two middle-income categories (labeled “Poor-Wealthy”).The results reported in table 3 using this variable show a signifi cant, negative relationship. It seems that class voting took place in 2006, but in a different manner from that which is conventionally assumed. Rather than a monotonic class vote in which Chávez attracts a disproportionate number of poor voters, or a nonmonotonic class vote in which only the wealthiest oppose him, in 2006 it seems that Chávez drew support disproportionately from the middle of the income distribution. This finding certainly merits further research.Insummary, I find evidence of a monotonic class vote only in 1998 and only among voters. Only then were the poor more likely than other income groups to vote for Chávez. But this class difference does not extend to the entire voting-eligible population, which suggests that one must make cautious inferences about class polarization in Venezuela at this time. In later elections, class voting took on a nonmonotonic quality, where it existed at all. Specifi cally, the very wealthy were less likely to vote for Chávez than all the other income groups in 2000, and in 2006, the middle classes seemed most supportive of Chávez.Thus, class voting has indeed emerged in Venezuela with the rise of Chávez, but it is nonmonotonic, contrary to conventional expectations If Chávez is indeed successfully targeting the poor for mobilization, then the change in reported abstention rates from one survey to the next should be more attenuated for the poor than for other income groups. That is, if reported abstention among the rich decreased between 1993 and 1998 by 32 percent we would expect reported abstention among the poor to have decreased by signifi cantly more than 32 percent. This does not appear to be the case. Across the four election intervals (1993–1998, 1998–2000, 2000–2004, 2004–2006), the change in reported abstention rates for the poor does not seem to be signifi cantly distinguishable from the change in reported abstention rates for any other income group.29 Obviously, one would prefer to examine fi ner-grained data that could identify individuals targeted for mobilization by the Chávez campaign, their level of income, and whether mobilization efforts increased their probability of voting. Still, given the available data, there is at least suggestive evidence that there was no particularly pronounced mobilization of the poor during these elections.CONCLUSIONS The conventional wisdom about leaders like Chávez is that their electoral successes depend on class voting, particularly the support of poor voters disenchanted with the old political establishment, corruption within traditional parties, and the neoliberal policies of the Washington Consensus. There are, however, intuitive reasons to doubt this interpretation, including Chávez’s confl icts with organized labor, potential middleclass benefi ts from some of his economic policies and redistributive programs, and the scholarly contention that Latin American populist leaders generally rely on multiclass bases of support. My results show that this intuitive skepticism is indeed warranted; Chávez’s electoral base is not, in fact, disproportionately poor. Chávez’s multiclass base is similar to that of previous populist leaders in the region. He has maintained a nationalist, antioligarchic rhetoric perhaps aimed at the lower classes, along with propoor redistribution and, at least since the failed 2002 coup against him, a certain amount of clientelism (Penfold-Becerra 2007). At the same time, he has attracted middle-class voters, perhaps by pursuing some broader redistributive and statist developmental policies that benefi ted these sectors. Chávez’s 2006 campaign promise to nationalize utilities, for example, likely attracted middle-class voters who stood to gain from lower utility bills. My fi ndings further suggest that some changes may have begun taking place in 2006. I fi nd that both the poor and the rich were less likely than the middle sectors of the income distribution to vote for Chávez in that election. This result surely merits further inquiry. One possible explanation is that Chávez has found it diffi cult to target social benefi ts at Venezuela’s very poor, which may have alienated those who expected a much more radical form of redistribution. Another explanation might stress the increasing levels of crime in the country’s slums and the failure of the Chávez government to ensure citizens’ security. Finally, opposition parties may have made inroads among the poor by building local party organizations. Indeed, scattered opposition parties took over several mayoralties and governorships in the 2008 regional elections. If these parties successfully targeted poorer voters, this may explain Chávez’s growing reliance on middle-income sectors. It may also explain the increasing radicalization of his recent economic policies as an attempt to regain ground among poor voters. Indeed, since losing the 2007 referendum, Chávez has nationalized major companies in a variety of sectors. And given his success in the more recent referendum in 2009, these policies may well have paid off.When Hugo Chávez first was elected in December 1998, it did not look like he had any particular plans for PDVSA. He did, however, have very clear plans for OPEC, which, under the leadership of Alí Rodríguez, was to be turned into a strong cartel once again. Until Chávez came to power, OPEC had turned into a shadow f its former self, with member states regularly ignoring their quotas. Venezuela, especially, had turned into one of the member states’ most unreliable partners. Production over allotted quotas, combined with the expansion of oil production in non-OPEC countries, such as Russia and Mexico, led to a steep decline in the price of oil. Chávez promised to put an end to this, by organizing OPEC’s second-ever meeting of heads of state in Caracas, in the year 2000. Also, Chávez spent the first years of his presidency visiting the leaders of OPEC and non-OPEC countries to convince them to adhere to production quotas, so as to maintain an oil price of between $22 and $28 per barrel.[4]Chávez’ efforts bore nearly immediate results, when the price of oil rose for the first time, since 1985, to over $27 per barrel (in nominal prices).Very soon, however, Chávez ran into conflict with the management of PDVSA, which, for the past fifteen years, had been focusing on producing as much oil as possible, regardless of OPEC quotas. The result was, first, a steady rotation of PDVSA presidents and, later, an all-out confrontation between the Chávez government and the oil industry. Chávez used this conflict to argue that what the oil industry needed was a complete re-nationalization because it had become too independent of the state and had turned into a “state within a state.” I will examine the details of this conflict in greater detail below.How Oil Shaped Venezuelan SocietyEconomicallyPerhaps the most evident effect oil has had on Venezuela’s economy is the appearance of the “Dutch Disease.” This economic disease is caught whenever a commodity brings a sudden increase of income in one sector of the economy, which is not matched by increased income in other sectors of the economy.[5]What happens is that this sudden sectoral increase causes severe problems in the other sectors. The increased sectoral income causes a distorted growth in services and other non-tradables, which cannot be imported, while discouraging the production of tradables, which are imported. The reason for this disparity is that the greater income rapidly raises the demand for imports, since domestic production cannot meet demand quickly enough, and also raises the demand for services, which the domestic market has to supply because services cannot be imported as easily as tradables can. The increased demand for imported goods and domestic services, in turn, causes an increase in prices, which ought to cause domestic production to increase, but doesn’t because the flow of foreign exchange into the economy has caused a general inflation of wages and prices.One can observe the symptoms of the Dutch disease in the Venezuelan economy quite clearly, when one looks at the extent to which the increase in oil production and income was followed by a corresponding decrease in agricultural production delaying industrialization. While agricultural production made up about one third ofVenezuela’s GDP in the 1920’s, it shrank to less than one tenth by the 1950’s. Currently agriculture makes up about 6% of GDP. Also, industrial production declined between 1990 and 1999 from 50% of GDP to 24% (compared to the all of Latin America, which declined from 36% to 29% in the same period).[6] The other Dutch disease symptoms are evident in the constant devaluations of the currency and subsequent inflation which have existed in Venezuela’s economy ever since the oil booms of the late 70’s and early 80’s.[7]In addition to the typical Dutch Disease problem, the sudden increase of oil revenues in Venezuela caused a serious problem in the government’s fiscal policies. That is, the new revenues caused the illusion that the oil income could be used to industrialize the country via massive infrastructure projects, to “sow the oil,” as the president at the time of the oil boom, Carlos Andres Perez, used to say. What happened was that the quadrupled government income caused government spending to quickly increase and even surpass the newfound revenues. When the oil income began to decline again, it was not as easy to reduce government spending as it had been to increase it. The result was that the government gradually went deeper and deeper into debt. Between 1970 and 1994, foreign debt rose from 9% to 53% of GNP. So, as was already stated earlier, while oil prices and revenues declined, so did per capita income and the Venezuelan economy as a whole, and poverty increased. In 1996 Venezuela was one of the very few countries in the world where per capita income was lower than it was in 1960.[8]CulturallyPerhaps the most visible consequence of Venezuela’s reliance on oil is that it has fostered a rentier and clientelistic mentality among Venezuelans. That is, the oil wealth has promoted the idea that one can do well in Venezuela, as long as one has access to the country’s oil wealth. The consequence was that rather than engaging in creative entrepreneurial activity, Venezuelans were encouraged to ally themselves with the state, seeking either employment or contracts from the state, which had a monopoly on Venezuela’s oil income. Political analyst Terry Lynn Karl describes the consequences of oil as follows:In the manner of a petro-state, rent seeking had become the central organizing principle of [Venezuela’s] political and economic life, and the ossified political institutions in existence operated primarily to perpetuate an entrenched spoils system. Both state agencies and political parties had given up their programmatic roles to become machines for extracting rents from the public arena.[9]Another observer of Venezuela, the cultural anthropologist Fernando Coronil, argues that Venezuela’s oil wealth, which is concentrated in the state, has caused the state to appear to have magical powers, to be able to accomplish just about any feat at no cost to the population.Citgo Petroleum Corp [PDVSAC.UL], the U.S. subsidiary of Venezuelan state-run oil company PDVSA [PDVSA.UL], said on Wednesday that theUnited States had revoked the visa of its president and chief executive Asdrubal Chavez, cousin of Venezuela’s late president Hugo Chavez,ASDRUBAL CHAVEZ COUSIN OF HUGO CHAVEZ PRESIDENT CITGO USAThus transformed into a petrostate, the Venezuelan state came to hold the monopoly not only of violence, but of the nation’s natural wealth. The state has exercised this monopoly dramaturgically, seeking compliance through the spectacular display of its imperious presence—it seeks to conquer rather than persuade. … By manufacturing dazzling development projects that engender collective fantasies of progress, it casts its spell over audiences and performers alike. As a “magnanimous sorcerer,” the state seizes its subjects by inducing a condition or state of being receptive to its illusions—a magical state.[10]PoliticallyVenezuela’s oil economy and culture of course also left a mark on its politics. As a natural consequence of the clientelistic and magical nature of the state was that the state would become very bureaucratic. It is estimated that of the people employed in the formal economy (about 50% of the total working population), approximately 45% are employed through the government.[11]Another consequence that Venezuela’s oil wealth has had for its political system is that it turned it into what political scientist Terry Lynn Karl calls a “pacted democracy.” The term pacted democracy describes a democracy which is held together via an agreement among different elite groups. It is a kind of truce among opposing powerful interest groups in the society, so as to maintain their privileges. In Venezuela this truce took the form of the pact of “Punto Fijo,” where all major parties were guaranteed access to power in proportion to the voting results. In other words, even if one party won the presidential and legislative elections, it would still be obliged to share the spoils of Venezuela’s oil economy among the other parties, more or less according to the vote results. This way each of the main parties (primarily Acción Democratica and Copei) was guaranteed access to jobs, contracts, ministries, etc. To further minimize conflict, the main union federation, CTV, was similarly divided among the parties, although Acción Democratica, as its founder, always was in control of it. Radical socialist and communist parties were completely excluded from this pact. The pact of Punto Fijo, however, began falling apart once oil rents began to decline in the mid 80’s. It then received its deathblow when Hugo Chávez was elected president in 1998.In terms of Venezuela’s level of bureaucratization, the “pacted” nature of its democracy, and the degree of clientelism, Venezuela in many ways resembled one-party state socialist regimes, except that it was governed by an alternating two-party system. Oddly enough, the system neared its end in the same year Eastern Europe’s did, in 1989, with the “Caracazo,” when there was a general uprising and riots against IMF-mandated economic reforms.PDVSA and the Chávez GovernmentAll of the foregoing sets the stage for showing just how extremely important the country’s conflict over oil is. At the most overt level, the conflict between the Chávez government and the oil industry is one about who controls PDVSA. Beyond that, the specific issues that control is being fought over have to do with the company’s efficiency, its internationalization program, its outsourcing and subcontracting practices, OPEC membership, and special oil contracts.ControlControl over the state-owned oil company, PDVSA, has been in dispute in Venezuela, perhaps ever since the company was first nationalized in 1976. When PDVSA was first nationalized, the transnational corporations’ dependencies were turned into fourteen Venezuelan companies, which corresponded with the fourteen main transnational oil companies that did business in Venezuela.[12]The entire management had years earlier already been Venezuelan and this management did not change with nationalization. For example, the former president of Shell Venezuela was the same as the new president of Maraven, the newly nationalized Shell Venezuela. Critics of the nationalization process, such as Carlos Mendoza,[13] say that the newly nationalized oil industry was nothing more than a Trojan Horse. Venezuela’s oil industry maintained an anti-statist and transnational corporatist management culture throughout its existence. The ties to the former owners of the nationalized Venezuelan companies were maintained primarily through technical assistance contracts with the former owners and through commercialization contracts, which heavily discounted the price of oil to their former owners.The government’s lack of control over the oil industry was further institutionalized in PDVSA’s board of directors. While normally a board of directors is supposed to represent the interests of the owners vis-á-vis the management, in the case of PDVSA the board of directors, almost in their entirety, was appointed from PDVSA management, who, due to their backgrounds, tended to represent management. This is why, when Chávez appointed a board of directors who were oil experts and who did not come from PDVSA, the PDVSA management protested and joined the April 2002 work stoppage against the government. Chávez was breaking a decades-old tradition that regarded board membership as the highest promotion a PDVSA manager could receive.EfficiencyPerhaps the first and foremost issue on the Chávez’ government’s mind with regard to reforming PDVSA has to do with the company’s efficiency. PDVSA critics point out that the company has become increasingly inefficient over the past twenty five years. From 1976 to 1992 the average percentage of PDVSA’s income that went towards the company’s costs was approximately 29% and the percentage that went towards the government was 71%. For 1993 to 2000, that relationship had practically reversed, so that 64% were kept by PDVSA and only 36% went towards the government.[14] Also, according to rankings of the business magazine, América Economía,[15]PDVSA was the largest Latin American company in 2000, but in terms of efficiency it ranked among the lowest of the fifty most efficient companies, far below any of its state-owned competitors, such as Petrobras of Brazil, Pemex of Mexico, or Petroecuador of Ecuador.[16] Other measures of profitability show similar results. For example, in terms of the Dollar revenues provided to the government per barrel of oil produced, PDVSA paid only about a quarter ($8.34) of what Mexico’s PEMEX paid out to the government ($24.66) in 2001.[17]Ironically, PDVSA has a fraction of the number of employees that PEMEX does, something that might be traced to PDVSA’s more extensive use of outsourcing and sub-contracting. Still, it is well known within PDVSA that it has nearly twice the number of administrative workers that it needs. In 1997 PDVSA merged three of its holdings, Corpoven, Lagoven, and Maraven) into PDVSA proper. Carlos Rossi, a former PDVSA economist, says that the Caracas headquarters of PDVSA acquired the nickname “Hollywood” because, “everyone there [in PDVSA Caracas] seemed to have a double.”[18]InternationalizationA large part of the reason for PDVSA’s drop in efficiency from the mid 1990’s on has to do with its internationalization policy and a change in its accounting methods. In 1989 PDVSA adopted a worldwide combined accounting method, so that costs and losses outside of Venezuela would be balanced against the revenues and profits within Venezuela. Previously the accounting for transactions within Venezuela and for those abroad was done separately. The result of the account consolidation was a large-scale import of costs that were incurred abroad. Since PDVSA’s tax rate within Venezuela is about twice that in the U.S., for example, the company had to transfer a much smaller proportion of its revenues to the government.From the early 1980’s to late 1990’s, PDVSA engaged in a program to vertically integrate the company on a global level. What this meant, in essence, was the purchase of refineries and of the U.S. gas station network Citgo. In all, in the period between 1983 and 1998, PDVSA purchased 23 refineries in Europe and the U.S. While other state-owned oil companies initiated vertical integration projects, Venezuela’s was the most ambitious. One of the official reasons for this was that Venezuelan oil is mostly of a very heavy crude variety, with many components that are undesirable for finished oil products, such as sulfur, nitrogen, and several metal elements. In other words, Venezuelan crude requires a fairly sophisticated refining process, which not all refineries can handle. The logic of acquiring foreign refineries was that such refineries could be retrofitted to process Venezuelan crude and to then provide finished oil products to the market closest to the refinery. The idea thus was to guarantee a market for Venezuelan heavy crude oil.However, many, if not most, of the refineries that were acquired were purchased at a bargain, mainly because the vendor could not find a way to make it profitable. As a result, PDVSA tried to avoid losses in these refineries either by providing Venezuelan crude at below market rates or by avoiding the costly retrofitting process altogether and providing the refinery with lighter crude from other countries, such as Russia.[19] The net result of the internationalization process and of the new accounting procedure was that tremendous PDVSA costs that were incurred outside of Venezuela were “imported” to the national branch of PDVSA, thus lowering overall profits and transfers to the government.OutsourcingAnother source of increased costs developed as a result of outsourcing, whereby PDVSA opened up marginal oil fields to private investors. So as to attract private investors, PDVSA negotiated lower taxes and royalties on the oil production, since the early 90’s. While on the surface this makes sense because marginal fields are much more costly to operate, the result was the production of much more costly oil, which counts against OPEC quotas, displacing oil production that might be more profitable. Of the 3.2 million barrels per day that Venezuela currently produces, about 500,000 barrels per day come from costly outsourced oil fields.[20]INTESAAnother whole dimension of outsourcing is related to contracts involving the general operations of PDVSA. Perhaps the most important instance of outsourcing, in terms of the management of PDVSA, is the joint venture it engaged in with the U.S.-based company SAIC (Science Applications International Corporation) to create INTESA (Informática, Negocios, y Tecnología, S.A.) in 1996. INTESA was to manage all of PDVSA’s data processing needs. After four years of outsourcing this important task to INTESA, it became increasingly clear that INTESA was not saving PDVSA any money, but that it was costing PDVSA much more than it expected.[21]Following the April 2002 Coup attempt, Alí Rodríguez, the new PDVSA president assigned Juan Fernandez, who was later to be the leader of the December 2002 PDVSA strike, to cancel the contract with INTESA. Fernandez negotiated that the contract would end, perhaps not so coincidentally, by the end of December 2002. INTESA joined the strike, however, and shut down all of its services to PDVSA, well before the contract expired. The result was that PDVSA could not transfer its data processing to new systems, nor could it process its orders and bills for oil shipments. PDVSA ended up having to process such things manually, since passwords and the general computing infrastructure were unavailable, causing the strike to be much more damaging to the company than it would have been, if the data processing had been in PDVSA’s hands.A recent investigation into INTESA, and especially into its majority owner SAIC (60%), revealed some information that ought to be quite disturbing to the government of Hugo Chávez.[22] That is, INTESA, which controlled all of PDVSA’s information, is in turn controlled by SAIC, a Fortune 500 company (revenues in 2002: $6.1 billion) that is deeply involved in the U.S. defense industry, particularly as it relates to nuclear technology, defense intelligence, and computing technology. Its managers included two former U.S. Secretaries of Defense (William Perry and Melvin Laird) and two former CIA directors (John Deutch and Robert Gates). Its current Board of Directors includes the former commander of the U.S. Special Forces (Wayne Downing), a former coordinator of the National Security Council (Jasper Welch), and the former director of the National Security Agency (Bobby Ray Inman). Whether or not SAIC was actively involved in the PDVSA strike and whether it passes crucial company information on to other oil companies is unknown. However, the very fact that these connections exist ought to be a cause of great concern to PDVSA and the Venezuelan government.Oil Industry Reform under ChávezVenezuela’s oil industry reform encompasses four main areas: solidification of state ownership of the oil industry, tax reform, subordination of the oil industry to national interests, and the strengthening of OPEC.[23]State ownershipThe 1999 Constitution, which was written by Chávez’s supporters, anchors state ownership of Venezuela’s oil industry in the constitution. It is well known that the government of Rafael Caldera, Chávez’ immediate predecessor in the presidency, wanted to privatize PDVSA. The new constitution, however, clearly states that “for reasons of economic and political sovereignty and of national strategy, the state will maintain the totality of the shares of PDVSA or of the entity created to manage the oil industry…”[24] In some ways, this article of the constitution was supposed to mark a definitive break from neo-liberal economic policies that PDVSA had been pursuing prior to Chávez’s election.However, some critics say that a backdoor to privatization remains open because the constitution also says that the state shall own all shares of PDVSA, “except those of subsidiaries, strategic associations, businesses, and whatever other that has constituted or constitutes PDVSA as a result of the development of its business.”[25] In other words, in theory, PDVSA could turn its various activities into subsidiaries and then sell them off, one by one. Following the December ’02 to January ’03 oil industry strike, this is what PDVSA’s directors have been considering, mostly in order to rid itself of unprofitable subsidiaries or activities.Related to state ownership is a provision in the hydrocarbons law which specifies that all state activity related to oil exploration and production are to be dedicated to the “pubic interest.”[26] More specifically, it states that all oil related activity must be oriented to support “the organic, integrated, and sustainable development of the country, paying attention to the rational use of resources and the preservation of the environment.” Income derived from oil “for the most part” must be used to finance health care, education, and the FIEM (the fund for macro-economic stabilization, a governmental savings fund).Tax reformThe next major target for reform is the way that the Venezuelan government extracts revenue from the oil industry. Here the government introduced a change in the taxation of the oil industry. Since 1943 the government required a royalty payment of 16.6% for every barrel of oil that either PDVSA or a foreign company extracted. In many cases this royalty had even been negotiated to drop to 1% of some foreign investors. A new oil reform that PDVSA was working on in 1998 even suggested eliminating royalty payments entirely. With the new oil reform law of 2001, however, royalty payments were nearly doubled to 30% of the price at which every barrel is sold. At the same time, the government lowered the income tax levied on oil extraction from 67.6% to 50%.When the government introduced this change, the opposition cried out that the doubling of royalty payments would ruin Venezuela’s cooperation with foreign investors and would practically eliminate foreign direct investment in Venezuela. The government’s main argument for increasing the royalty payments is based on the fact that it is much easier for the government to collect royalty payments than it is to collect taxes on oil income. That is, the government can track very easily how much oil is being extracted and what the royalty payments should be based on the current price of oil. However, taxes based on oil income are much more difficult to control because PDVSA or other oil companies deduct their expenses from the income on which they have to pay the taxes. Since expenses are not that easily identifiable for an outside auditor, the tax payer can attempt to inflate expenses, in order to lower their tax payments. By shifting government revenues from taxes to royalties, the government is basically closing loopholes in the tax collection process.A second and closely related reason for the change in the oil revenue collection process has to do with PDVSA. Chávez and his supporters have long claimed that PDVSA is providing too little of its revenues to the central government, the company’s only shareholder. One way to make the company more efficient would thus be to increase its contribution to the government, regardless of its expenses. That is, by making fewer expenses tax deductible, which is what the shift from income tax to royalties does, the company is faces a strong incentive to make its operations more efficient. In other words, a tax which allows the deduction of expenses penalizes the oil producer if production is made more efficient. If, on the other hand, the producer has to contribute just as much to the government, regardless of costs or expenses, the “royalty makes the interests of the natural resource owner [the state] and of the investor coincide.”[27]“Re-nationalization”As mentioned earlier, some critics of PDVSA, such as Carlos Mendoza, have called PDVSA’s 1976 privatization “phony.” Chávez, in his speeches following the collapse of the December 2002 to January 2003 oil-industry shut-down, has thus referred to the regaining of control over PDVSA as a “re-nationalization.” What this regaining of control involves is first and foremost increasing PDVSA’s efficiency and profitability, so that the company can transfer a greater share of its revenues to the government treasury. The government plans to increase the company’s efficiency through the aforementioned changes in taxation, by selling off unprofitable subsidiaries, and by reorganizing the company into two major geographic subdivisions, PDVSA East and PDVSA West. The details of which subsidiaries will be sold and exactly how the company is to be reorganized are still largely unknown as of this writing.OPECWhen Chávez first came to power, in February 1999, among his highest priorities was to strengthen OPEC and raise the international price of oil. Oil had dropped to less than $10 per barrel, to a large extent because Venezuela was ignoring its OPEC oil production quotas during the previous government of Rafael Caldera. Also, non-OPEC members such as Mexico and Russia, were increasing their production considerably, further driving down the price of oil. Chávez immediately put Alí Rodríguez in charge of the Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM), which oversees PDVSA and oil policy. Within the new government’s first 100 days, Rodriguez visited most OPEC and non-OPEC oil producing countries and returned with a commitment from most these countries to reduce production or abide by their OPEC quotas. The price of oil immediately went up, from an average price of $12.28/barrel for 1998 to $17.47/barrel for 1999, one of the largest non-war related increases of the past decade. Later, Chávez and Rodriguez managed to convince OPEC to introduce a price band system, of $22 to $28 per barrel, which OPEC would try to maintain.The following year, 2000, President Chávez spent much time traveling to both OPEC and non-OPEC countries, to consolidate their commitment to restrained oil production and to convince them to attend the second-ever gathering of OPEC heads of state, to be held in Caracas.[28] On September 27 of 2000, Chávez opened and hosted this second OPEC summit. For the Chávez government, the summit had the following six objectives:Reestablish a dialogue between Venezuela and its partners in OPECRecuperate the credibility of Venezuela in OPECStrengthen OPECDefend oil pricesReassume a leadership position within OPECConsolidate relations between Venezuela and the Arab/Islamic worldGiven the strengthened position of OPEC in the world today, it is safe to say that the summit’s objectives were largely achieved.[Ultimately, the renaissance of OPEC could be a large part of what motivated the U.S. to attack Iraq. That is, if OPEC had remained as defunct as it was when Chávez came to power, it is quite possible that the Bush administration would never have considered controlling Iraq’s oil reserves much of an issue. But with the return of OPEC, the consequent rise in oil prices, and the general lack of control the U.S. government felt in the face of an energy crisis and the attack on the World Trade Center, “breaking OPEC’s back” became a top priority.]Opposition to Oil Industry ReformAs has been noted elsewhere, opposition to the Chávez government did not really gain much momentum until Chávez proposed the 49 “enabling laws” (“leyes habilitante”), among the most important of which was the “Organic Law of Hydrocarbons,” which specified the institutional and legal changes for governing Venezuela’s oil industry. When the law was made public, the outcry, especially among oil industry executives was immediate.The opposition declared that the new law would doom Venezuela’s oil industry because the higher royalties and the limitations placed on joint ventures would make foreign direct investment completely unattractive. One of the main arguments here is that Venezuela’s crude oil is mostly heavy and extra heavy, a type of crude that is quite expensive to extract from oil fields. The shift from taxes to royalties would mean that companies could deduct substantially fewer expenses from the transfers they are required to make to the government. As a result, the extraction of oil from “marginal fields” (fields which yield less oil) and heavy and extra heavy crude become much less attractive to foreign investors. To support their argument, the opposition points to the fact that Venezuela’s royalties are among the highest in the world.Another element of critique of the government’s oil policy has always been that the constitution prohibits the privatization of PDVSA. While few in Venezuela openly favor privatization, due to the strong nationalist sentiment in the country, many have suggested that Venezuelans would be better off if PDVSA were privatized to the general public, in the sense that all citizens would receive shares of PDVSA that they would then be free to buy and sell on the stock market.While the opposition roundly criticized the new law when it was first introduced in October 2001, the real problems within PDVSA did not begin until Chávez decided to fire his appointment to the presidency of PDVSA, General Guaicaipuro Lameda, in February 2002. Lameda had has said that he was surprised about his appointment because he never considered himself a supporter of Chávez. But he took the post anyway and for 15 months he ran PDVSA mostly from the perspective of a businessman, mostly adhering to the concerns of the upper management, instead of the Chávez government. One of the reasons the government gave for firing Lameda was independent audit of PDVSA that had been initiated in January of that year, which indicated that numerous dubious contracts had been entered under Lameda’s watch, which appeared to personally benefit managers of PDVSA, leading to serious losses for the company.Chávez replaced Lameda with Gaston Parra, a leftist economist and former president of the Central Bank of Venezuela. Also, he appointed five new members to PDVSA’s board of directors. Lameda, together with members of PDVSA’s upper management charged that Chávez was politicizing PDVSA by appointing individuals to the board on the basis of political loyalty, rather than merit. Ever since PDVSA’s founding, the board of directors was regarded as the culmination of a long management career at PDVSA. Upper management generally filled most of the positions of the board. PDVSA managers regarded this policy as the foundation for the company’s meritocracy.By appointing a board that did not come from within PDVSA, Chávez broke with that tradition for the first time, thus earning him the charge of breaking with meritocracy in the company and replacing it with politicization. Forgotten, however, was that previous presidents had also appointed individuals to the PDVSA board who did come from within PDVSA.[29] Also, as the representative of the owners, the board of directors, in theory, should be appointed by the owner (the state) and represent the owner’s interests. Appointing a board from within the company, as had largely been the tradition, actually represents a conflict of interest because the managers appointed to the board are more likely to represent the interests of the management, rather than the state.Another, though largely unarticulated, reason for why PDVSA’s management and most of its administrative employees opposed Chávez following the introduction of the new oil law and the appointment of a new board had to do with the overstaffing mentioned earlier. That is, with the change in taxation PDVSA had to drastically cut its overhead. Since it was already quite overstaffed in the administrative offices in Caracas, due to the recent merger of three of PDVSA’s subsidiaries, the staff reductions were going to be even more severe.[30]Already, PDVSA had reduced its payroll by 26%, between 1995 and 2000. Still, the overstaffing remained a problem, which became more severe with the new oil law, which forced even greater cutbacks in overhead. Ultimately, the upper management issued an ultimatum to Chávez to dismiss the newly appointed directors, or it would join the strike called by Fedecamaras and the CTV for April 9. 2002Venezuela is still a polarized country. While there are millions who want the government out now, there are also millions (including the military) who fear a right-wing coup. There must be a negotiated solution.[1] Tugwell, Franklin (1975) The Politics of Oil in Venezuela. Stanford University Press, p.182[2] For example, while Venezuelan individual income taxes during the 70’s made up only 4.1% of total tax income and corporate taxes made up 70.3%, in neighboring Colombia, the tax burden is distributed much more evenly among different sources, so that individual income tax makes up 11% and corporate tax 12.8% of total tax income. (Source: Terry Lynn Karl, 1997, The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro States, University of California Press, p.89)[3] Source: OPEC Annual Statistical Bulletin, 2001[4] Chávez’ visits to Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi would come to haunt him over and over again, as his opponents would site these visits as reasons for their dislike of Chávez.[5] As was the case of Dutch gas, which is where the name for the problem comes from.[6] World Development Report 2000/2001, p.297[7] Average annual inflation was over 50% between 1988 and 1998.[8] Terry Lynn Karl, p.235. This was a fate suffered by only 19 countries in the world in 1996.[9] Terry Lynn Karl (1997), p.184[10] Fernando Coronil (1997) The Magical State: Nature, Money, and Modernity in Venezuela. University of Chicago Press. p.4[11] [Source?][12] To list a few name changes: Shell became Maraven, Exxon became Lagoven, Mobil became Corpoven , Gulf became Menoven (sp?).[13] An oil industry expert, who briefly served on the PDVSA board of directors in the days leading to the April 11, 2002 coup attempt.[14] Bernard Mommer (2001) “Venezuelan Oil Politics at the Crossroads.” Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, Monthly Commentary.[15] www.americaeconomia.com[16] PDVSA ranks #24 in terms of return on assets, #49 in terms of return on sales, and #50 in terms of return on fixed assets.[17] Source: Mark Weisbrot and Simone Baribeau (2003), “What happened to Profits?: The Record of Venezuela’s Oil Industry,” Center for Economic Policy Research paper: www.cepr.net/what_happened_to_profits.htm (their figures are based on SEC filings).[18] Carlos Rossi, “PDVSA’s Labor Problems,” The Daily Journal, April 18, 2002.[19] See: El Nacional, “Cuentas Crudas, Precios Refinados”, November 17, 1998[20] For 2001 outsourced oil fields cost $10.94 per barrel of oil equivalent produced, while non-outsourced oil fields cost only $2.03 per barrel of oil equivalent (in 1997 dollars). Source: CEPR Research Paper, “What Happened to Profits?”[21] See: www.soberania.info/tercerizacion_portada.htm The excess costs averaged about $90 million per year for 1998 to 2000.[22] See: Alexander Foster and Tulio Monsalve, “Quien Maneja las Computadoras de PDVSA?” Venezuela Analitica, December 17, 2002 www.analitica.com/bitbiblioteca/tulio_monsalve/computadoras_pdvsa.asp[23] Alí Rodríguez, the former president of OPEC and current president of PDVSA provides a good summary of the policy in: “La Reforma Petrolera Venezolana de 2001” in Revista Venezolana de Economía y Ciencias Sociales, No. 2/2002, May/August 2002.[24] Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Article 303.[25] Ibid.[26] Article 5 of the “Ley Organica de Hidrocarburos.”[27] Alí Rodríguez (2002), p.204[28] Chávez’ visits to Iraq—the first of any head of state since the Gulf War—and to Libya, both members of OPEC, would later be used repeatedly by his opponents at home and in the U.S. as proof for his unreliability and dangerous tendencies.[29] President Caldera had named the son of his chancellor to the board and Chávez’ first appointment to the PDVSA presidency, Hector Ciavaldini came from a lower management position. No protests were voiced against these appointments at the time.[30] Carlos Rossi, “PDVSA’s Labor Problems,” The Daily Journal, April 18, 2002. According to Rossi, PDVSA employees referred to the Caracas headquarters as “Hollywood” because every employee had at least one double that performed the same functions within the company.https://www.vanderbilt.edu/lapop...https://revista.drclas.harvard.e...The Economics, Culture, and Politics of Oil in VenezuelaJuan Pérez Alfonso, Venezuelan, Regarded as Founder of OPEChttps://www.tandfonline.com/doi/...1973 oil crisis - WikipediaOil is the devil's excrement

The world is your oyster!You can go to(USA) Careers - United Launch Alliance(Europe) ESA - Vacancies…And a few more:Applied Physics Laboratory: The Space Department of the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), a division of The Johns Hopkins University, as a preeminent university resource for space systems, defines and implements solutions to important problems in both the civilian and national security arenas through the development and application of space science, engineering, and technology. [APL jobs]ASI: (Agenzia Spaziale Italiana) The Italian Space Agency is a government agency founded for the purpose of identifying, coordinating, and managing italian space programs.AST: The FAA Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation (AST)'s mission is to ensure protection of the public, property, and the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States during a commercial launch or re-entry activity and to encourage, facilitate, and promote U.S. commercial space transportation.Arabsat: (Arab Satellite Communications Organization) ARABSAT since 1976 has been serving the satellite-based telecommunications, information, cultural, and educational needs of the member states of the Arab League. [Arabsat jobs]Austrian Space Agency: The Austrian Space Agency, ASA, serves the Federal Ministry of Science and Transport as a service institution for the coordination of space activities in Austria.Canadian Space Agency: The Canadian Space Agency is a departmental agency of the Government of Canada. The Canadian Space Agency is committed to leading the development and application of space knowledge for the benefit of Canadians and humanity. [CSA jobs]CAST: Chinese Academy of Space Technology (CAST) is a primary research center and spacecraft development base for Chinese Space technology endeavour. To date the academy has successfully developed and launched 52 satellites of various kinds.CCSDS: The Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) is an international organization of space agencies interested in mutually developing standard data handling techniques to support space research, including space science and applications, conducted exclusively for peaceful purposes.Center for Space Studies: The Center for Space Studies (CEE) has operated the Satellite Tracking Station located in Santiago, providing telemetry, tracking and command support (TT&C) to more than 350 space missions. The Center for Space Studies also develops a national program that involves the use of satellite technology applied to research, and other needs of Chile.Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales: French National Space Agency. Since 1960, CNES is responsible for the definition of the French space policy and for its implementation. (This site is in French). [CNES jobs]CEOS: The Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) membership encompasses the world's government agencies responsible for civil Earth Observation (EO) satellite programs, along with agencies that receive and process data acquired remotely from space.CONAE: The Argentine National Commission on Space Activities mandate includes the planning and implementation of all actions related to the peaceful applications of outer space and space knowledge, for which it has the exclusive use and control of national space activities.Cospas-Sarsat: The Cospas-Sarsat international satellite system for search and rescue consists of a constellation of satellites in polar orbit and a network of ground receiving stations, which provide distress alert and location information to appropriate rescue authorities for maritime, aviation and land users in distress.CRESTech: A consortium of academic researchers, industry leaders and government, The Centre for Research in Earth and Space Technology (CRESTech) is committed to bridging the gap between pure science and the successful application of science and technology in profitable new businesses.David Florida Laboratory: The David Florida Laboratory (DFL) is Canada's world-class national facility for spacecraft assembly, integration and test. It is maintained and operated by the Canadian Space Agency.DLR: (German Aerospace Research Establishment) Three future-oriented fields of research form the key areas of DLR activities: aviation, space flight and energy technology. The DLR institutes develop new technologies, perform scientific investigations, test materials and equipment - mostly in cooperation: with industry and universities, with national and international partners. [DLR jobs]Draper Laboratory: Draper Laboratory is recognized for its excellence in space guidance, navigation, and control for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. These roles encompass major responsibilities in NASA's manned space programs, including the Space Shuttle, Space Station, and other space systems and components for various defense and commercial unmanned space programs. [Draper Laboratory jobs]EUMETSAT: EUMETSAT's primary objective is to establish, maintain and exploit European systems of operational meteorological satellites. EUMETSAT is responsible for the launch and operation of the satellites and for delivering satellite data to end users as well as contributing to the operational monitoring of climate and the detection of global climate change. [Eumetsat jobs]European Union Satellite Centre: The European Union Satellite Centre (EUSC) is an Agency of the Council of the European Union dedicated to the exploitation and production of information derived primarily from the analysis of earth observation space imagery in support of Union decision-making in the field of "second pillar", the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). [EUSC jobs]Federal Communications Commission: The mission of this independent US government agency is to encourage competition in all communications markets and to protect the public interest. In response to direction from the Congress, the FCC develops and implements policy concerning interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable. [FCC jobs]Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics: The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA)'s mission is the study of the origin, evolution, and ultimate fate of the universe. More than 300 professional scientists, supported by some 500 technical, engineering, and administrative staff, pursue a broad range of research, organized by divisions. [CfA jobs]IKI: As the leading organization of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the field of investigations of Outer Space, Solar System planets and other objects of the Universe, Space Research Institute (IKI) is primary in charge of long-range planning and elaboration of space research programs of which a considerable part is performed within the framework of international space research cooperation.INPE: Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (National Institute for Space Research) of the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology.Institute for Applied Space Research: The Institute for Applied Space Research is a chartered Institute of the School of Engineering and Applied Science of the George Washington University. IASR is dedicated to providing GWU with a center for research and development in the field of space communications.INTA: INTA (Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial) is a public research institution dependant of the State Secretary of Defense. The Institute is dedicated to aerospace research and space science as well as to the technological development in other industrial areas. [INTA jobs]International Space Science Institute: The International Space Science Institute (ISSI) in Bern has been established to further interdisciplinary studies and interpretation of the very complex experimental data which originate from multiexperiment satellites, already launched or due to be launched over the next several years by different space agencies.Intersputnik: Intersputnik is an international intergovernmental organization established in 1971 to operate a global commercial satellite-based telecommunications system. Today, Intersputnik has 23 member nations and provides high-quality international, regional and national communication services in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Ocean regions. Intersputnik's users are over 100 state-run and private telecommunications and broadcasting organisations world-wide.IPAC: The Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) exists to carry out large, data-intensive processing tasks of critical importance to NASA's infrared astronomy program, and to provide scientific expertise on those projects to the astronomical community.ISAS: The Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) is a central institute dedicated for space and astronautical science in Japan. It has been continuously conducting space science research by making the maximum use of its own flight capabilities and opportunities.ISRO: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) executes its space programme through its establishments located in different places in India. The main objective of ISRO space programme includes development of satellites, launch vehicles, Sounding Rockets and supported ground systems. [ISRO jobs]ITU: The International Telecommunication Union headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland is an international organization within which governments and the private sector coordinate global telecom networks and services. [ITU jobs]JAXA: On October 1, 2003, ISAS, NAL and NASDA were merged into one independent administrative institution: the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The consolidation of these three formerly independent organizations will allow a continuous and systematic approach to space exploration, from basic research to development and practical application. [JAXA jobs]JPL: Managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is the lead U.S. center for robotic exploration of the solar system. JPL spacecraft have visited all known planets except Pluto (a Pluto mission is currently under study for the early part of the next decade). In addition to its work for NASA, JPL conducts tasks for a variety of other US federal agencies. [JPL jobs]KARI: The main research and development areas of the Korea Aerospace Research Institute(KARI) are largely classified into development of aircraft, artificial satellites and rockets. KARI also performs the quality assurance business for aircraft and space devices in accordance with delegation from the government.LASP: The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) has been an active participant in the U.S. space program since the early 1950s. Members of LASP conduct fundamental research in the atmospheric and planetary sciences, develop space instrumentation, and create computer information systems for space operations. [LASP jobs]MITRE: The MITRE Corporation is an independent, not-for-profit company that provides technical support to the US government. [MITRE jobs]Mullard Space Science Laboratory: As the UK's largest University space physics institute, it includes professionally-staffed electronic, mechanical and software engineering groups and has designed and built instruments for more than 30 orbiting spacecraft and 200 sounding rockets. [MSSL jobs]NASA: Home page of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Here you will find links to the various agency's field centers. [NASA jobs]National Center for Microgravity Research: The National Center for Microgravity Research on Fluids and Combustion principal activities both at CWRU's Case School of Engineering and at NASA Glenn Research Center are fundamental research and technology development, science program outreach and development, scientific support to NASA principal investigators, technology transfer to industry, and public education initiatives. [NCMR jobs]National Radio Astronomy Observatory: The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated by Associated Universities, Inc., a nonprofit research organization. The NRAO provides state-of-the-art radio telescope facilities for use by the scientific community. [NRAO jobs]Netherlands Space Office: The Netherlands Space Office acts as the Dutch agency for space affairs. The NSO is the face of the Dutch space community for international space organisations like ESA, NASA and JAXA as well as the central point of contact for the space community within the Netherlands.NLR: The Dutch National Aerospace Laboratory (NLR) provides expert contributions to activities in aerospace and related fields. NLR independently renders services to government departments and international agencies, aerospace industries and aircraft and spacecraft operators. Customers include various organizations based in the Netherlands, in Europe and elsewhere. [NLR jobs]NOAA: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration home page. The NOAA Mission: To describe and predict changes in the Earth's environment, and conserve and manage wisely the Nation's coastal and marine resources to ensure sustainable economic opportunities. [NOAA jobs]Norwegian Space Center: The Norwegian Space Centre is a foundation cooperating closely with the Ministry of Trade and Industry to support the development of Norwegian industry and for development and demonstration of space applications, and to optimize conditions for national space research.Novespace: Novespace, a joint-stock venture created in 1986 by the French Space Agency (CNES), was formed with two objectives in mind: to disseminate space technologies to other industrial sectors and to promote microgravity as a valuable tool for scientific experimentation and research.NSAU: The National Space Agency of Ukraine is in charge of the organization and development of space activities in Ukraine and under its jurisdiction abroad.Ohio Aerospace Institute: The Ohio Aerospace Institute is a consortium of nine Ohio universities, NASA Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, and private companies. OAI's mission is to be a collaborative network of university, industry and government, focused on the creation, integration, application and communication of aerospace related knowledge and the commercialization of related technologies. [OAI jobs]ONERA: ONERA is a scientific and technical public establishment managed according to industrial and commercial practice, placed under the supervision of the French Minister of Defense. Its mission is to develop and guide aerospace research; design, develop and implement the facilities it requires to conduct its research and testing; publish and promote the results of its research; and contribute to the education of engineers and scientists. [ONERA jobs]PSRI: The Planetary Sciences Research Institute (PSRI) is dedicated to the development of high sensitivity, high precision, stable isotope instrumentation and methodology for laboratory and space projects, and the application of those methods to studies of extraterrestrial samples, diamonds, environmental and ecological problems. [PSRI jobs]ROSA: Established in 1991 by the Romanian Government, ROSA (Romanian Space Agency) is an independent public institution. ROSA is authorized to establish research and development centres oriented on specific objectives of the Romanian Space Programme.Russian Federal Space Agency: The Russian Space Agency (RSA) was created on February 25,1992 by Decree issued by the President of the Russian Federation. RSA is the federal body of executive authority which defines implementation of state policy in space research and exploration for peaceful purposes and execution of Federal space program. The main goal of RSA is to provide effective solutions to social and economical tasks and promoting Russia's interests on the international space arena.Space Telescope Science Institute: The Space Telescope Science Institute is the astronomical research center responsible for operating the Hubble Space Telescope as an international observatory. [STScI jobs]SRC: Space Research Centre, SRC is the Scientific institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences established in 1977. Space Research Centre activities comprise the designing, preparation and realization of space experiments in the context of international cooperation.SRON: The mission of Space Research Organization Netherlands (SRON) is to initiate, to develop, to build and to use internationally outstanding instruments for scientific research in and from space. [SRON jobs]Swedish Institute of Space Physics: The Swedish Institute of Space Physics is a governmental research institute. The primary task is to carry out basic research, education, and associated observatory activities in space physics. [IRF jobs]Swedish Space Corporation: SSC is a government-owned limited company with activities covering the entire range of space-related work from feasibility studies to operational applications of space technology. Systems engineering and management are the major activities of the company, but SSC also designs and develops high-technology hardware and software in-house, especially for use in space vehicles and in satellite ground stations. [SSC jobs]Swiss Propulsion Laboratory: The Swiss Propulsion Laboratory (SPL), founded in autumn 1998 as a non-profit organization, is running integrated programs focusing on research and development of space-technology in Switzerland. SPL aims to develop, build and run reasonable priced systems to transport small civilian payloads into a low-earth orbit (LEO).UCAR: The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) is a not-for-profit university membership consortium which carries out programs to benefit the atmospheric, oceanic, and related sciences. Various UCAR activities are also funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the U.S. Departments of Defense and Energy, and the Federal Aviation Administration. [UCAR jobs]UK Space Agency: The UK Space Agency is an executive agency of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and at the heart of UK efforts to explore and benefit from space.UNOOSA: The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) is the United Nations office responsible for promoting international cooperation in the peaceful uses of outer space.(Source: Space Careers.com)

In the context of a legal agreement—which is what a term sheet is—a “schedule” is a list of things that are referenced in the agreement. Often, for complex agreements, there are many things that need to be listed. Examples might be:Names and salaries of employeesNames and ownership interests of shareholdersSoftware licensesPatents and intellectual propertyComputers and other owned equipmentLeases the company has signedEtc.Instead of putting all this directly into the agreement, they will instead be listed separately and attached to the end, with the agreement itself just saying something like “the employees as listed in Schedule A”.There is no particular order in which schedules are attached, although it is typically in the order in which they are referenced in the document. And for purposes of clarity, each schedule is numbered (or, more often, lettered, starting with “Schedule A”.)To give you an idea of the kind of schedules you might find in the actual closing documents of an investment (although likely not the term sheet), take a look at this typical due diligence list:A. Organization of the Company1. Describe the corporate or other structure of the legal entities that comprise the Company. Include any helpful diagrams or charts. Provide a list of the officers and directors of the Company and a brief description of their duties.2. Long-form certificate of good standing and articles or certificate of incorporation from Secretary of State or other appropriate official in the Company's jurisdiction of incorporation, listing all documents on file with respect to the Company, and a copy of all documents listed therein.3. Current by-laws of the Company.4. List of all jurisdictions in which the Company is qualified to do business and list of all other jurisdictions in which the Company owns or leases real property or maintains an office and a description of business in each such jurisdiction. Copies of the certificate of authority, good standing certificates and tax status certificates from all jurisdictions in which the Company is qualified to do business.5. All minutes for meetings of the Company's board of directors, board committees and stockholders for the last five years, and all written actions or consents in lieu of meetings thereof.6. List of all subsidiaries and other entities (including partnerships) in which the Company has an equity interest; organizational chart showing ownership of such entities; and any agreements relating to the Company's interest in any such entity.B. Ownership and Control of the Company1. Capitalization of the Company, including all outstanding capital stock, convertible securities, options, warrants and similar instruments.2. List of securityholders of the Company (including option and warrant holders), setting forth class and number of securities held.3. Copies of any voting agreements, stockholder agreements, proxies, transfer restriction agreements, rights of first offer or refusal, preemptive rights, registration agreements or other agreements regarding the ownership or control of the Company.C. Assets and Operations1. Annual financial statements with notes thereto for the past three fiscal years of the Company, and the latest interim financial statements since the end of the last fiscal year and product sales and cost of sales (including royalties) analysis for each product which is part of assets to be sold.2. All current budgets and projections including projections for product sales and cost of sales.3. Any auditors (internal and external) letters and reports to management for the past five years (and management's responses thereto).4. Provide a detailed breakdown of the basis for the allowance for doubtful accounts.5. Inventory valuation, including turnover rates and statistics, gross profit percentages and obsolescence analyses including inventory of each product which is part of assets to be sold.6. Letters to auditors from outside counsel.7. Description of any real estate owned by the Company and copies of related deeds, surveys, title insurance policies (and all documents referred to therein), title opinions, certificates of occupancy, easements, zoning variances, condemnation or eminent domain orders or proceedings, deeds of trust, mortgages and fixture lien filings.8. Schedule of significant fixed assets, owned or used by the Company, including the identification of the person holding title to such assets and any material liens or restrictions on such assets.9. Without duplication from Section D below, or separate intellectual property due diligence checklist, schedule of all intangible assets (including customer lists and goodwill) and proprietary or intellectual properties owned or used in the Company, including a statement as to the entity holding title or right to such assets and any material liens or restrictions on such assets. Include on and off balance sheet items.D. Intellectual PropertyList of all patents, trademarks, tradenames, service marks and copyrights owned or used by the Company, all applications therefor and copies thereof, search reports related thereto and information about any liens or other restrictions and agreements on or related to any of the foregoing (without duplication from attached intellectual property due diligence checklist).E. Reports1. Copies of any studies, appraisals, reports, analyses or memoranda within the last three years relating to the Company (i.e., competition, products, pricing, technological developments, software developments, etc.).2. Current descriptions of the Company that may have been prepared for any purpose, including any brochures used in soliciting or advertising.3. Descriptions of any customer quality awards, plant qualification/certification distinctions, ISO certifications or other awards or certificates viewed by the Company as significant or reflective of superior performance.4. Copies of any analyst or other market reports concerning the Company known to have been issued within the last three years.5. Copies of any studies prepared by the Company regarding the Company's insurance currently in effect and self-insurance program (if any), together with information on the claim and loss experience thereunder.6. Any of the following documents filed by the Company or affiliates of the Company and which contain information concerning the Company: annual reports on SEC Form 10-K; quarterly reports on SEC Form 10-Q; current reports on SEC Form 8-K.F. Compliance with Laws1. Copies of all licenses, permits, certificates, authorizations, registrations, concessions, approvals, exemptions and other operating authorities from all governmental authorities and any applications therefor, and a description of any pending contemplated or threatened changes in the foregoing.2. A description of any pending or threatened proceedings or investigations before any court or any regulatory authority.3. Describe any circumstance where the Company has been or may be accused of violating any law or failing to possess any material license, permit or other authorization. List all citations and notices from governmental or regulatory authorities.4. Schedule of the latest dates of inspection of the Company's facilities by each regulatory authority that has inspected such facilities.5. Description of the potential effect on the Company of any pending or proposed regulatory changes of which the Company is aware.6. Copies of any information requests from, correspondence with, reports of or to, filings with or other material information with respect to any regulatory bodies which regulate a material portion of the Company's business. Limit response to the last five years unless an older document has a continuing impact on the Company.7. Copies of all other studies, surveys, memoranda or other data on regulatory compliance including: spill control, environmental clean-up or environmental preventive or remedial matters, employee safety compliance, import or export licenses, common carrier licenses, problems, potential violations, expenditures, etc.8. State whether any consent is necessary from any governmental authority to embark upon or consummate the proposed transaction.9. Schedule of any significant U.S. import or export restrictions that relate to the Company's operations.10. List of any export, import or customs permits or authorizations, certificates, registrations, concessions, exemptions, etc., that are required in order for the Company to conduct its business and copies of all approvals, etc. granted to the Company that are currently in effect or pending renewal.11. Any correspondence with or complaints from third parties relating to the marketing, sales or promotion practices of the Company.G. Environmental Matters1. A list of facilities or other properties currently or formerly owned, leased, or operated by the Company and its predecessors, if any.2. Reports of environmental audits or site assessments in the possession of the Company, including any Phase I or Phase II assessments or asbestos surveys, relating to any such facilities or properties.3. Copies of any inspection reports prepared by any governmental agency or insurance carrier in connection with environmental or workplace safety and health regulations relating to any such facilities or properties.4. Copies of all environmental and workplace safety and health notices of violations, complaints, consent decrees, and other documents indicating noncompliance with environmental or workplace safety and health laws or regulations, received by the Company from local, state, or federal governmental authorities. If available, include documentation indicating how such situations were resolved.5. Copies of any private party complaints, claims, lawsuits or other documents relating to potential environmental liability of the Company to private parties.6. Listing of underground storage tanks currently or previously present at the properties and facilities listed in response to Item 1 above, copies of permits, licenses or registrations relating to such tanks, and documentation of underground storage tank removals and any associated remediation work.7. Descriptions of any release of hazardous substances or petroleum known by the Company to have occurred at the properties and facilities listed in response to Item 1, if such release has not otherwise been described in the documents provided in response to Items 1-6 above.8. Copies of any information requests, PRP notices, "106 orders," or other notices received by the Company pursuant to CERCLA or similar state or foreign laws relating to liability for hazardous substance releases at off-site facilities.9. Copies of any notices or requests described in Item 8 above, relating to potential liability for hazardous substance releases at any properties or facilities described in response to Item 1.10. Copies of material correspondence or other documents (including any relating to the Company's share of liability) with respect to any matters identified in response to Items 8 and 9.11. Copies of any written analyses conducted by the Company or an outside consultant relating to future environmental activities (i.e., upgrades to control equipment, improvements in waste disposal practices, materials substitution) for which expenditure of funds greater than $10,000 is either certain or reasonably anticipated within the next five years and an estimate of the costs associated with such activities.12. Description of the workplace safety and health programs currently in place for the Company's business, with particular emphasis on chemical handling practices.H. Litigation1. List of all litigation, arbitration and governmental proceedings relating to the Company to which the Company or any of its directors, officers or employees is or has been a party, or which is threatened against any of them, indicating the name of the court, agency or other body before whom pending, date instituted, amount involved, insurance coverage and current status. Also describe any similar matters which were material to the Company and which were adjudicated or settled in the last ten years.2. Information as to any past or present governmental investigation of or proceeding involving the Company or the Company's directors, officers or employees.3. Copies of all attorneys' responses to audit inquiries.4. Copies of any consent decrees, orders (including applicable injunctions) or similar documents to which the Company is a party, and a brief description of the circumstances surrounding such document.5. Copies of all letters of counsel to independent public accountants concerning pending or threatened litigation.6. Any reports or correspondence related to the infringement by the Company or a third party of intellectual property rights.I. Significant Contracts and Commitments1. Contracts relating to any completed (during the past 10 years) or proposed reorganization, acquisition, merger, or purchase or sale of substantial assets (including all agreements relating to the sale, proposed acquisition or disposition of any and all divisions, subsidiaries or businesses) of or with respect to the Company.2. All joint venture and partnership agreements to which the Company is a party.3. All material agreements encumbering real or personal property owned by the Company including mortgages, pledges, security agreements or financing statements.4. Copies of all real property leases relating to the Company (whether the Company is lessor or lessee), and all leasehold title insurance policies (if any).5. Copies of all leases of personal property and fixtures relating to the Company (whether the Company is lessor or lessee), including, without limitation, all equipment rental agreements.6. Guarantees or similar commitments by or on behalf of the Company, other than endorsements for collection in the ordinary course and consistent with past practice.7. Indemnification contracts or arrangements insuring or indemnifying any director, officer, employee or agent against any liability incurred in such capacity.8. Loan agreements, notes, industrial revenue bonds, compensating balance arrangements, lines of credit, lease financing arrangements, installment purchases, etc. relating to the Company or its assets and copies of any security interests or other liens securing such obligations.9. No-default certificates and similar documents delivered to lenders for the last five (or shorter period, if applicable) years evidencing compliance with financing agreements.10. Documentation used internally for the last five years (or shorter time period, if applicable) to monitor compliance with financial covenants contained in financing agreements.11. Any correspondence or documentation for the last five years (or shorter period, if applicable) relating to any defaults or potential defaults under financing agreements.12. Contracts involving cooperation with other companies or restricting competition.13. Contracts relating to other material business relationships, including:a. any current service, operation or maintenance contracts;b. any current contracts with customers;c. any current contracts for the purchase of fixed assets; andd. any franchise, distributor or agency contracts.14. Without duplicating Section D above or the intellectual property due diligence schedule hereto, contracts involving licensing, know-how or technical assistance arrangements including contracts relating to any patent, trademark, service mark and copyright registrations or other proprietary rights used by the Company and any other agreement under which royalties are to be paid or received.15. Description of any circumstances under which the Company may be required to repurchase or repossess assets or properties previously sold.16. Data processing agreements relating to the Company.17. Copies of any contract by which any broker or finder is entitled to a fee for facilitating the proposed transaction or any other transactions involving the Company or its properties or assets.18. Management, service or support agreements relating to the Company, or any power of attorney with respect to any material assets or aspects of the Company.19. List of significant vendor and service providers (if any) who, for whatever reason, expressly decline to do business with the Company.20. Samples of all forms, including purchase orders, invoices, supply agreements, etc.21. Any agreements or arrangements relating to any other transactions between the Company and any director, officer, stockholder or affiliate of the Company (collectively, "Related Persons"), including but not limited to:a. Contracts or understandings between the Company and any Related Person regarding the sharing of assets, liabilities, services, employee benefits, insurance, data processing, third-party consulting, professional services or intellectual property.b. Contracts or understandings between Related Persons and third parties who supply inventory or services through Related Persons to the Company.c. Contracts or understandings between the Company and any Related Person that contemplate favorable pricing or terms to such parties.d. Contracts or understandings between the Company and any Related Person regarding the use of hardware or software.e. Contracts or understandings regarding the maintenance of equipment of any Related Person that is either sold, rented, leased or used by the Company.f. Description of the percentage of business done by the Company with Related Persons.g. Covenants not to compete and confidentiality agreements between the Company and a Related Person.h. List of all accounts receivable, loans and other obligations owing to or by the Company from or to a Related Person, together with any agreements relating thereto.22. Copies of all insurance and indemnity policies and coverages carried by the Company including policies or coverages for products, properties, business risk, casualty and workers compensation. A description of any self-insurance or retro-premium plan or policy, together with the costs thereof for the last five years. A summary of all material claims for the last five years as well as aggregate claims experience data and studies.23. List of any other agreements or group of related agreements with the same party or group of affiliated parties continuing over a period of more than six months from the date or dates thereof, not terminable by the Company on 30 days' notice.24. Copies of all supply agreements relating to the Company and a description of any supply arrangements.25. Copies of all contracts relating to marketing and advertising.26. Copies of all construction agreements and performance guarantees.27. Copies of all secrecy, confidentiality and nondisclosure agreements.28. Copies of all agreements related to the development or acquisition of technology.29. Copies of all agreements outside the ordinary course of business.30. Copies of all warranties offered by the Company with respect to its product or services.31. List of all major contracts or understandings not otherwise previously disclosed under this section, indicating the material terms and parties.32. For any contract listed in this Section I, state whether any party is in default or claimed to be in default.33. For any contract listed in this Section I, state whether the contract requires the consent of any person to assign such contract or collaterally assign such contract to any lender.NOTE: Remember to include all amendments, schedules, exhibits and side letters. Also include brief description of any oral contract listed in this Section I.J. Employees, Benefits and Contracts1. Copies of the Company's employee benefit plans as most recently amended, including all pension, profit sharing, thrift, stock bonus, ESOPs, health and welfare plans (including retiree health), bonus, stock option plans, direct or deferred compensation plans and severance plans, together with the following documents:a. all applicable trust agreements for the foregoing plans;b. copies of all IRS determination letters for the foregoing qualified plans;c. latest IRS forms for the foregoing qualified plans, including all annual reports, schedules and attachments;d. latest copies of all summary plan descriptions, including modifications, for the foregoing plans;e. latest actuarial evaluations with respect to the foregoing defined benefit plans; andf. schedule of fund assets and unfunded liabilities under applicable plans.2. Copies of all employment contracts, consulting agreements, severance agreements, independent contractor agreements, non-disclosure agreements and non-compete agreements relating to any employees of the Company.3. Copies of any collective bargaining agreements and related plans and trusts relating to the Company (if any). Description of labor disputes relating to the Company within the last three years. List of current organizational efforts and projected schedule of future collective bargaining negotiations (if any).4. Copies of all employee handbooks and policy manuals (including affirmative action plans).5. Copies of all OSHA examinations, reports or complaints.6. The results of any formal employee surveys.K. Tax Matters1. Copies of returns for the three prior closed tax years and all open tax years for the Company (including all federal and state consolidated returns) together with a work paper therefor wherein each item is detailed and documented that reconciles net income as specified in the applicable financial statement with taxable income for the related period.2. Audit and revenue agents reports for the Company; audit adjustments proposed by the Internal Revenue Service for any audited tax year of the Company or by any other taxing authority; or protests filed by the Company.3. Settlement documents and correspondence for last six years involving the Company.4. Agreements waiving statute of limitations or extending time involving the Company.5. Description of accrued federal, state and local withholding taxes and FICA for the Company.6. List of all state, local and foreign jurisdictions in which the Company pays taxes or collects sales taxes from its retail customers (specifying which taxes are paid or collected in each jurisdiction).L. Miscellaneous1. Information regarding any material contingent liabilities and material unasserted claims and information regarding any asserted or unasserted violation of any employee safety and environmental laws and any asserted or unasserted pollution clean-up liability.2. List of the ten largest customers and suppliers for each product or service of the Company.3. List of major competitors for each business segment or product line.4. Any plan or arrangement filed or confirmed under the federal bankruptcy laws, if any.5. A list of all officers, directors and stockholders of the Company.6. All annual and interim reports to stockholders and any other communications with securityholders.7. Description of principal banking and credit relationships (excluding payroll matters), including the names of each bank or other financial institution, the nature, limit and current status of any outstanding indebtedness, loan or credit commitment and other financing arrangements.8. Summary and description of all product, property, business risk, employee health, group life and key-man insurance.9. Copies of any UCC or other lien, judgment or suit searches or filings related to the Company in relevant states conducted in the past three years.10. Copies of all filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, state blue sky authorities or foreign security regulators or exchanges.11. All other information material to the financial condition, businesses, assets, prospects or commercial relations of the Company.