Oil prices spiked down earlier this week after Hugo Chavez tried to drive them up by threatening $100 a barrel oil.

But I bet they will go up on this news – an oil production pipeline shutdown in Ecuador, based on a real counterrevolution run by ignorant leftists intent on chasing out all foreign investment and jobs. These populists imagine that oil will just come out of the ground by itself once the foreign investors are out and the tax base (none of these bastarads pays taxes) dries up. They are likely to cause a lot of trouble for us all at the pump as well as in their own democracy. Here we go again. Here they are in action:

Ecuadorian oil pipeline shut down due to protests against Oxy

Quito, Feb 7 (EFE).- Demonstrators forced the shutdown Tuesday of Ecuador’s SOTE oil pipeline to press demands that U.S.-based Occidental Petroleum be expelled from the Andean nation.

An official with the state-run oil company Petroecuador told EFE that the pipeline’s activities were halted Tuesday morning after protesters occupied the pumping station in Baeza, some 90 kilometers (56 miles) east of Quito.

The authorities are trying to reach an agreement with the demonstrators so that the pumping of crude through the pipeline can be resumed, the official said.

Petroecuador and government prosecutors jointly accuse Occidental of having violated the terms of its drilling concession by failing to obtain authorization from the energy ministry for a 2001 transaction in which the U.S. concern dealt 40 percent of its Ecuadorian assets to Canada’s EnCana.

But Oxy says that the transaction with EnCana never came about, adding that the case has become politicized due to the interest of many Ecuadorian social sectors in nationalizing the local petroleum industry.

Occidental produces about 111,000 barrels per day from its fields in the Amazonian region known as Block 15, where the California firm has invested more than $6 billion in plant and equipment.
If the Ecuadorian government were to void the contract with Occidental, Petroecuador would take over Oxy’s operations and facilities in Block 15.

SOTE, which is 305 kilometers (189 miles) long and carries some 280,000 barrels of crude per day, links the Amazon region’s oil fields with the Pacific coast port of Balao.

Hundreds of residents, as well as authorities, of the Amazon provinces of Sucumbios and Orellana, the heart of Ecuador’s oil industry, traveled to Quito on Tuesday to demand that the government annul the contract with Oxy.

In addition, Amazon region residents, unions, student organizations and other social groups have called for a demonstration in the capital on Wednesday to demand that Occidental stop operating in Ecuador, as well as to show their opposition to the free trade accord that Quito is currently negotiating with Washington.

Oil exports are Ecuador’s leading source of revenue and fund more than a third of the government budget.

The country pumps some 500,000 barrels per day, making it the fifth-leading oil producer in the Americas. Petroecuador accounts for 40 percent of Ecuador’s output, with the rest coming from a dozen foreign-owned companies. EFE fa/bp

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I will have a roundup soon from Ecuadoran bloggers.