Venezuela was fighting like a lone jaguar in OPEC meetings today to urge the cartel to cut oil production so that prices would stay high. Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez needs those high prices to bankroll his fake ‘revolution’ and finance his external meddlings abroad. His so-called revolution is an increasingly ravenous one, and an expensive beast that must be fed.

But nothing was going Venezuela’s way.

U.S. crude stocks soared higher than anyone expected.

U.S. refining capacity use dropped to 70%, down from about 98%, signalling slackening of demand.

And every single nation on earth was pumping as hard as it could to keep that increasingly sated U.S. and global demand fed.

SUDDENLY!

A bunch of thugs who were not Ecuadorean attacked Ecuador’s oil-producing capacity and smashed it down. Ecuador is out of the ring now. No one knows who they were. Indigenous rights activists were blamed but they said it wasn’t them. Ecuador declared an emergency sent in troops again for the second time in about two weeks, and all production stopped.

But it didn’t halt the fall in crude oil prices today, currently below $60 a barrel. Nor did it stop OPEC from keeping production steady at least until its next meeting in June.

Ecuador is the second-biggest oil producer in South America and supplies about 3% of the U.S.’s crude imports. Regardless of the impact on oil prices, someone wanted that oil production to stop.

Who was it?

Alek Boyd at VCrisis has posted one essay that brings out various facts about this intriguing and unanswered matter here.