The U.S. Export-Import Bank, an independent agency of the federal government, is now planning a $2.84-billion loan for a massive project to expand and upgrade an oil refinery–in Cartagena, Colombia.
The money would go to Reficar, a wholly owned subsidiary of Ecopetrol, the Colombian national oil company.
“This is part of a $5.18 billion refinery and upgrade project in Cartagena, Colombia supplying petroleum products to the domestic and export markets,” the Export-Import Bank said in a statement.
The U.S. government-controlled bank says the $2.84-billion in financing it plans to undertake will be the second largest project it has ever done. The largest was $3 billion in financing for a liquid natural gas project in Papua New Guinea.
Stupid. Our government tells us, that we cannot drill, or refine, oil ourselves, but will give money, loan or not, to other countries to develop their own resources. That’s like having a big garden on your property, big enough to supply much of your own food, yet you don’t harvest it all for that purpose, and instead, not only do you spend money at the grocery for food items you have in your garden, but you loan a guy across town the money for seeds and a vehicle to take his harvest to the local market, so that you can buy his food items. Stupid economics.
@johngalt: I agree with you John, but you don’t really need the complexity of the analogy. Just try to comprehend the idea that we are borrowing money to lend it to someone else who will probably never satisfactorially repay us and continue to treat us with utter disdain while squeezing every dime possible for the oil! Let THEM go borrow the money from the Chinese or whoever the world’s leading shylock is at the moment.
That money would be better spent building new prisons/mental hospitals to confine cocaine addicts in this country and stop the bleeding of US dollars to third world turds. Columbia (and Mexico and Peru and …) would be
way better off too. The prosperity of this country is in the crapper for too many reasons like this.
@Dink Newcomb:
The analogy is for those too stupid to realize just how stupid the economics of giving, or loaning, money to other countries to develop their oil industry, while limiting that same industry within the U.S. Just Stupid.
But, it’s going to create/save 15,000 jobs, SOMEWHERE! We need these jobs here. But, then, that’s not what this administration is about, (or others before obviously).