e-Con e-News 01-07 February 2025
‘Before you study the economics, study the economists!’
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Is Rockefeller’s Exxon Getting Singapore
to Sell Stolen Venezuelan Oil to Sri Lanka?
e-Con e-News 01-07 February 2025
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At a recent collective bargaining negotiation, workers
asked for a copy of the collective agreement in Sinhala.
The company agreed to translate it but declared in case
of discrepancy, the English document would prevail!
Happy Independence Day!
The English do & does prevail!
Or do they?
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The ‘explosive’ disclosure that the US government ousted yet another President of Sri Lanka, Lt Colonel Gotabaya Rajapakse, in 2022, was headlined in the Island of 04 February, 2026, on the 78th anniversary of the English ‘grant’ of an independence, strangled at birth in 1948.
Rajapakse’s ouster, revealed in the book Winds of Change: Geopolitics at the Crossroads of South and Southeast Asia by Asanga Abeyagoonasekera (quoted below), comes weeks after another book by the Senior Media Advisor to the unelected President, Ranil Wickremesinghe. Wickremesinghe replaced Rajapakse II, who was forced to flee to Singapore. That book Aragalaye Balaya by Sunanda Madduma Bandara, sought to solely pin the blame for President Rajapakse’s ouster on India, even as it did not deny the role played by the USA.
‘In Singapore, a senior journalist recounted
how Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation was
scripted, under duress, at a hotel, facilitated
by a foreign motorcade.’
Who this ‘foreign motorcade’ is, we are not told. Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s own memoirs The Conspiracy to Oust Me from the Presidency ‘refrained from naming the primary conspirator, though he clearly alluded to an international conspiracy’. Why he ‘refrained’ to name such names, is also not clear, and why now? Abeyagoonasekera’s Winds of Change: Geopolitics at the Crossroads of South and Southeast Asia delveseven deeper, however, and seeks to trace the April 2019 terrorist bombings to India, alluding to a joint US-India operation to destabilize the country (see ee Random Notes). Author Abeyagoonasekera quotes Indian Defence Secretary Sanjay Mitra ordering Sri Lanka to hand over the MRCC [Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre] on 8 April, 2019, 2 weeks before the terror: ‘You cannot give it to another nation.’ India’s order was ‘meant to prevent Sri Lanka from even considering a competing proposal from China’.
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In April 1971, the leaders & members of the
JVP were charged with overthrowing the Queen
of England. And now a government led by JVP
has to celebrate the Englishman’s charade of an
independence day minus an independent economy…
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The dawn of the 2nd quarter of the 21st century has already seen the kidnapping of the President of Venezuela, & his spouse, the move to steal its abundant oil, while rendering its own government unable to administer its economy. These weeks have also seen the USA dramatically besiege Cuba further & prevent its access to energy. This week saw US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent brazenly brag claim the USA ‘deliberately triggered a dollar shortage in Iran, fueling a currency collapse that led to soaring inflation & mass anti-government protests’. He told the US Senate Economics Committee, the USA pushed ‘one of Iran’s largest banks into bankruptcy, forced the central bank to print money, & ultimately drove Iranians onto the streets’, with the ensuing unrest, accompanied threats from Donald Trump to bomb Iran again (see ee Random Notes).
These actions recall the strangling of Sri Lanka’s own access to finance, fuel, fertilizer, pharma & food in 2022, leading to the ouster of its popularly elected leader, resulting in a so-called ‘regime change’ where very little has been fundamentally changed, at least economically, with our signature welfare credentials being dismantled, so-called free education & free healthcare undermined, its electricity system being eviscerated, and access to its own abundant energy & mineral resources being stolen before our very eyes – all the while, while claiming Sri Lanka is bankrupt.
The leader of the opposition, if opposition is what their natterings amount to, is trying hard to challenge the ruling NPP from the Left lane on a busy road. He was given a headline this week: ‘Colonialism has become active in a different form today: Sajith’ – intriguing indeed, but it turns out to be a dud firework: ‘It is active in different sectors of the society such as the economy & culture. This colonialism has to be defeated,’ he said. For those who have eyes to see & a brain to smell a dead rat, over 500 undying (yet resisting) years later, colonialism is still very much alive in all its forms, political, military & economic. Like a viperous snake (with apologies to the naga), it ain’t dead til it’s cut into pieces and sold as soup to those who prize it as a delicacy!
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‘The country has had to endure multiple trials over the years,
from the insurgencies in the south to terrorism in the north,
failed experiments with outdated socialist economic policies,
tsunamis & other natural disasters, man-made disasters of
corruption & mismanagement, an economic collapse
culminating in protest politics, & an unprecedented loss of
confidence in democratic institutions & the legitimacy of
elected leaders. & then came Cyclone Ditwah.’
– Sunday Times Editorial (see ee Economists,
Independence Day reflections)
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No mention of an utterly mercenary media. Anyway… Among the overflowing abundance of kudos & lamentations on this 78th anniversary of ‘independence’, we have had to listen to endless sermons about how wonderful a country the English bestowed upon us in 1948 – one recurrent theme is how the darker natives ruined this precious gift: A wonderful white-clothed civil service, an import-export dependent plantation economy run by & for merchants & moneylenders. The truth, as SBD de Silva always reminded us, is this: the English bequeathed to us the most impoverished peasantry in Asia. Amen! We therefore are compelled to remind readers to read the recent contributions in the Lankawebby Shenali Waduge on the actual history of endurance, invasion & resistance in the country (see ee Quotes).
Waduge’s memorializing offers a healthy antidote to the utter slavishness of the English media in Sri Lanka. Their servility is most evident in its avid reproductions of commercial & bureaucratic ‘press releases’ parading as news. They really are better called ‘Nothing News’. Every single blurb issued from the nether orifices of the IMF, the World Bank, the imperialist embassies and their fronts & unthinking thinktanks: Chambers of Commerce, Advocata, Verité, etc, say nothing new. They recall the whip wielders & drummers of our traditional festivals, which at least speak to our enduring culture, which survives if not prevails despite the media. A typical news cycle proceeds thus: ‘The IMF Chief to visit… The IMF to arrive… The IMF is here… The IMF warns… The IMF was there. The IMF is leaving. The IMF has left. (& they’re back!) This is repeated with others who have dollar or euro or yen bribes to provide: The UN is concerned. The UN is warning. The UN will provide… etc.
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‘It is true our government is in power
but we still don’t have state power.
We will bring about a revolution soon
& seize state power as well.’
– KD Lal Kantha, Cabinet Minister
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‘If the years of [Guyana’s] suspended constitution, 1953-57,
were a period of colonial dictatorship, the years 1957-64
were the period of the People’s Progressive Party in office
but not in power. The first 4 of these years were tantamount
to a coalition of the PPP & the Colonial Office; towards the
end of this first term I was dubbed Chief Minister. Then in
1961 after we were re-elected, my title changed to Premier
under ‘internal self-government’. But real power to govern,
to carry out our program fully, was withheld from us throughout.
The government was deemed PPP, but in fact real power remained
in the hands of the [English] Governor; constitutionally, we were
merely his advisers. With him in the Executive Council were 3
other Englishmen who held the most important portfolios.’
– Cheddi Jagan, The West on Trial
– My Fight for Guyana’s Freedom, 1966
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Those who have power have no brains
Those who have brains have no power
– Sinhala folklore
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• This brings us to the 50-year-old city-state of Singapore – hailed as a model Sri Lanka has studiously refused to or has been too dumbass native to follow. Singapore has been playing a certain role in the region, as an outpost of multinational corporations (MNCs), helping the USA & Europe wage war on Southeast Asia, a rock with no drinking water of its own, feasting on the countries around it as a hinterland for natural resources – a veritable desert Zion of the east, miraculously turned green with borrowed humus, operating ‘the biggest port in the world’, etc. Sri Lanka obtains it fuel from Singapore, from ships that largely bypass us carrying oil there to be refined, and then sold back to us via ships that sail from there. So much for that much-promoted holy grail of a minimalist ‘carbon footprint!’
Has Singapore been selling oil to Sri Lanka stolen from Venezuela? is the title of this week’s edition. It’s more than that: On 28 October 2025, the US embassy’s online lipstick, EconomyNext reported that Sri Lanka’s Cabinet of Ministers had awarded ‘Singapore’s Trafigura Pte Ltd’ a contract to supply 1.4million diesel barrels in 5 shipments during 7 months starting from November 15, the government said. The supply for the state-run Ceylon Petroleum Corporation will be on a long-term contract basis.’ This news item rather convolutedly added, ‘The Cabinet of Ministers approved the proposal tabled by Power Minister Eng Kumara Jayakody to award the relevant contract for Vitol Asia (Singapore) Ltd, as recommended by the High-level Standing Procurement Committee appointed by the Cabinet of Ministers’.
On 06 January 2026, 3 days after the kidnapping of Venezuela’s President, EconomyNext headlined, ‘Sri Lanka awards Murban crude deal to Singapore-based Vitol Asia.’ EN then added: SL Cabinet of Ministers has decided to award a Murban crude deal for 4 shipment [sic!] to Singapore-based Vitol Asia, the government said’:
‘Out of the 5 bids received from the registered suppliers of Ceylon Petroleum Corporation for procurement of 2,800,000 + 5% barrels of Murban crude oil for a period of 4 months from 15.04.2026 to 14.08.2026, Vitol Asia Pte Ltd of Singapore has been chosen. The decision was taken based on the recommendation of the higher-level standing procurement committee with regard to the bids, the government said in its Cabinet decisions document’.
Murban is a high quality, light & sweet crude oil produced by the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), often used for producing gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. Merey is as a heavy crude product of Venezuela’s Orinoco Oil Belt. And only China is said to be able to really handle Merey. So even if they are not slipping Venezuelan black gold into the mix, why do Vitol & Trafigura matter?
Rockefeller-owned ExxonMobil’s Singapore complex is now the largest manufacturing site in the world for base stocks – a key component for producing lubricants, which are used in automotives & for industrial applications. A base stock is a single lubricant component produced by a single manufacturer (see ee Random Notes). Rockefeller, like Unilever, is leaving the messier parts (labour relations, ecological concerns) of their ‘industries’ to SME fronts (see ee Random Notes).
Wikipedia claims, ‘Vitol, a Swiss-based Dutch multinational energy & commodity trading company founded in Rotterdam in 1966, has over 40 offices worldwide, especially in Geneva, Houston, London, and Singapore. Trafigura Group Pte Ltd is a Singaporean-based multinational commodities company, with major regional hubs in Geneva, Houston, Montevideo, & Mumbai, founded in 1993. The company trades in base metals & energy. It is the world’s largest private metal trader & 2nd-largest oil trader having built or purchased stakes in pipelines, mines, smelters, ports & storage terminals. Trafigura was formed… in 1993 but quickly split off from a group of companies managed by Marc Rich.’ Marc Rich, the commodities trader & hedge fund manager charged in 1983 for violating the US embargo on Iranian oil while dealing on Israel’s behalf, was pardoned by US President Bill Clinton.
After the kidnapping of Venezuela’s leaders N Maduro & C Flores, US President Don Trump decreed that only 2 companies, Vitol & Trafigura, would be allowed to load Venezuelan oil. Those companies would pay for the oil to the USA, into a special account held in Qatar under Trump’s name! Al Jazeera in Qatar has apparently not heard a word about this. Any tankers carrying oil not owned by Vitol & Trafigura from Venezuela have been illegally seized at sea by the US Navy, sometimes assisted by the English government. The USA has been claiming that Venezuela agrees to this – which is not true. The Venezuelan government simply has has no military power to stop the US Navy from seizing oil tankers. The US government is claiming that the Venezuelan government gave the USA, information on non-Vitol & non-Trafigura tankers. It is more possible that Vitol & Trafigura give information on ‘rogue’ tankers to the USA, notes former English diplomat, Craig Murray: Trafigura is: ‘the archetypal extremely corrupt Western corporation. Their record for deliberate pollution & corruption in Africa is appalling, including in Angola & Ivory Coast. They have frequently been involved in CIA schemes for regime change. How Vitol & Trafigura came to be the beneficiaries of a duopoly, and what backhanders that may have involved, is another question.’ The USA, under pressure, has since announced that more companies will be included. However, the US theft ‘is almost identical to the system imposed on Iraq after its destruction by the USA & its allies’, with ‘payments for Iraqi oil made to the USA and a percentage of them returned to the Iraqi government’. However, ‘Iraqi revenues were paid to the US Treasury, whereas the Venezuelan funds are going to a Qatar account under Trump’s personal control, removed from the reach of Congress’. Murray writes: ‘It gives him a massive slush fund to pursue policy outside the US legal framework. It is like Iran-Contra on a massive scale.’ Murray emphasizes: ‘None of this sales arrangement has been agreed by Rodríguez and none of it is contained in the new Venezuelan hydrocarbon legislation on concessions & royalties.’
On 27 January, Anglo-US News Agency Reuters reported: ‘Trading houses Trafigura & Vitol began marketing Venezuelan oil this month after an agreement between Caracas & Washington for the USA to control 50 million barrels after its January 3 capture of President Nicolas Maduro, with proceeds going to a USA-supervised fund. Trump said the USA has also seized oil on board Venezuelan tankers for processing in US refineries. Vitol & Trafigura have sold Venezuelan crude to refiners including US-based Valero & Phillips 66 and Spain’s Repsol & have also approached Indian & Chinese refiners, including PetroChina, for possible sales… However, one of the trading executives said PetroChina traders were told not to touch the oil until further notice from headquarters.’ (see ee Random Notes)
In a brilliant takedown of the Reuters’ news story, which should be a model for media analysts to hone their scalpels, Prince Kaponedissects how ‘Reuters sells custodial plunder as a pricing issue, turning blockade into ‘market caution’.’ He instead states clearly: ‘China’s Foreign Ministry has publicly stated that the US seizure of Venezuela’s president & use of force against Caracas ‘clearly violate international law, basic norms in international relations, and the purposes & principles of the UN Charter’ and called for Maduro’s release & dialogue; the ministry has also condemned ‘hegemonic acts’ by the US that ‘seriously violate international law & Venezuela’s sovereignty and threaten peace & security in Latin America & the Caribbean.’ Chinese officials have stressed that cooperation between China & Venezuela is cooperation between sovereign states protected by international law & the domestic laws of both countries, and that the use of force & unilateral coercive measures against Venezuela’s oil industry have undermined economic & social order. None of that appears in the Reuters frame, where the only ‘problem’ is whether a barrel clears at the right discount.
‘What we are witnessing around Venezuelan oil is that enforcement made material. Control here does not mean ownership in a formal sense. It means custody over circulation – authority over where oil flows, how it is sold, and through which financial channels its value is realized. That is why revenue supervision matters as much as tanker routes. When the flow of income from a country’s primary resource passes through externally administered channels, sovereignty is hollowed out without a single flag being lowered. The state continues to exist, but its lifeblood moves under someone else’s supervision. This is not collapse. It is administration. Earlier imperial playbooks sought regime change – the dramatic replacement of governments. That approach proved unstable. What replaces it is regime subordination: local authorities remain in place, but within a narrowing corridor defined by external power. Leaders are not treated as sovereign decision-makers; they are treated as managers of a pressured system, tasked with maintaining domestic order while strategic decisions about resources, trade & alignment are made elsewhere. Sovereignty becomes conditional – revocable when it obstructs hemispheric control… And the working class – here & abroad – gets trained to watch theft like it’s a weather report.’
Kapone’s forensics seek to ‘restore the missing record: seizures, supervision, & the re-routing of Venezuelan oil revenue through imperial hands. We reframe the contradiction as doctrine – Fortress America tightening hemispheric command as multipolar escape routes multiply. We close with a call to organize: break the information blockade, target the chokepoints, & build material solidarity with the besieged.’ (see ee Random Notes)
Nury Vittachi’s reports provide good examples of shattering the US-led media circus of fake news & lies on China & Hong Kong, whose violent US$-funded demonstrations would echo a few years later in Sri Lanka’s 2022 beginning of IMF-backed collapse… (see ee Random Notes)
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• Comparing the Centrals Banks of Asian of non-settler colonial countries such as India, as well as settler-colonial countries like Canada, Sunil Abhayawardhana attempts to explore the ‘Central Bank’s Role in Development’ (see ee Focus). Abhayawardhana suggests the role of such banks are ‘determined by if the economy is developed, developing, or underdeveloped’. He also describes the active role played by the central banks of (differently colonized?) Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, etc, in directing investment in industrialization, which has been prevented in Sri Lanka. Under the guidance of the IMF & World Bank & other instrument of imperialism, Sri Lanka’s Central Bank has been freed of its centrality, and made ‘independent’ of accountability to an elected parliament. The ‘independence’ of such banks has been more recently highlighted by the US government’s decision to prosecute its Federal Reserve chairman for fraud, making it out that such ‘pressures’ to conform are new. Yet it turns out that one former US President (LB Johnson) even physically assaulted one FR chair! But such publicized ‘conflicts’ could very well be theatre
The word ‘Development’ was minted by the multinational Unilever in the 1950s to replace the word, ‘Colonial’! The pervasive use of the word (almost every government ministry & NGO uses it) shows the power of those who coin such tropes, and give it currency! For the last half a century at least, Sri Lanka has been described as ‘developing’, much like patronizingly referring to a mentally damaged child as ‘s/he is coming along, coming along…’ Finance casino players like to refer to ‘emerging’ markets. But the truth is such countries remain in that state of stasis, and a more apt and historically correct designation is ‘underdeveloping.’
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• Kusum Wijetilleke, (an) economic advisor to the SJB leader Sajith Premadasa (where on earth are the footnote clique, Harsha & Eran?), tracks the ‘stunning’ and misleading pronouncements of the present CBSL governor, N Weerasinghe (see ee Focus). The Governor has to ‘always project stability and continuity to the markets’, writes Wijetilleke. Hence, the CBSL governor declared that the recent cyclonic devastation would have no impact of economic projections. He also incorrectly ‘rebuked’ as mere ‘academics’ the 121 signatories of a December 2025 letter by ‘Debt Justice’ calling on the government to suspend debt payment and reconsider the debt restructuring. Wijetilleke kindly shows how these dissenting academics have been very much part of the system.
It turns out that this restructuring is merely postponing payment (some say the cliff – abyss? – will yawn in 2028, KW says 2043!)… Using the metaphor of the recent floods, we may say, that the inundation which could otherwise be directed into the open seas, has been merely ‘dammed’ to devastate the country in a few years (perhaps beyond the re-election cycle)… leaving the economy exposed to a second restructuring’… Wijetilleke calls for ‘realistic adjustments’ to be made possible, for countries exposed to ‘climate shocks’, but in an imperialist-dominated world, are there not other vulnerabilities, such as subjection to the dramatic caprices of US & EU policy shifts, sanctions, regular invasions, kidnapping of leaders, forever wars, etc. Should not the IMF and the World Bank take a regular walk down the wild side of Pennsylvania Avenue, and make algorithmic allowances for such blatant imperialist policy parading as mercurial whimsy?’
Even as one may sense a naivete among the Debt Justice crew, with their appeal to the morality of the debt slaver, Wijesinghe ends with a staunch defense:
‘The economists are not advocating abandonment of markets or fiscal anarchy. They are arguing that Sri Lanka exited restructuring with a debt profile likely to fail again, their position is technically coherent, aligned with balance-sheet realism, and focused on durability rather than optics.’ Optics indeed!
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• Midst all this pussyfooting, ee Focus therefore defers once more to the super realism of SBD de Silva about Sri Lanka’s economy – continuing to reproduce his classic The Political Economy of Underdevelopment, and the 2nd part of his book, ‘The Plantation System & Underdevelopment’, beginning Chapter 7: ‘Plantations & their Metropolitan Orientation’. Here he locates its origins in the mid-17th century (when we were fighting off the Portuguese invaders, & the next set of the gangsters, Dutch invaders, were winking their eyes at us). The inability to prevent whites from obtaining and cultivating their own land, saw them resort to ‘unfree labor’ with a ‘a highly authoritarian structure of labour relations’, to shape ghe plantation system. de Silva meticulously dissected the variables comparing the evolution of peasant-based cultivation alongside large plantations, and the numerous fake justifications for their spread. Smallholders could just as easily achieve high yields per acre, and extra-economic pretexts had to be used to drive out peasants. The cost of transporting enslaved Africans was 5 times as high as white servants! However, the plantation system enabled a whole layer of middlemen & merchants to profit, even if at great cost. SBD de Silva exposed the claims to science, specialization, size, economics of scale, division of labor to justify the slave system. There was no greater productivity nor any generation of ‘external economies’, which modern industrialization is famous for: ‘where one thing leads to another…’ Ultimately what differentiates the type of colonies was whether industrialization (processing, etc) was allowed to take place or not! And even more fundamental than the limited degree of local processing & the metropolitan markets for which the crops are produced, is the dominance of merchant capital in their production & marketing. This gave rise to the fundamental divergence in the world – countries:
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‘Whereas capitalism was the mode of production in the centre,
merchant capital being its agent, in the plantation situation
merchant capital remained dominant.’
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• This issue of ee is dedicated to Sugath Kulatunga, who passed away last week. He was a regular thoughtful contributor to this little weekly effort, and we recall his support (even if he did not agree with everything we said, nor us with him). To the very end of his life he kept serving up issues, via social media, email, etc, issues that mattered to the country and the world, sharing & adding his wealth of practical experience and knowledge. RIP = Return if Possible…
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Bloomberg report notes that wage disparities persist, with foreign workers often earning less than Russian nationals for similar roles
