by Nathan Smith

While everyone was watching Venezuela, my eyes noticed something strange 25.4 billion kilometres into space. Something didn’t feel right about what I was being told.

As a cool New Year’s gift (I’m not sure who was the true intended recipient), the US military conducted what appeared to be a highly complicated arrest and extraction of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro. The leader was then brought back to the US, where he reportedly will be indicted for crimes, although it’s unclear how a foreign citizen can be subject to US jurisdiction. But we live in a strange world.

For months leading up to the operation, I couldn’t figure out any good reason why Washington had decided to increase pressure on Maduro. I had a long list of bad reasons and an even longer list of mendacious reasons, but none of them answered the most important question of all: Why now?

The main reason everyone landed on is energy and resources, sprinkled with some anti-China geopolitical competition. In this argument, China is the most worrying global threat to the US, and while Washington may not call it an enemy, China has certainly become an adversary in the high-level race to secure resources. A key resource is oil, and Venezuela has a lot of oil. Ergo, the US action against Maduro was all about energy.

While it’s true that most conflicts, especially post-1945, have a layer of resource competition behind them, that’s not always the answer for why two (or more) sides decide to fight. Both the US and China require more oil, and both are keen to have exclusive control over Venezuela’s 303 billion barrels of proven oil reserves.

But what would it mean to “control” the oil? Most people probably imagine the US military flying all of Venezuela’s oil back to the US, where they can use it to fuel their minivans and crypto mining mainframes. Trillions of dollars’ worth of oil for essentially free would certainly transform the US economy (and the US dollar, since inflation is just a measure of energy costs). Yet that’s not how things work.

For a start, the world is still globalised. The moment any barrel of Venezuelan oil lands in the US, it will go on the market, and the entire world can bid to buy that barrel. If that barrel is priced at a ridiculously low $5, because Washington wants cheap oil for Americans, nothing would stop a buyer in Denmark from purchasing the barrel for $5 as well. Except this buyer would not be alone. As thousands of other buyers from around the world line up to buy, a bidding war would begin, driving the price up until it reaches an equilibrium at a level neither too high nor too low. Very quickly, that initial $5 price would rise to a global average oil price of X = >$5.

So, we can safely ignore anyone saying the core motivation for the US operation against Venezuela was about cheap oil. That’s not how the global market works. It wasn’t how it worked in 2003 when the US invaded Iraq, and it won’t be how it works in 2033 when the US probably decides to invade yet another country under some arrogant pretext.

Furthermore, Venezuelan oil is expensive to refine. In the trade, the oil most common in that country’s vast fields is referred to as “extra-heavy.” This highly viscous and dense oil is notoriously difficult to extract and refine. As a result, it typically sells at a discount compared to the “lighter” oil from US shale or Saudi Arabian fields. Where a barrel of “light” crude takes just one day to refine, a barrel of “extra-heavy” crude can take up to a week to process.

To put this into perspective, if the entire US crude distillation capacity of 18 million barrels per day were devoted to refining Venezuela’s whopping 303 billion barrels of oil, it would take about 45 years to process. However, due to various constraints, the US can currently process only about three million barrels per day of “extra-heavy” crude. This means, ceteris paribus, the total time to process all of Venezuela’s oil would take ~280 years! That’s a long time.

Does anyone really believe the US will retain close control over Venezuela’s government for 12 months, let alone 280 years? Come on, pull the other leg.

Yes, resources are important. Yes, oil is the most important resource for any modern economy. And yes, the US is competing intensely with China to secure as much oil as possible. But while oil is important, it’s not super important. How do I know it’s not super important? Because NASA told me so. Let me explain.

According to the mainstream narrative of the last 67 years (since NASA was created), humans have sent thousands of satellites into space. Each of these crafts was equipped with solar panels or batteries for energy. Some of those crafts are orbiting Earth, while others were flung into deep space for research purposes.

During the Venezuela shenanigans, one of those far-flung crafts, Voyager 1, reached a distance of one light-day from Earth. A light-day is the distance light can theoretically travel in a single day, or about 15.8 billion kilometres. Travelling at 61,000 km per hour since 5 September 1977, Voyager 1 has been careening towards interstellar space powered simply by three Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs) batteries.

These batteries were developed in the 1950s and first used in space exploration in 1961. They are essentially nuclear batteries that convert the heat from decaying plutonium-238 into electricity. According to the mainstream narrative, the RTGs on Voyager 1 have been slowly losing power for the past 49 years but remain operational today, enabling it to transmit research data back to Earth by powering down non-essential systems to conserve energy.

Are you starting to see the problem here?

Again, according to the mainstream narrative, NASA is essentially telling us that since at least 1961 we have had the technology for batteries that operate continuously without recharging, in a near vacuum, under intense radiation, presumably being hit regularly by high-velocity micro particles of solar dust and all of this while facing unbelievable temperatures of 120 C in direct sunlight or -150 C in deep shadow.

I am not making this up. Everything I have outlined above about Voyager 1 is consistent with the mainstream narrative. The world’s premier space organisation, funded by the world’s only superpower, says we already have the technology for perpetual batteries that could solve many commercial and private energy requirements. And we have had this technology for roughly 70 years. I really want you to let this fact soak in.

In other words, the mere existence of Voyager 1 makes a mockery of all wars for energy. About one million Iraqis were estimated to have been killed because of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. If Russia’s war in the Ukraine is about controlling energy pipelines, then conservative estimates suggest about one million soldiers have died in that war as well. Adding in the dozens of minor conflicts over energy over the last 60 years, such as in Sudan, Nigeria, Iran, Myanmar, etc., the death toll moves into the tens of millions.

According to the mainstream narrative, the entire global system in 2026 still relies primarily on oil for energy generation, despite the existence of batteries that can last for 49 years without recharging. I hate to push things into binaries, but either we are being lied to about energy on Earth, or we are being lied to about space.

Or, if you want this in syllogism form: IF we have perpetual batteries, THEN we don’t need oil. SINCE we still need oil, THEN the whole story about Voyager 1 must be nonsense. I mean that literally: it makes no sense.

At this point, it would not surprise me to learn that NASA’s space adventures are fake, and always have been fake. Given the realities and fiscal freedom that come with the US having the world’s reserve currency, it is perfectly plausible that NASA is actually paid $25.5 billion per year not to go into space. That’s certainly the kind of budget an organisation of that size would need to maintain the propaganda that humans are, definitely, totally, sending probes into deep space. Don’t ask questions, just believe whatever NASA says and enjoy the pretty pictures.

I don’t know about you, but it’s actually easier on my everlasting soul to believe that NASA is lying about space than it is to believe we have had perpetual batteries for 49 years (at minimum), and yet we still chose to kill tens of millions of people over oil. Something fishy is going on with Venezuela that has very little to do with Venezuela.

Originally published on Flat Circle.