SAMUELE FURFARI: Europe's Outrage Over Maduro Arrest Reflects Poor Understanding Of Oil Industry

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

58% : The EU media often ignore that Citgo, originally a Venezuelan-owned company based in the U.S., remains a crucial economic lifeline for Venezuela.
56% : But after his arrest by U.S. authorities, the EU media rapidly changed their tune.
52% : Most EU journalists lean left politically, and given Maduro's communist background, they now seek to cast him in a heroic light.
48% : The EU press frames the U.S. operation in Venezuela almost exclusively through the prism of oil, with foreign producers portrayed as "predators."
48% : This lack of understanding reveals a deep ignorance of technical complexities that shape the oil industry and the geopolitics of energy.
47% : While EU citizens are quick to criticize, they readily consume oil products, which still account for over 90% of transportation energy use despite a half century of searching for alternatives.
45% : Yet this fundamental truth goes unrecognized by EU media, and therefore by the public.
40% : For example, the EU media don't consider the technical challenges involved - such as the poor quality of the Venezuelan crude, which requires blending with naphtha or other lighter hydrocarbons to be fluid enough for processing.
37% : Yet nowhere was the reaction more negative - and more baffling - than in the European Union, where outrage swept through public discourse, a stark contrast to the generally positive reaction in the U.S. and elsewhere. Much of this anger was aimed at Donald Trump and, more pointedly, at the U.S. oil industry, which once again has become the convenient scapegoat for complex geopolitical realities.
37% : Moreover, EU audiences and media seem to forget that Venezuela is one of the most unstable countries for foreign investment.
37% : With leaders like von der Leyen exhibiting such ignorance of facts, is it any wonder the EU media are hostile to U.S. oil companies?
36% : He is author of the paper, "Energy Addition, Not Transition," and 18 books, including "Energy Insecurity: The organised destruction of the EU's competitiveness.
34% : European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said that fossil fuels are obsolete - a statement that ignores the harsh realities of current energy demands and infrastructure.
33% : Until his arrest, Maduro was universally condemned across the European Union as a dictator responsible for his people's suffering and for widespread international drug trafficking - and as an unelected, illegitimate president.
28% : The European Union finds itself in an awkward position.
26% : As a professor of energy policy, I am deeply frustrated by the European Union's persistent hostility toward the oil industry.
15% : Most concerning to me is the deeply entrenched negative image of the oil industry in the European Union.

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