ITALY • NICARAGUA more general questions. But they have to be careful not to go too quickly in order not to cut themselves off from the broad masses of working people. * npanies handle trol in dobas. Petrol is refined at Nicaragua's only refinery, which is in Managua. It is owned by Exxon.
When the Sandinistas took power in the country in 1979, 168 US firms were operating in the country. Thirty of them were nationalized. Some wound down their activities, and now there are only about a dozen left, including IBM and Exxon. No new US companies have come in over the last eight years.
The Exxon refinery is in a key position in the Nicaraguan economy and industry. It processes 10,000 barrels of Soviet oil a day, but cannot touch the Cuban oil. So gasoline is shipped in already refined from Cuba. This is also of Soviet origin. Cuba gets only a tiny proportion of its petroleum from its own wells. The bulk comes 10,000 kilometers from the Soviet Union.
One of October's major stories in Nicaragua also had to do with gasoline. The minister for international cooperation, Henry Ruiz, made a new proposal for foreign investment in the country. In a speech to the Nicaraguan parliament he said that there were good chances of striking oil in Nicaragua, but "We will need $100 million and the sort of equipment that only a multinational corporation could have."
Paradoxically, it was the right-wing opposition that was unhappy about the Sandinistas proposal to open the doors for multinational corporations. "They want to sell the fatherland," some rightists even commented.
Until Nicaragua can pump its own oil, motorists will have to continue to line up in front of the Shell tanks, and save on gas, so that their 70 liters will last the whole month. The other filling stations will open up when the petrol from the Cuban tanker runs out and Soviet fuel is back in the tanks, refined by one of US industrialists' last bastions in revolutionary Nicaragua - the venerable Exxon refinery, which will soon be 25 years old. *
(From the November 12 issue of Klassekampen, paper of the SA, Danish section of the Fourth International.] December 7, 1987 • International Viewpoint