The tone of this blog has sometimes veered off its original intent, every so often appearing similar to that of an international human rights watchdog.  Quite frequently however, we refer to the geopolitical and economic ramifications from the actions of an erratic authoritarian, of which there are unfortunately many, and not only the human cost.

Today, we don’t have to.  Shell has done this for us.

International oil majors have mostly lost interest in investing in Venezuela, Royal Dutch Shell Plc said on Tuesday, following leftist President Hugo Chavez’s nationalization of assets in recent years.

“They are desperately inviting people back in, but no one’s going there,” Shell’s Chief Financial Officer Simon Henry told reporters at the sidelines of a press conference in London.

As Reuters‘ Tom Bergin reports, “Europe’s largest oil company by market value did not bid in a licensing round last month to develop projects in Venezuela’s Orinoco belt, despite being openly courted by Chavez. London-based BP  has also decided against investing in Venezuela due to the uncertain political environment, analysts said“.

The world’s largest non-government controlled oil and gas company by market value Exxon Mobil and the U.S.’s third largest oil major, ConocoPhillips, left Venezuela in 2007 after being pushed out of multibillion-dollar heavy oil projects in the Orinoco belt.

Despite the slew of companies boycotting Venezuela, the South American country’s economic administrators reported last month they had secured the biggest investments ever in its oil industry, though some analysts scrutinized their method of counting this.

U.S. number 2 Chevron and Spain’s Repsol were the only Western oil companies who won contracts in the latest Orinoco auction. Only two of the three contracts on offer were taken up.

Ultimately, we mustn’t be surprised by their trepidation. Clearly we have an unstable regime using the casualties of nationalization as scapegoats for the inability to bolster a faltering economy. This is partially due to a cabinet bent on creating a socialist revolution throughout South America and developing a hegemony similar to the one he so deeply despises to the north.