It is but this is only the pre-sale (with discounts), which is a private sale reserved to institutional buyers. The public ICO will start on March 19th and will last until all coins will be sold.

We still don't know at what price the Petro will be sold during the public ICO. The white paper says there will be discounts too.

I suppose this particular discount only refers to the pre-sale. But what I don't understand is how and when the current orders will be used. I think the only thing is to wait the ICO and see (19th March).

The more I read the White Paper and the more I realise it's pretty well done. The confusion comes only from the polemic political chit-chat, but the process is very well described.

We are in the pre-sale and this is a private sale: only institutional investors can buy.
When this phase is over (19th March) the public ICO start: everybody should be able to buy then.
The ICO will last until all the tokens have been sold.

Download the White Paper here: http://www.elpetro.gob.ve/Whitepaper_Petro_en.pdf

How the sale of Petro works

There has been some confusion in the discussion. This is how the sale works according to the White Paper (taken directly from it):

Total emission: 100.000.000

Pre - Sell
Tokens available: 38.400.000
Reference Selling Price: oil barrel = USD 60 (approx.)
Start date and time: February 20, 2018 at 08:30 a.m. (Venezuela time, -04:00 GMT).
Closure date and time: March 19, 2018 at 23:59:59 p.m. (Venezuela time, -04:00 GMT).
During the process, discounts that reduce over time will be applied to stimulate early investment.

Initial Offer
Total Petro available for sale: 44,000,000
Reference Selling Price: oil barrel = USD 60 (approx.)
Start date and time: March 20, 2018 at 08:30 a.m. (Venezuela time, -04:00 GMT)
Closure date and time: Until the Petros of the first emission are exhausted


Incentives

An incentive system has been designed for investors who purchase Petro on a private sale basis and Initial Offering.
The plan is quite simple and involves scales of discounts (Dv ) from the initial lot. This first lot, which will be placed in the Pre-Sale, will have a volume of 3,400,000 Petro and will have a 30% discount on the reference price of crude oil in the Venezuelan basket. The following lots will have 5,000,000 Petro and the discount will decrease successively for each lot sold, until the last lot, of 24,000,000 Petro, which will have no discount.


Figures

The first lot is worth about (approx.) $204.000.000 USD.
The second (approx.) $300.000.000 USD.
The third (approx.) $1.440.000.000 USD.

I just updated the first post, it should be much more clear (i hope).

Sorry 30% (not 40%), my mistake.

From the White Paper (page 21):
This first lot, which will be placed in the Pre-Sale, will have a volume of 3,400,000 Petro and will have a 30% discount on the reference price of crude oil in the Venezuelan basket. The following lots will have 5,000,000 Petro and the discount will decrease successively for each lot sold, until the last lot, of 24,000,000 Petro, which will have no discount.

Online, I would buy in Ethereum.

Anyway, even if you make the offer in dollars, this is more or less like a future contract. If you're interested you sign it and reserve your Petros. Or you can also wait to get more details, until mid March when the pre-sale ends.

1) Why? If they sell you Petros with a 40% discount on the oil barrel, and you are a speculator, you definitely want to buy (and that's why there were 170 thousand offers).

2) No, IT IS POSSIBLE to buy oil with Petros, this is the main reason of it! The national oil company PDVSA will accept Petros obviously (that's totally confirmed, and probably also other cryptos!).

3) Sure, Petro will be traded in the secondary market and obviously the market will decide its price. But depending on the exchange mechanism the government will offer, its price base could actually be the oil barrel (about 60$ at the moment).

Thanks for sharing the file.

I don't get why "nobody" would fill and sign that agreement if you want to buy Petros. Of course I'd do that without any problem. I want to buy Petros, therefore I'm ok with making an offer (which I did).

The price of the Petro is defined by the official Price of the Venezuelan oil barrel, and this price is published on the page of the Ministry (you can google it). At the moment it is around 58 $USD.

It's a biased anti-Venezuelan obsession: the result of years of mainstream media brainwashing. Unfortunately the human being is quite stupid. They don't realise how their ignorance can destroy lives. Now the embargo is another possibility, and all this idiots will support it against the "dictatorship". Because, at the end of the day, nobody gives a shit about the Venezuelans, it's only a confirmation bias fed by hatred.

Petro needs to be introduced as fast as possible. But i hope that all this pressure will not add too many technical and security problems that could be fatal. If they succeed, people working on this project could literally be remembered as historical national heroes, of a new independence (crypto) war.

[NEWS] Bloomberg reports that the US administration is evaluating the possibility of a total oil embargo against Venezuela.

Economic researcher on Latin America and Venezuela, Mark Weisbrot (@MarkWeisbrot) says this has never been done before, not even against Iraq, and that would be unimaginably devastating for the people.

I believe this would be a war crime of incredible proportions. The Petro could help even more, in case Venezuela was under embargo.

There is nothing at that address. Where are you supposed to get that file? I didn't get it when I did my offer.

Venezuela is in a deep economic crisis, that is not a "normal" recession. It was triggered by the 2014 oil price collapse and then made worse by US interventionism through sanctions and a large scale economic war.

Despite the economic crisis and the hyperinflation problem (that is largely fabricated from Miami and Colombia, investigate it if interested), the representation you get on mainstream media is a ridiculous caricature of the situation people actually live. The political goal of the whole operation is to justify a military intervention or a coup to overthrow the democratically elected government. The US did this dozens of times. But Venezuela is, unfortunately for them, quite ready. A coup they tried in 2002 failed and the army is quite hard to infiltrate now. They can attack through their puppet/proxy Colombia with terrorist attacks on the border.

The earlier the Petro arrives the stronger Venezuela will be in the global market and easier will be to recover, even with US sanctions.

Learn how media works. Follow the money. I read everything and that's irrelevant as I said in previous posts. But you can keep repeating this "backing" thing over and over again, it's fine.

The Petro is potentially valuable for tons of other reasons too, even if it wasn't backed at all.

The only problem with caracaschronicles.com is that it's opposition garbage, basically publishing a mix of propaganda, fake news and conspiracy theories in English, for the international gullible consumer.

What do you mean by that? Petro will be freely exchanged in the market once released. Its price will be determined by that. Its base price will be the oil barrel. I don't understand what your point is here.

Maduro's personal human rights record is clean. Unlike every US president in the last centuries who has personally ordered invasions, bombings, terrorism, psyops, coups etc. If it was for human rights nobody should invest in anything in the US.

Maduro is an elected President who's gone through a media assassination because the US need to overthrow him (as they tried with Chavez for years), as simple as that. His government has faced the worst siege and aggressions (criminal, financial, commercial and through the mainstream media) a country could get. The information on Venezuela and Maduro is a pure childish caricature, written by Venezuelan opposition, that is funded with millions of dollars by the US (meddling in elections?).
In 2017, 176 people have been killed by the extreme violence initiated by opposition funded gangs in the streets. The opposition ordered to "take the streets' in order to overthrow the elected government. ANY government in the world would have done whatever possible to keep peace. They successfully did it, with the election of the Constituent Assembly that sentenced the political defeat of the opposition violent strategy.

As for your opinion on the investment, well. It's a quite poor.

Very interesting comment by Max Keiser (before the announcement of the Petro) talking about de-dollarisation in the world.
This gives an idea of the size of the game and the reasons why the Petro does not come alone could succeed.

On path to de-dollarization: World tired of funding US military adventurism – Max Keiser
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JC7QEqxZCIs

This is garbage. And you even talk about "propaganda bubble"! All millionaires belong to the opposition, almost all private media in Venezuela are controlled by the opposition. There are journalists and politicians openly calling for military interventions and sabotage, defining Maduro a dictator in prime time on tv. There are free elections. Opposition organised coups, funded gangs (guarimbas) that invaded and blocked the streets killing and lynching dozens of people (including policemen) for months.

Please don't be more ridiculous than necessary.

Venezuela is a democracy. And there are elections on 22nd April. Good luck and bye bye.

[NEWS] Dagong Global Credit Rating (Chinese credit rating agency) gives very positive review of Petro
http://globovision.com/article/calificadora-china-el-petro-ofrece-nuevas-ideas-al-sistema-monetario-internacional (SPANISH)

Please note that DGCR is totally independent from the Venezuelan government. In fact, their current rating of Venezuela's sovereign debt is basically: "rubbish". But of course the Petro is a totally different matter. The success of the Petro is not even linked to a possible sovereign debt default. And the Petro could even help avoiding that, if it works.

I could not find an English article (only Spanish, Chinese and Russian so far), please post it if you find it!