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Venezuelan Surprise!!
I love it! Hugo Chavez, president of oil-rich Venezuela, plans on selling cheap oil to America's poor. Support him in his efforts: buy CITGO gasoline!
Date: 9/21/2005 2:02:23 AM ( 19 y ) ... viewed 1437 times Published on Sunday, September 18, 2005 by the New York Daily News
Chavez' Surprise for Bush
Offering to Sell Cheap Oil to America's Poor
by Juan Gonzalez
Worried about the skyrocketing cost of gasoline and heating oil this winter?
Well, Hugo Chavez, the firebrand president of oil-rich Venezuela, wants to
help.
Chavez, a former army officer twice elected president in huge landslides,
has become a target of the Bush administration for his radical social
policies.
Last month, right-wing evangelist Pat Robertson openly urged his
assassination.
But now Chavez is firing back at Bush and Robertson with a surprise weapon -
cheap oil for America's poor.
In an exclusive interview yesterday, the Venezuelan leader said his country
will soon start to ship heating oil and diesel fuel at below market prices
to poor communities and schools in the United States.
"We will begin with a pilot project in Chicago on Oct. 14, in a
Mexican-American community," said Chavez, who was in town for the United
Nations sessions. "We will then expand the program to New York and Boston in
November."
The first New York neighborhood in the program will be the South Bronx,
where Chavez was to speak today as a guest of Rep. Jose Serrano.
The Venezuelan leader revealed details of the new oil-for-the-poor program
during a wide-ranging interview at the upper East Side home of his country's
UN ambassador.
"If you want to eliminate poverty, you have to empower the poor, not treat
them as beggars," Chavez said.
During the hour-long interview, he also blasted the Iraq war; accused Bush
of trying to kill him to reassert U.S. control over Venezuela's oil; offered
support for the victims of Hurricane Katrina; and lampooned the UN as out of
touch with the world's poor.
Echoing his favorite American writer, radical linguist Noam Chomsky, Chavez
warned that "Americans must reorder their style of life" because "this
planet cannot sustain" our "irrational" consumption, especially when it
comes to oil.
Much of what Chavez said he has expressed before.
But his novel oil-for-the-poor idea in this country is sure to make him an
even bigger target of the Bush administration.
Those who scoff at this as a publicity scam should think twice.
With the price of oil at record levels, the Chavez government is swimming in
cash.
Those sky-high fuel prices are bound to have a drastic impact on low-income
neighborhoods here, especially since Congress redirected much of this
winter's usual energy assistance program for victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Venezuela, on the other hand, owns a key U.S. subsidiary called Citgo
Petroleum Corp., which has 14,000 gas stations and owns eight oil refineries
in this country, none of which was damaged by Katrina.
Chavez said he can afford to sharply reduce Citgo's prices by "cutting out
the middle man."
His plan is to set aside 10% of the 800,000 barrels of oil produced by the
Citgo refineries and ship that oil directly to schools, religious
organizations and nonprofits in poor communities for distribution.
The same approach, he said, has worked in the Caribbean, where Venezuela is
already sharply subsidizing oil deliveries to more than a dozen nations.
Cutting oil prices must seem like the worst sort of radicalism to the Big
Oil companies and their buddies at the Bush-Cheney White House.
But ordinary Americans fed up with price gouging by these energy companies
could begin to look at Chavez in a different light if his oil-for-the-poor
project works.
Still, Chavez, warns, we must all think about the future. Americans are 5%
of the world's population, yet we consume 25% of the world's oil.
On his drive from Kennedy Airport to Manhattan this week, Chavez noted, "Out
of every 100 cars I saw on the road, 99 had only one person in the car.
"These people were using up fuel," he said. "They were polluting the
environment. This planet cannot sustain that mode of life."
That's the kind of message that can get a man killed these days - or at
least labeled a dangerous madman by folks in the White House.
Juan Gonzalez is a Daily News columnist.
© Copyright 2005 New York Daily News
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