-Caveat Lector-
Subject:
New oil law takes effect in Venezuela
Date:
Wed, 2 Jan 2002 11:46:38 -0500
From:
a <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Hello,
The following story from the Nando Times (http://www.nandotimes.com)
was sent to you by: a ([EMAIL PROTECTED]).
---------------------------------------------------------------
New oil law takes effect in Venezuela
The Associated Press
CARACAS, Venezuela (January 2, 2002 06:38 a.m. EST) - President
Hugo Chavez celebrated a contentious new oil law that took
effect Tuesday, telling supporters that Venezuela is beginning
the New Year with a "new oil strategy."
"We need a new oil strategy because the one we have had has
not been successful," Chavez said during a rally in the western
state of Tachira.
The new Hydrocarbons Law gives the state greater control
over the petroleum industry, an initiative Chavez argues
will allow the government to better spread Venezuela's oil
wealth among the poor.
Critics say the law will alienate investors by imposing the
world's highest royalty rates on companies operating Venezuela's
oil fields.
Business leaders - who last month paralyzed the country for
one day to protest the oil law and 48 others - also complain
about a requirement that state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela
SA hold a minimum 51 percent stake in future joint ventures
involving exploration and exploitation.
Chavez argues the state must retain control of the country's
petroleum reserves, the largest in the Western Hemisphere,
because Venezuela depends on oil for almost half of government
income and 80 percent of export revenue.
Government officials insist the new law is actually more
liberal than past ones because it allows private companies
to own "downstream" operations, such as refineries, for the
first time.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Publication date: 12/28/2001
U.S. cooking up a coup in Venezeula?
By Conn Hallinan
Special To The Examiner
THERE is the smell of a coup in the air these days. It was like
this in Iran just before the 1953 U.S.-backed coup overthrew the
Mossedeah government and installed the Shah. It has the feel of 1963
in South Vietnam, before the military takeover switched on the light
at the end of the long and terrible Southeast Asian tunnel. It is
hauntingly similar to early September 1973, before the coup in Chile
ushered in 20 years of blood and darkness.
Early last month, the National Security Agency, the Pentagon and
the U.S. State Department held a two-day meeting on U.S. policy toward
Venezuela. Similar such meetings took place in 1953, 1963, and 1973,
as well as before coups in Guatemala, Brazil and Argentina. It should
send a deep chill down the backs of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez
and the populist coalition that took power in 1998.
The catalyst for the Nov. 5-7 interagency get-together was a
comment by Chavez in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist assault on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon. While Chavez sharply condemned
the attack, he questioned the value of bombing Afghanistan, calling it
"fighting terrorism with terrorism." In response, the Bush
administration temporarily withdrew its ambassador and convened the
meeting.
The outcome was a requirement that Venezuela "unequivocally"
condemn terrorism, including repudiating anything and anyone the Bush
administration defines as "terrorist." Since this includes both Cuba
(with which Venezuela has extensive trade relations) and rebel groups
in neighboring Colombia (to whom Chavez is sympathetic), the demand
was the equivalent of throwing down the gauntlet.
The spark for the statement might have been Sept. 11, but the dark
clouds gathering over Venezuela have much more to do with enduring
matters -- like oil, land and power.
The Chavez government is presently trying to change the
60-year-old agreement with foreign oil companies that charges them as
little as 1 percent in royalties and hands out huge tax breaks. There
is a lot at stake here. Venezuela has 77 billion barrels of proven
reserves and is the United States' third-biggest source of oil. It is
also a major cash cow for the likes of Phillips Petroleum and
ExxonMobil. If the new law goes through, U.S. and French oil companies
will have to pony up a bigger slice of their take.
A larger slice is desperately needed in Venezuela. Although oil
generates some $30 billion each year, 80 percent of Venezuelans are,
according to government figures, "poor," and half of those are
malnourished. Most rural Venezuelans have no access to land except to
work it for someone else, because 2 percent of the population controls
60 percent of the land.
The staggering gap between a tiny slice of "haves" and the sea of
"have nots" is little talked about in the American media, which tend
to focus on President Chavez's long-winded speeches and unrest among
the urban wealthy and middle class. U.S. newspapers covered the Dec.
10 "strike" by business leaders and a section of the union movement
protesting a series of economic laws and land reform proposals, but
not the fact that the Chavez government has reduced inflation from 40
percent to 12 percent, generated economic growth of 4 percent, and
increased primary school enrollment by 1 million students.
Rumblings from Washington, strikes by business leaders, and
pot-banging demonstrations by middle-class housewives are the fare
most Americans get about Venezuela these days. For any balance one has
to go to local journalists John Marshall and Christian Parenti. In a
Dec. 10 article in the Chicago bi-weekly In These Times, the two
reporters give "the other side" that the U.S. media always go on about
but rarely present: The attempts by the Venezuelan government to
diversify its economy, turn over idle land to landless peasants,
encourage the growth of co-ops based on the highly successful
Hungarian model, increase health spending fourfold, and provide drugs
for 30 to 40 percent below cost.
But the alleviation of poverty is not on Washington's radar screen
these days. Instead, U.S. development loans have been frozen, and the
State Department's specialist on Latin America, Peter Romero, has
accused the Chavez government of supporting terrorism in Colombia,
Bolivia and Ecuador. These days that is almost a declaration of war
and certainly a green light to any anti-Chavez forces considering a
military coup.
U.S. hostility to Venezuela's efforts to overcome its lack of
development has helped add that country to the South American "arc of
instability" that runs from Caracas in the north to Buenos Aires in
the south, and includes Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru. Failed
neoliberal economic policies, coupled with corruption and
authoritarianism, have made the region a powder keg, as recent events
in Argentina demonstrate. And the Bush administration's antidote?
Matches, incendiary statements, and dark armies moving in the night.
http://www.examiner.com/opinion/default.jsp?story=OPhallinan1228w
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