Petrobras and Chevron Sign Joint Ventures with Venezuela’s PDVSA

Caracas , Venezuela, July 22, 2006 —Petrobras and Chevron this week became the latest companies to partner with Venezuela’s state owned oil company PDVSA in new joint venture contracts that are changing the way Venezuela deals with foreign companies.

These contracts give foreign investment a major role in industrial operations, but, unlike the previous contracts negotiated in the 1990’s, leave the Venezuelan state firmly in control of its own resources.

The deal with Petrobras gives the Venezuela Petroleum Corporation (CVP, a subsidiary of PDVSA, responsible for managing the joint ventures) a 60% controlling share of the business, Petrobras 36% and Williams International Oil & Gas (Venezuela) Ltd. 4%. The venture will operate in the Concepción field in Zulia state under the company name of Petrowayú S.A. Chevron has negotiated a similar agreement.

The President of CVP, Eulogio Del Pino said, “This is the first of the four contracts we expect to sign with Petrobras, one of the companies with which PDVSA has been developing important plans.”

Petrobrás is the Brazilian state owned petroleum corporation and the company’s President, Gerson Fernandes thinks the contract signifies more than a company to company agreement. “The signing ratifies the trust not only among the countries but also among the businesses and peoples,” said Fernandes.

However, this is not an exercise in Latin American integration. Shell (UK/Netherlands), Perenco (France), and Tecpetrol (Argentina) already signed contracts earlier this month and in all there will be twenty-one agreements with eighteen different, mostly non-South American, companies. The contracts do, though, mean a significant shift in the balance of power between companies and the Venezuelan state.

Under the old “Operating Agreements” negotiated during the period known as “The Opening” (Apertura) of the 1990’s, Venezuelan oil fields were in the hands of trans-national corporations. They paid no royalties and only paid 36% tax on their profits. This was agreed without consulting the National Congress and was inconsistent with the Nationalization Act which prevented the hand over of the hydrocarbon industry to private capital.

The new agreements are consistent with both the new Venezuelan constitution and the new Organic Law on Hydrocarbons (OLH). Under the constitution all hydrocarbon fields within Venezuelan territory are and must remain the property of the state and the OLH requires that any business unit must be more than 50% state run.

Under the joint ventures companies have to pay a royalty of 16.6% and taxes of 50% and the state will hold between 60% and 80% of the newly formed businesses.

There have been few complaints, in public at least, from the corporations about these changes. Upon signing its agreement, Chevron said that their strategy was in line with Venezuelan oil politics and the President of Shell Venezuela said, “This company has been operating in Venezuela for more than ninety years and could continue another ninety more. The potential of the oil industry here can be taken to other areas, working with PDVSA.”

Not all companies found the new relationship and costs so easy to accept. Total Oil and Eni failed to reach agreement with the government and Eni threatened legal action for a breach of contractual rights. That was in April, however, and nothing has materialized up till now.

Preliminary Results of Venezuela’s Voter Registry Audit Show No Intent for Fraud

José Miguel Bernardo, coordinator of an independent audit of Venezuela's voter registry.
Credit: Globovisión

Caracas, Venezuela, July 22, 2006—The Coordinator of one of the voter registry audits conducted by the universities, José Miguel Bernardo, says that first results of their audit indicate that while the registry has many errors, there is nothing to suggest that these are there to perpetrate fraud.

Bernardo is coordinating an audit independent of Venezuela’s electoral council (CNE), on assignment by the Catholic University Andrés Bello (UCAB), the Central University of Venezuela (UCV), and the University of Simon Bolivar (USB). Another audit is currently being conducted by the CNE itself with the cooperation of seven other universities and under observation of the Carter Center and a delegation of the Belgian Senate.

Bernardo, who is a statistics expert, told the TV station Globovision that his analysis of the voter registry has shown that there are many errors, but these are administrative and lack political intentionality that could alter the results of an election. Errors that the opposition has found recently, such as the large number of over 100 year olds are true, he said, but, “In practice [these] do not favor the government and their distribution is uniform.”

Similarly, USB mathematician Raúl Jimenez, who is also involved in the audit, said, “One must be responsible. The electoral registry is a disaster and the CNE has done nothing to improve it, but there is nothing to indicate a political intention in the anomalies.”

Jimenez explained that his audit estimated the electoral results from the recall referendum without the erroneously registered voters and found that the President would have won the vote in any case. “The newly inscribed are not being placed so that they vote for the President. We have an aspect that is conclusive: there are no [political] tendencies [to the data],” said Jimenez.

Venezuela’s National Electoral Council, which oversees all electoral processes, had originally invited nine universities and an institute to make proposals and to participate in a second audit of the voter registry, which has recently been strongly criticized by the opposition. While the CNE rejected the audit proposal of three of the universities, it has allowed them to conduct their own independent audit, but their results will not be taken into consideration for the correction of the registry’s data. The CNE will, however, evaluate the results of the three universities’ audit.

Carter Center and Belgian Delegation Join Audit

The CNE audit, in conjunction with the seven other universities and a research institute, started a few weeks ago and will now incorporate observers from the Carter Center and the Belgian Senate, announced the CNE earlier this week.

In a letter from Carter Center representative Jennifer McCoy, the Carter Center had recently requested permission to observe the CNE audit. “Considering the importance of having a reliable voter registry for the electoral process, we salute the CNE Board of Directors’ decision to conduct a new audit of the registry. In that sense, we would enormously appreciate the possibility of being in direct touch with the development of this initiative,” said McCoy in her letter to the CNE.

Also, this Monday, two delegates from the Belgian Senate, who are members of the inter-parliamentary Belgian-Venezuelan group, will begin observing the audit of the voter registry.

Opposition Launches More Charges of Registry Errors

Meanwhile, an opposition party has launched more charges of irregularities in the voter registry. Earlier this month, the former governing party, but now minor opposition party, Copei presented its own results of an audit, in which it claimed that 1.8 million registered voters had the same address and 2.1 million had no address at all.

It is not clear, though, where Copei got its copy of the registry from, since the CNE has refused to turn over the complete registry, with all voters’ addresses, arguing that doing so would be a violation of privacy.

Last year, the CNE contacted CAPEL, an electoral consulting group of the Inter-American Human Rights Institute, to conduct the first audit. The results of that audit showed that the percentage of “sensitive” errors, that is, errors that could lead to fraud, were below 3%, which is well below the internationally accepted margin of error of 5% for voter registries.

CAPEL’s final report stated, “The technical team of IIDH/CAPEL did not find reason to imply a delegitimation of Venezuela’s Voter Registry as a legally valid instrument for conducting elections.”

Venezuela Says Press Association Is Biased Towards Media Owners, Not Freedom of Speech

Inter-American Press Association Logo

Caracas, Venezuela, July 21, 2006—Rejecting a report by the Inter-American Press Association that says there is little freedom of speech in Venezuela, Venezuelan government officials said the organization is biased because it represents media owners and not journalists.

The Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) declared Wednesday that there has been a “sharp deterioration in press freedom” in Venezuela.  In a three day visit, its delegation says it met representatives of the Venezuelan press, NGOs, and academics, but that they were refused meetings with any government official.

According to IAPA Press Freedom Committee Chairman Gonzalo Marroquín, there has been an increasingly restrictive legal structure in Venezuela which has meant journalists facing legal action are subject to harsher penalties if found guilty. “We have noticed a growing tendency to file libel suits against journalists, which appears to indicate an attempt to silence independent voices. This is made worse by the imposition of stiffer penalties for crimes committed through the press, as in the latest reform of the Penal Code, and by the judiciary’s lack of independence,” said Marroquín.

IAPA also says journalists face harassment and attacks when they wish to access government information.

The main example cited by IAPA is the newspaper Correo del Caroní, based in Ciudad Guayana in the state of Bolívar, where it is claimed journalists have been attacked and that the paper is put under constant pressure by officials.  For example, in May of this year the state legislature applied to have the offices of the paper moved, claiming the space was a “green area.” This application was denied by the local mayoralty.

“Since the outset of the Chávez administration a clear tendency toward limiting information has been observed, the typical action of authoritarian regimes that always see the press as an enemy,” said Marroquín.

The Vice-minister of Communication Strategy at the Communication and Information Ministry, Amelia Bustillos, responded by saying there was nothing new in the report and that it was disrespectful and slanted. “I regret that the IAPA representatives, maybe because of their tight agenda, haven’t had time to read, see, or listen to the media in our country, since it is well known that freedom of expression exists and also that official information is distributed equally.  They, instead of wasting time with political operators of Venezuelan newspaper businesses, should have examined objectively how our media relates to the country.  That is the best evidence.”

Venezuela's main newspapers, such as El Universal and El Nacional, and the 24-hour news channel Globovisión are vehemently anti-government.

IAPA says it is an independent body that campaigns for press freedom. It operates throughout Latin America and releases frequent reports on the nature of the press across the continent.  Critics argue, however, that it is “an owners’ club,” interested more in protecting corporate freedom than journalistic freedom.  Indeed, Diana Daniels, President of IAPA and head of this investigative mission is also Vice-president of The Washington Post Company, one of the largest newspaper businesses in the U.S.

Accoridng to Bustillos, “The IAPA, in its role as defender of communication businesses and not of its journalists and workers—because we don’t recognize it as anything but that—accomplished again in our country its role as agent of the opposition, encouraged by the usual actors, repeating lies that only seek to discredit the Chávez government.”

IAPA is governed by the Chapultepec Declaration signed in Mexico in 1994, which is composed of ten governing principles that signatories believe are essential for the freedom of the press.  Diana Daniels says that Venezuela is not fully observing the principles.

However, Bustillos says the Venezuelan government hasn’t recognized the Chapultepec Declaration, so they aren’t obliged to comply with it.

Venezuela’s Chávez Slams Israeli Bombing of Lebanon

Caracas, Venezuela, July 20, 2006—Shortly before his departure on a seven country international tour, Venezuela’s President Chavez denounced Israel’s bombing of Lebanon, discussed south-south cooperation, and emphasized the need for a multi-polar world. He spoke at Maquetía (Caracas) International Airport before boarding a plane to Argentina, which will be only the first stop of his international tour.

Foremost on his mind was the current crisis in the Middle East.  He criticized Israel’s actions, the responses of many other nations and the media’s coverage of the events,

“They are bombing entire cities, it is a true genocide.  Where will this madness end? God only knows!  It extends from Iraq to Lebanon and Palestine.  Let’s hope it doesn’t spread further.”

“The most virulent, loud, and high-handed critics of North Korea are the same ones that, in view of Israeli aggression against innocent men, women and children, say nothing.”

He also addressed the media’s use of language in their reporting of Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and Palestine, singling out CNN for special treatment, CNN doesn’t “speak of invasion, they don’t speak of aggression, they don’t speak of any of that, [they speak of] the conflict, and the Isreali army against the terrorists.”

Chávez has long been a vocal proponent of the sanctity of national sovereignty and a fierce critic of US foreign policy which he brands simply as imperialism.  His government has criticized CNN in the past and has created a cable TV channel named Telesur which offers an alternative for Latin American viewers to the “North American-centric” CNN in Spanish.

In a direct swipe at the US, their recent veto of a UN resolution that demanded a halt to Israel’s offensive in Gaza came into the firing line.  From there, he glided smoothly on to the subject of his government’s campaign to win a seat as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council.

“They have stabbed the Middle East peace process in the heart, and we see a security council blocked by the power of the veto, that of the government of the United States especially.”

If Venezuela could occupy a seat on the council he said he hoped they would be able to, “Contribute modestly towards the battle to free the world from the imperialist threat”.

Unsurprisingly, the US government is strongly opposed to Venezuela’s campaign for the seat and is campaigning hard for Guatemala to take the one to be vacated by Argentina later this year.  Guatemala is seen as a government that will not cause trouble for the US, unlike Venezuela.

Chávez praised Russia, though, and he mourned the death of the old Soviet Union.  In the view of Chávez it seems Russia should be a regional power in a multi-polar world and he wants Venezuela to develop strong economic ties with her. “Let’s see what a great scientific and technological contribution Russia is going to give us with the installation of the munitions factory, the armament factory, because it’s not only the armament, the product, it is the processes applied to many other fields,” said Chavez.

His time in Argentina will be spent at a Mercosur Summit, the first for Venezuela since becoming a full member earlier this month.  He reiterated his desire for a more “social” Mercosur.

After Argentina he will head to Belarus, Russia, Qatar, Iran, Vietnam, and Mali.

There have been some complaints that he should be staying at home as there are enough problems to solve in Venezuela.  A number of residents of Coche, in the south of Caracas, where there have been more than five gangland murders since the weekend, say he should be sorting out the problem of insecurity in their area.

Elsewhere on the domestic front Chávez announced that National Assembly Deputy Francisco Ameliach would be managing the upcoming presidential election campaign.  Ameliach will leave his post as Deputy during that period.

Venezuela Launches Fourth Caracas Subway Line

Chavez in the front of one of the new subway trains of the new number 4 line.
Credit: ABN


Map of the Caracas subway system.

Caracas, Venezuela, July 19, 2006—Venezuela’s President Chavez inaugurated a fourth subway line for Caracas yesterday, a project that cost $860 million and took nearly seven years to complete. During the inauguration, Chavez defended its completion against critics who charge that it is no coincidence the project finishes on an election year.

The new subway line, which was planned during the Rafael Caldera presidency (1994-1999), but not initiated until Chavez’s first year in office, is supposed to transport 360,000 passengers per day. Since a good part of the new 5.8 kilometer line runs parallel to Caracas’ main number one line, it is expected to contribute towards de-congesting this over-crowded part of the subway system, by about 150,000 passengers per day.

The project is part of a large infrastructure investment plan that the government launched, to improve public transportation throughout the country. These include the construction of five new freeways, four subway systems in major cities (including the line just completed one in Caracas), a railroad system of 4,000 kilometers (to be completed in 20 years), and a second bridge of 3 kilometers over the Orinoco River.

The recession in late 2001, the April 2002 coup attempt, and the December 2002 oil industry shutdown all contributed to delays in the subway project because of a lack of financial resources. It was not until the renewed oil boom of 2004 that the government was able to concentrate on completing this long-planned project.

During the inauguration, Chavez announced that the new number 4 line will be further extended towards the eastern half of Caracas, with construction to begin soon.

Chavez rejected the suggestion that the opening of the subway was timed to coincide with this year's presidential election. "It is not my fault that we are finishing exactly as was planned in 2006. What do they want? That we close it and don't inaugurate it until next year?" said Chavez. Declaring his complete confidence that he will win reelection, he added, "In any case, what will happen in December is already written, whether we inaugurate public works or not."

Today, the first day of the line’s operation, though, produced unexpected surprises for passengers, because signs were missing and it was thus unclear which way one had to go to make transfers. Also, most escalators are not operational yet, so that elderly people had a hard time climbing the in some cases very long flights of stairs.

Venezuela Receives Arab League Support for UN Security Council Seat

Caracas, Venezuela, July 19, 2006—Venezuela is being granted observer member status in the Arab League, which is also expected to support Venezuela’s bid for a UN Security Council seat. These two announcements coincide with the second Arab-South American Summit, which is took place this week in Caracas.

Under the shadow of an escalating war in the Middle East, the second Arab-South American Summit got underway this week in Caracas. Building on the first ever meeting a year ago in Brazil, delegations from fifteen Arab countries and twelve South American nations are gathering for two days to assess the progress of political, economics, cultural, environmental, and technological agreements reached in 2005. In addition, leaders attending this week’s summit will undoubtedly focus attention on the host country’s admission into the Arab league, the UN Security Council bids of Venezuela and Egypt, and the current crisis engulfing the Middle East.

In the first order of business, Venezuela was granted observer status in the Arab league. Membership will be formalized in September, when Venezuela joins its neighbor Brazil and several OPEC partners in the 22-nation group. More than 10 million people of Arab descent live in South America, most of them in Brazil.

President Chavez also secured Arab League support for Venezuela’s UN Security Council bid. "We expect 22 countries to support the (Venezuela) candidacy." Stated Ahmed Benhelli, Secretary General of the Arab League of Nations. With Arab League assistance, Foreign Affairs Minister Alí Rodríguez Araque on Tuesday guaranteed Venezuela has obtained more than the 128 votes necessary to win a non-permanent seat at the Security Council, as a number of international organizations have already agreed to support Caracas, including the Caribbean Community and Common Market (Caricom) and the Common Market of the South (Mercosur). In return for Arab league backing, Egypt is seeking South American support in its Security Council bid.

This development comes on the heels of President Chavez’s harsh condemnation of recent Israeli attacks against Lebanon. On Sunday President Chavez bashed the “elite” in Israel, whom he accused of being aggressive at the behest of the United States. The incursions into Lebanon and Gaza were labeled “madness” by the President, as he went on to note Israel has nuclear weapons of mass destruction, “but nobody says anything because behind it is the empire” – a reference to the Bush Administration.

The official position of the Venezuelan government was released the day before when the Foreign Affairs Ministry issued a press release that stated, “The Bush Administration veto to impede the consideration of this crisis within the framework of the U.N. Security Council is unacceptable. The hegemony exercised over this body is the clearest denial of said organization as a space for reasonable settlement of conflicts. This is the reason why our country keeps firmly upholding the necessity of democratizing this body, and therefore endeavors for a seat on the Security Council.”

The Foreign Ministry press release also stated, “The indiscriminate use of force has also brought about many casualties and has wounded several, among the civil population, including innocent children and women. No pretext can justify such aggressions.”

The Venezuelan government’s rebuke prompted Israel to recall the economic council at their embassy in Caracas for what it described as, “talks with a senior official at the Israeli Foreign Ministry.” According to Israeli Foreign Ministry Deputy General Director for Latin American Affairs, Doris Shavit, the Israeli government is amazed at the "lack of balance" in President Chavez Frias' remarks. "They totally ignore events that led to escalation in the region and the role of Hamas and Hezbollah in making the situation worse," said Shavit.

While surprising to Israel, the comments of President Chavez and the pro-Palestine remarks contained in Sunday’s press release are not a departure from the “Declaration of Brasslia” established at the conclusion of the first Arab-South American Summit. In 2005 the 33 nations gathered in Brazil released a joint statement, not only calling for close ties between South America and the Arab world, but also criticizing what the group viewed as Israeli and US aggression against Palestinians.

In light of the recent bombing of Lebanon, it is likely a similar declaration will emanate from this weeks summit. But the new Arab-South American alliance is much more than a coalition of states politically opposed to Israeli and US foreign policy. Bilateral trade between South America and the Arab world reached $10 billion last year.

Latin America – Arab Trade Expected to Increase

Arab leaders are pleased to find open markets in South America and a business climate more relaxed than in Europe or the US, post-September 11. Whereas the United Arab Emirates recently lost a billion dollar US ports deal due to an intense anti-Arab backlash in that country, Venezuela has very publicly entered into energy and trade pacts with Iran. Meanwhile, Brazil will greatly increase exports of agricultural goods to the Middle East. According to the Arab-Brazilian Chamber of Commerce, exports could double within five years. And the Venezuelan-backed Latin American TV station Telesur, last year signed an agreement with the Qatar-based Arabic network Al-Jazeera to share content and cooperate on newsgathering.

In addition, many South American states are forcefully engaged in a campaign to eliminate rich countries' agricultural subsidies. The fight has stymied trade talks in the proposed Free Trade of the Americas Agreement (FTAA), as well as World Trade Organization (WTO) meetings. The topic has long been a popular theme among Arab leaders and this week’s summit is sure to strengthen the fair trade position.

Hugo Chavez Advances Towards Elections Without a Rival

Caracas (IPS)—Venezuela’s political opposition is traversing a tortuous path for finding a standard bearer to face President Hugo Chavez, who is seeking reelection on December 3rd for a new six year term, and who counts on favorable winds because of the majority support he enjoys in the population, according to surveys.

The head of state and those who support him are like a compact block and with a well defined electoral resolve, since Chavez does not have any rivals in his own field, does not hide the fact that he wants to govern for a long time, and surveys published throughout the year have indicated 55% or more intend to vote for him in a presidential election.

In contrast, his adversaries are divided between those who want to participate in elections and those who prefer to abstain; and between those who accentuate voting conditions, since they distrust the electoral power, and those who prefer to campaign and find better conditions on the way to December.

Lately, the opposition has been divided also into those who want to choose a candidate via primary elections and those who prefer a consensus around the one most favored in surveys or in an analysis of their conditions for confronting Chavez.

Nine of the eleven opposition hopefuls accepted to test themselves in a primary election organized by the group of technocrats, Súmate, which would be scheduled for August 13 and will be open to the entire voting population of the country, of nearly 15 million registered voters.

But there are doubts about the success of these primaries and whether only some tens or a few hundred thousands of voters participate, “because many opposition supporters are not motivated to participate, or they do not like the candidates, or are afraid of being identified as opponents by those who distribute the benefits of the state,” commented Luis Léon, the director of the polling firm Datanalisis to IPS.

The group of nine aspirants that would test themselves under the umbrella of Súmate is headed by Julio Borges, a young lawyer of the center-right party Primero Justicia (Justice First) and by Manuel Rosales, a centrist who is governor of the oil state of Zulia, in the country’s West.

The polling firms Datanalisis, Keller, and Consultores 21, the most recognized of the country, identified between seven and nine percent of voting intention for both Rosales and Borges in their most recent surveys, alternating one with the other.

Other aspirants, who have one percent voting intention or who do not even appear in the surveys are the former social democratic foreign minister Enrique Tejera, the social Christian Omar Calderon, the Chavez dissidents Pablo Medina and William Ojeda, the businessman Andrés Brito, and the union leader Froilan Barrios.

But outside of the primaries are the young businessman Roberto Smith, who is trying not to be identified as an oppositionist and who has between one and two percent of the voting intention, and Teodoro Petkoff, the former leader and ideologue of the Venezuelan left and who also has not reached more than four percent in the surveys.

However, Petkoff, perhaps the best-known of the hopefuls, due to his long political career—he was a guerilla fighter, a communist dissident, and a planning minister in the second government of the social Christian Rafael Caldera (1994-1999)—strongly polemicized with Súmate, accusing it of imposing arbitrary conditions for the primaries.

Súmate tied the selection of a standard bearer with a commitment to fight for electoral conditions it judges to be transparent, but Petkoff accused them of “exercising an authoritarianism like that of Chavez, when its role should be merely technical and the political decisions should be in the hands of the politicians and the candidate.”

Maria Machado, Súmate’s spokesperson—the center of the government’s criticism ever since she was received by President George W. Bush in the White House last year—answered that the primaries “are the majority’s preferred method and the opportunity to demonstrate how one can organize a clean electoral consultation.”

The opposition still doubts that the automated voting system that reigns in the country guarantees the secrecy of the vote or if it permits the addition or changing of electronic votes. Also, it believes that the National Electoral Council is partial because four of its five members are pro-government.

Prior to fixing the date for the opposition vote last week, the three main aspirants, Borges, Rosales, and Petkoff, maintained a pact for finding a single candidate amongst themselves by some method, with the primaries as the last option.

Leon emphasized that “the opposition claims a lot that it is homogenous, perhaps it is only united by its desire to remove Chavez from power, but there are groups from the extreme left to the extreme right with distinct interests, objectives, and agendas.”

A new Chavez victory is outlined on the horizon, “favored by a voting preference of 55% or more, while his opposition combined does not exceed 20% at this moment,” he warned.

Saúl Cabrera, of Consultores 21, coincided in that “the indicator of confidence in Chavez, which profiles the voting intention in his favor, is 54%, while up to 26% trusts in some oppositionist and 24% in no leader.”

Among those who support Chavez, according to Cabrera, 20% are unconditional and the rest carry a load of conditions, while those who support the leaders of the opposition unconditionally merely add up to six percent of those surveyed.

According to Keller’s figures, Chavez’s popularity is at 58%, divided between a clearly political support of 30% and 28% “for transactional reasons,” that is, in order to make off with some privilege of the state.

In Venezuela, in contrast to other countries of Latin America, the clientelistic capacity of the state is very high, commented the pollster Alfredo Keller to IPS, to the extreme point that in his studies of a few years ago over half of those asked considered it to be unfair that they worked as much as they did, since they live in a very rich country.

The surveys of Datanalisis, Keller, and Consultores 21 are conducted in population centers of more than 20,000 inhabitants, in which 80% of the population lives.

Another polling firm, Hinterlaces, which studies the 15 main cities and combines surveying with focus groups, also identified 55% of voting intention in favor of Chavez, while registering seven percent for Rosales, five for Borges, three for Petkoff, two for Smith, and 17% for “someone new.”

“The only candidate who can confront Chavez successfully with some sort of margin of success, according to this study, is an ‘outsider,’ someone outside of the current political scheme and who still has not emerged,” Hinterlaces director Oscar Schemel told IPS.

In his opinion, an ample spectrum of the population, up to 49%, can be located in a “ni-ni” (neither-nor) space, since they like neither Chavez nor the opposition. Among the other half of the country, 33% is clearly Chavista and 16% is oppositional.

On the other hand, Keller maintains that 72% of those surveyed long for the emergence of a leader who can challenge Chavez’s prominence in the management of the country, “which indicates that many Chavistas want a strong and firm opposition leader, and this speaks well of the democratic foundation of Venezuelans.”

Schemel said that in his research the population transfers to this hypothetical leader strengths that encapsulate their values, such as that he be young, humble, comes from below and has suffered, that he has a concrete governing program and is not part of any political extremes.

This search, united by generalized rejection of the government’s management by a majority of those surveyed—above all in areas such as the management of personal security and unemployment—animates oppositionals to maintain themselves in campaign mode, despite the adverse conditions, according to Keller.

As of August there will probably be one or more opposition candidates and it cannot be dismissed that, with a few weeks to the elections, they decide to leave Chavez alone in the contest, if they believe the terms of the competition to be extremely disadvantageous or if an advance in the abstentionist tendency reduces their ability to get votes.

Translated from Spanish by Venezuelanalysis.com

Original Source: Diario Digital

Venezuela Says Unilateral Oil Cutoff to the U.S. is “Absurd”

Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez.
Credit: RNV

Caracas, Venezuela, July 17, 2006 —Venezuela’s embassy in the U.S. responded to the U.S. government’s speculation that Venezuela might cutoff its oil supply to the U.S. by saying that the possibility of this happening unilaterally is “absurd.” Venezuela’s Ambassador to the United States, Bernardo Alvarez, gave the response in a letter written to U.S. Senator Richard Lugar, who had commissioned the U.S. Congress General Accounting Office (GAO) to make an analysis of a potential Venezuelan oil cutoff.

The GAO study, which was released in June, indicates that the U.S. is more vulnerable now to a disruption in Venezuelan oil production than it was during the December 2002 to January 2003 opposition-led shutdown of its oil industry. Venezuela is the fourth largest oil importer to the U.S., supplying approximately 1.5 million barrels per day.

The GAO says that a six month disruption of production, would “lead to a reduction of up to $23 billion in U.S. gross domestic product.” Similarly, a Venezuelan oil supply embargo against the U.S. would mean an increase in the price of oil. The report also noted that, “These disruptions would also seriously hurt the heavily oil-dependent Venezuelan economy.”

Ambassador Alvarez’s July 6th letter to Senator Lugar, which was posted on the embassy’s website last Friday, laments that the GAO study embodies a “serious logical inconsistency.” On the one hand the report notes that in the event of an involuntary disruption of oil production, Venezuela would try to restart production as rapidly as possible, just as it did during the 2002/2003 oil industry shutdown because oil is so crucial to Venezuela’s economy. “Oil exports provide the revenues to the Venezuelan government that are vital for its programs and essential to its very viability,” says Alvarez in his letter.

On the other hand, the report does not give any consideration of what a voluntary disruption of oil supply to the U.S. means for Venezuela. “Yet, the GAO does not even make a reference to the absurdity of a unilateral action by the Venezuelan government purposefully to cut off oil exports given the GAO’s analysis of the importance of such exports to Venezuela, and its government, whoever may be president,” continues Alvarez.

Both the GAO report and the Ambassador’s letter suggest on several occasions the Venezuelan government’s commitment to supply oil to the U.S. According to Alvarez, this shows that Venezuela does not want to politicize this economic relationship. However, as the GAO report highlights, there are several instances in which the U.S. has discontinued cooperation between on energy related issues between the two countries.

The report mentions and Alvarez’s letter restates that, “i t was not Venezuela but the U.S. government, solely for political reasons, that has discontinued the bilateral technology and information energy exchange agreement between our two countries that had been successfully ongoing for over 20 years.” For Alvarez, this is “a strong indication of the imposed prohibition on U.S. agencies, like the Department of Energy, to engage effectively with Venezuela.”

This example and others show that while Venezuela wants to “ remove politics from the energy equation, the United States, unfortunately, has acted in ways more apparent than real in this regard.”

Also, the report speculates about the current level of Venezuelan oil production and suggests, on the basis of outside oil analysts, that it has declined from 3.1 million barrels per day (mpd) to 2.6 mpd since the 2002 oil industry shutdown. Alvarez’s letter, just as Venezuela’s state owned oil company PDVSA, denies this to be true. However, even if it were true, the fact, which the GAO acknowledges, that Venezuela is currently supplying just as much to the U.S. as it did before the oil industry shutdown, shows Venezuela’s commitment to the U.S. market.

Finally, with regard to speculation that Venezuela is seeking to replace the U.S. market with that of China and/or India, Alvarez’s letter clarifies, “As any sensible supplier, we are constantly looking for new customers, as we continue to serve existing, and especially long-standing, customers. This should be no cause for alarm,” says Alvarez.