News
Venezuela Plans More Oil Discounts:
2 from Mass. play role in deal for region
By Susan Milligan
Boston Globe
April 25, 2006
CARACAS -- Leftist President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela said yesterday he would greatly expand the discounted home heating oil program he started last year for needy people in Massachusetts and other northeastern states.
Chavez, a firebrand populist who has clashed repeatedly with President Bush, said in an interview with the Globe that he would extend the program for next year and increase the amount of cheaper oil available. Former US representative Joseph P. Kennedy II, who was among a group that negotiated the deal with Chavez, said customers would have more direct access to the heating oil and would be subject to looser eligibility rules.
Chavez made the pledge in an interview after meeting with a group including Representative William D. Delahunt, Democrat of Quincy, and Kennedy, who is now chairman of Citizens Energy, a nonprofit Massachusetts group. The two had played a key role in negotiating the initial deal with Chavez last year that sent 12 million gallons of reduced-cost heating oil to Bay Staters this winter, which assisted about 45,000 needy families. Several other states negotiated similar deals.
That program set off sharp criticism from some Republicans who said Delahunt was playing into the hands of Chavez and undermining US foreign policy by dealing with an anti-American populist with a questionable human rights record. The initiative to renew the discount oil program for the coming winter is certain to intensify the political battles in the United States over how to respond to the high price of gasoline and home energy costs -- including whether the US government is itself doing enough to help the poor confront soaring fuel costs.
While Chavez did not say how much more oil would be made available this year, he said in an interview after meeting the delegation that he will move to a ''second stage, an expansion and deepening of the project." The oil will again be provided by CITGO, the US distribution arm of the Venezuelan state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela.
While the controversial Venezuelan leader has irked the administration and other critics with his anti-Bush rhetoric, he said yesterday that he had no problems with the American people. ''The only things we feel about the American people are affection, caring, and the willingness to improve relations," Chavez said in the interview in his Miraflores presidential palace.
This past winter, Venezuela made 9 million gallons of heating fuel available to Massachusetts families, and another 3 million to institutions that serve the poor. Families got a 200-gallon shipment -- enough to last about three weeks -- for about $276, which means a savings of about $184. The discounted fuel was available through the Citizens Energy nonprofit organization to families eligible for federal fuel oil assistance, which offers an annual subsidy of $550.
The expansion of the Venezuelan cut-rate oil offering is part of an effort to begin to repair US-Venezuelan relations after years of confrontation, Chavez said after his meeting with Delahunt, Kennedy and US Representative Gregory W. Meeks, a Democrat from Queens, N.Y.
Kennedy and the two congressmen hailed the agreement as critical relief to low-income families facing growing energy costs. The three dismissed suggestions that they were giving Chavez yet another opportunity to tweak the US president, whom Chavez has called ''Mr. Dangerous" and a ''murderer."
Longtime Massachusetts Republican consultant Charles Manning, refering to Chavez as ''the most . . . anti-American government leader in South America," called the relationship between the Venezuelan president and the proponents of the heating oil program unsavory and hypocritical.
''If Hugo Chavez wants to play politics in our country by giving us low-cost oil while he's short-changing the people of Venezuela, that's fine with me," Manning said last night. ''But it shows you what type of bad guy he is, and I don't understand why Delahunt and Kennedy would want to do business with someone like that."
Under the ''second stage" of the program, the oil will be delivered more directly to consumers and the eligibility terms will be broadened, Kennedy said. Details and amounts of the fuel to be involved in the second phase were not disclosed.
Kennedy said he had written to every major company in the US oil business -- an industry now enjoying record profits -- and asked for discounted oil for the poor, but was turned down by all of them. Only Venezuela agreed to provide cut-rate home heating oil, he said.
Delahunt also shrugged off criticism of the program, and accused Republicans of failing to give enough funding to the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which provides cash assistance to needy families for heating and cooling homes.
''We want to get more [discounted Venezuelan oil], particularly when we're looking at $3 a gallon at the pump and $70 a barrel" for oil, Delahunt said. ''We want to extend the deal because we don't have confidence in the administration and the Republican Congress to deliver adequate dollars for the LIHEAP program." Congress has repeatedly failed to come through with the full amount of money it has promised for LIHEAP.
The move served to boost the goals of all the parties in the negotiations: Delahunt and Meeks got lower-cost heating oil for their districts; Kennedy got a promise of cheaper oil for his customers, and Chavez got another opportunity to needle Bush.
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