Venezuela’s Bluster

Despite Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s recent threats to cut off oil exports to the United States in protest of President Bush’s international policies, this isn’t likely to happen. The United States now buys 60 percent of Venezuela’s oil exports. Mr. Chavez

is looking for new markets and has signed a deal to sell 120,000 barrels of oil a month to China. In December, the United States bought 1.34 million barrels a day from Venezuela. In addition, many U.S. refineries are built to handle high-sulfur Venezuelan crude. China has no such refinery.

Still, the United States is wise to investigate other sources of imported oil. Sen. Richard Lugar recently asked the Government Accountability Office to study how the United States might compensate for a decrease in imports from Venez-uela, which currently accounts for about 15 percent of U.S. oil imports.

Such a review is warranted for economic, more than political, reasons. The Organization of Oil Exporting Countries estimates that Venezuela is producing 2.6 million barrels a day, a sharp decline from 3.3 million in 1997. According to Business Week, production at some of the country’s most important wells is dropping by 25 percent a year. To counter this, increased exploration is necessary but the number of exploratory wells has been cut nearly in half since 1997. There is evidence, Business Week reported this week, that the country’s state-run oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, is being starved of capital, while President Chavez uses its profits – which are helped by record-high oil prices – to fund new government programs.

Like the country’s oil company, Mr. Chavez is full of contradictions. Elected president in 1998, Mr. Chavez has enacted land reforms, improved health care and schools and food and water supplies. At the same time, he has fired longtime government bureaucrats and replaced them with cronies and recently enacted what amounts to a media censorship law. This is not the type of democracy that Washington supports. Worse, President Chavez has begun buying guns and helicopters from Russia and fighter planes from Brazil.

So far, the United States and Venez-uela are engaged in a war of words and it is likely to stay that way, according to Ariel Armony, a Latin American studies professor at Colby College. Neither president will be in office forever and they need each other more than they care to admit, Professor Armony notes.

Expect more harsh words in the meantime.