Chavez: OPEC must never fall on its knees again

The self-styled revolutionary and champion of the poor is seen promoting Venezuela's defiant stance against leading oil consumers.

'We must never allow ourselves to fall again on our knees.'

August 15, 2000, 12:39 PM ALGIERS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Monday that OPEC leaders he had met during his current tour agreed on the need to keep oil prices fair and that the cartel should never fall on its knees again. Chavez said in Nigeria before flying to Algeria at the end of his tour of member states of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries that any fall in prices below the present level would be like passing a "death sentence" for producers like Venezuela.

"We have made an evaluation of all the scenarios during this tour and we insisted on the necessity of keeping just prices and the need for OPEC not to fall on its knees," he told reporters on arrival at Algiers airport on the final leg of his tour.

"We must never allow ourselves to fall again on our knees," he added in an apparent reference to budget shortfalls in many OPEC countries after the oil price crash of 1998 and 1999.

Since March 1999, when a change of government in Venezuela brought OPEC's worst output quota buster into line, the cartel has been enjoying a rare period of unity and prosperity with relatively high levels of quota compliance.

After fuelling sky-high oil prices last year with drastic export curbs, Chavez is seeking to raise the political profile of an organisation that fell into obscurity for years as a result of political disputes, quota busting and even war.

A decade after a US-led western alliance drove Saddam Hussein's invading forces out of Kuwait back to Iraq, Chavez has said he hopes the time is right for tighter integration in the fractious cartel as it approaches its 40th birthday.

Chavez has been touring to invite member states of OPEC to the cartel's first summit in 25 years in Caracas at the end of September.

While OPEC holds regular meetings of its oil ministers - in neutral Vienna - to decide on output quotas, Chavez wants top-level contact between the 11 members of the group that owns two-thirds of the world's oil reserves and exports.

But the self-styled revolutionary and champion of the poor has also used the tour to promote Venezuela's defiant stance against leading oil consumers.

"OPEC is not the devil that the developed countries (try to) make the people of the world believe," Chavez said in Abuja after talks with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo.

"We have to explain to the people in the US, to the people of the UK and the people of Japan to know the truth," he said. "What we want is a fair price - not high but fair.

That is fundamental to the development of our economy." Oil markets shot higher on Monday after exultant Chavez hailed current price levels he said would help develop the economies of fellow cartel members.

Benchmark Brent crude for September delivery added 90 cents to a new eight-week high of $31.47 a barrel, up a robust 15 percent over the past two weeks on lower than expected supply and within half a dollar of the post-Gulf War high of $31.95.

US light crudes ended up 92 cents at $31.94 a barrel.

Six OPEC leaders will attend summit

Chavez said in Algeria that six OPEC leaders, including himself, will attend the Caracas summit.

"The leaders of Iraq and Libya will not attend for reasons that we know. The same with (the leaders of) Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, who have problems and who cannot attend the summit," he said.

But he added that the five OPEC members will send high-ranking delegations to the summit.

"We have achieved our goals. Bouteflika was the first who called for such a summit and he will open the summit with a keynote speech," he said, referring to the president of Algeria, which hosted OPEC`s first summit in 1975.

Chavez said the summit would discuss the need to set up a "new OPEC and adapt it to the new challenges." Other proposals made by Venezuela is to create an OPEC bank to finance social and economic development projects in member states and also create an OPEC university, he said.

"We need to organise such a summit every four or five years," he added.

http://www.arabia.com/article/0,1690,Business|27040,00.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), August 16, 2000

Answers

Considering the price of a whopper at burger king has gone up consistantly with inflation so should gasoline and other petro products, yes I know it's "un-american" to pay more then 50" for gas. I felt that way about a whopper when it went above 59", now it's almost $2 and the quaility is way down.

See this article about Oil 1973 vs 2000 the similarites are scary, and so are the consequences -- surfed on to this article from http://www.Itulip.com it's in .pdf and 50+ pages a good read though.

http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/web/downloads/whitepaper.pdf

-- (perry@ofuzzy1.com), August 16, 2000.