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Falling oil prices won't stop Venezuela revolution: Chavez
CARACAS
Petroleumworld.com, November 24, 2008Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez vowed to press ahead with his socialist revolution despite tumbling oil prices, after voting Sunday in local elections seen as a test for his popularity.
"Even when prices remain at 50 dollars or less, the Venezuelan economy, this nation, this country will continue its march. Nothing will stop ... the building of Venezuela's socialist project," Chavez said.
Venezuelan crude prices fell this week to 40.68 dollars per barrel, after floating above 120 dollars in the middle of the year.
The government calculated a price of 60 dollars per barrel in the 2009 budget -- which finances the popular social programs underpinning Chavez's support -- but the fierce anti-liberal shrugged off concerns over falling prices.
Chavez said previous peaks were unfair to poor, non-oil producing countries.
"It was more worrying when it (oil) was at 150 (dollars per barrel) and not 50 dollars. At 150, it hit all the countries of Central America and the Caribbean and it doesn't seem fair that we were getting a price with no relation to any economic rationality," Chavez said.
However, Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez said Sunday that Venezuela would seek a cut in crude production of 1.0 million barrels per day by the end of the year at an OPEC oil cartel meeting in Cairo next weekend to try to slow the price slide.
OPEC agreed on October 24 to reduce production by 1.5 million barrels per day from November 1 but prices have since continued to sink.
Oil-rich Venezuela officialy produces 3.24 million barrels of oil a day, but according to OPEC it produces no more than 2.33 million bpd.
"The price of oil isn't the big worry, it's the world crisis," Chavez said.
Caracas will shortly host a summit of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, or ALBA, trade body -- set up by Venezuela and Cuba in 2004 -- to discuss the crisis, he added.
"The United States says the crisis will be solved with more market freedom. That's crazy, it's like taking a bronchitis sufferer and putting them in a freezer."
Story from AFP
AFP 23 1851 GMT 11 08
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