Venezuela
sells cheap heating oil to Delaware poor
AFP
CARACAS
Petroleumworld.com
02 15 06
Venezuela's state oil company said its US subsidiary on Tuesday
began selling discount heating oil to the poor in Delaware, the
seventh US state to benefit from its winter aid program.
Petroleos de Venezuela said CITGO had sold the heating oil at
40 percent below the market price, which would benefit 5,000 families
in the mid-Atlantic East Coast state.
Delaware was the seventh US state in which CITGO has sold heating
oil at that discount, PDVSA said in a statement.
PDVSA's extension of heating aid to poor Americans and Native
American Indians comes amid deep tensions between Washington and
Caracas, spurred by President Hugo Chavez's fierce opposition
to US free-trade policies.
The Venezuelan president, a major ally of communist Cuba's Fidel
Castro, has also accused Washington of plotting to topple him.
The heating aid initiative followed a pledge by Chavez to help
the poor of the world's richest nation during a visit to New York
in September 2005 for a UN summit.
It comes as Americans worry about the high cost of fuel and question
the windfalls enjoyed by US oil companies from the surge in energy
prices.
CITGO launched the aid program in November in the US city of Boston,
in the northeastern state of Massachusetts, and in The Bronx borough
of New York City.
It has since been extended to Maine, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania
and Vermont, according to CITGO's website, www.citgo.com.
PDVSA said Tuesday that CITGO would send additional deliveries
of heating fuel in the coming days to the New York City borough
of Queens.
Those deliveries would complete the 55,000 barrels of subsidized
heating fuel that CITGO daily supplies to the United States, it
said.
Venezuela is the number four supplier of crude oil to the United
States after Canada, Mexico and Saudi Arabia.
The only Latin American member of the Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries, Venezuela has a production quota of 3.2 million
barrels per day, of which it sells about 1.5 million to the US.
CITGO sells a variety of oils and lubricants and has nearly 14,000
gas (petrol) stations in the US.
AFP
02 14 06
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