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Venezuela's $5m OPEC extravaganza
Rafael Ramírez Carreño, Minister of Energy and Petroleum and President of PDVSA, said Venezuela is ready to receive the ministers and delegations that will be attending the 141st Extraordinary Meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) Conference to be held in Caracas on June 1st.By Carola Hoyos
Market Watch
London
Petroleumworld.com 05 30 06When energy ministers of the world's biggest oil exporting countries arrive in Caracas this week, new armoured Mercedes limousines will take them to hotel suites kitted out with specially commissioned soaps made from exotic fruits.
Members of the committee planning the meeting of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, the oil producers group, even discussed embroidering bedsheets with each minister's name.
The price tag for the lavish Caracas meeting is 20 times higher than that of the more regular Vienna-held Opec meeting and tops the $3m (£1.6m) Kuwait spent on its meeting in December.
Venezuela, whose per capita income is $6,467 a year, is spending $5m on hosting Thursday's Opec meeting.
Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's populist president, is planning to give a speech at Angel Falls, the country's spectacular jungle waterfall, and the world's largest. Boat rides and a possible trip to a Caribbean holiday island are also on offer for ministers who feel up to it. Mr Chávez has left little to chance in this show of largesse.
A 53-page manual explains Opec and "the culture of Arab, Muslim countries". It also includes a poem in praise of Mr Chávez: "His country is about oil, but his heart is still flesh and blood, not money."
At the meeting, Opec production quotas will almost certainly not be changed. But Mr Chávez is expected to use the occasion to get across his political message of "High oil prices are good, US President George W. Bush is bad."
Resource nationalism in an era of $70 a barrel is making many other Opec countries uneasy. Saudi Arabia, the group's most powerful member and an ally of the US, has worked hard to shift Opec's image from that of an oil weapon-wielding cartel to a reliable supplier maintaining stable prices.
An energy adviser to the US government said: "The Venezuelans will try to use this as a political forum and some of the other Opec countries would rather to stick to business."
Mexico, Latin America's biggest oil producer and an Opec observer country, usually sends delegates to meetings, but has decided to sit this one out. Kuwaiti officials are quietly relieved that their energy minister will not be present, even though the reason for his absence is a change in Kuwait's parliament, rather than a decision to snub Venezuela.
Other Latin American countries, such as Peru, Brazil and Colombia also disagree with Mr Chávez's approach and worry that it is driving away investors from the entire continent.
Armando Zamora, director of Colombia's national hydrocarbon agency, said in an interview: "It concerns us because for the general investor, Latin America is one unified region. But certainly, that is not the case. In fact, we think very differently."
In fact, Venezuela's only political soul mate at the meeting will be Iran.
Market Watch 28 05 06
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