VENEZUELA'S CHAVEZ TAKES ON THE US
By Hazel Henderson (*)(720 words)
IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE, SEPTEMBER 2000
SAINT AUGUSTINE, Sep (IPS) - Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has reinvigorated OPEC and become a hero in much of the developing world as a spunky new challenger to US global hegemony.
In response, US officials are repeating many of the mistakes that soured their relations with Latin America in the past. Their clumsy warnings not to visit Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein or Libyan leader Muammar Khaddafi during Chavez' recent world tour only insured that he would. Such interference by the US only hardens OPEC's resolve to maintain its new price band.
Round One of OPEC vs the US is a clear victory for OPEC, thanks largely to Venezuela, a key player in and founder of the forty- year old oil producers' cartel. For starters, the US is on shaky moral ground in its demands for lower oil prices: it still uses about twice the energy per unit of GNP as Japan and Europe, while generating that much more pollution.
Moreover, in contrast to the political and media scapegoating of the cartel as the villain in the oil price spike, OPEC gets less in real dollars for its oil today at USD 30 per barrel than it did in the 1970s.
Few politicians care to remind US and European voters that the lion's share of consumer oil prices consists of taxes and refinery mark-ups. Less than 40 percent of the price of oil is the cost of the oil itself. It was the refiners playing roulette with their inventories, trying to beat price movements, that caused the short stocks of oil.
The US was especially vulnerable to an oil price hike. Special interests made sure that Congress avoided any legislation to improve auto efficiency and blocked ratification of the Kyoto Accords on reducing climate-changing air pollutants. US energy efficiency advances have stalled, and the economy remains oil dependent and so vulnerable to inflation and/or recession -- a fact the US has blinded itself to by removing oil from the Consumer Price Index.
US policymakers and media have aggravated the situation by demonizing President Chavez -- which assured his continued overwhelming popular support in the recent Venezuelan election and burnished his image among the majority of the world's developing countries.
But US voters may be wiser than their leaders, in the long run. Americans overwhelmingly support environmental goals, technologies of efficiency and clean, renewable energy. And higher oil prices will help push the automobile industry into offering the long- delayed clean, high mileage, affordable cars that consumers want.
The Venezuelan founders of OPEC, President Romolo Betancourt and his energy minister, Juan Pablo Perez Alfonso, always stressed that oil was a precious resource that would run out early in this new century -- part of the reason they fostered OPEC. They also believed in solar, hydrogen, wind, ocean and other renewable energy sources, as well as in conservation -- which American oil, coal and automobile lobbies are still trying to hold back. Instead they should start investing more in this cleaner, greener future.
Round Two of the face-off may also go to OPEC. Chavez recently inaugurated the first International Seminar on New World Trends and the Future of Oil and Energy in Caracas, which supported OPEC's new price band and concurs that the organization is being falsely targeted in recent price rises.
The Seminar experts also offered OPEC some far-reaching, strategic advice:
- Set up a fund for new energy technologies to keep abreast of the super-major oil companies, Shell, BP and their shifting investments from oil into solar, hydrogen and other renewable energy sources.
- Switch its focus to its cleaner gas resources, while gaining income and carbon credits under the Kyoto Accords by reducing pollution.
- Set up an electronic barter exchange for OPEC's petroleum. This would enable less developed OPEC member countries -- Nigeria, Libya, Algeria and Indonesia -- to bypass the world's global casino of some 1.5 billion daily dollars currency trading (most of which is speculation). This would also allow OPEC member countries that are short of foreign exchange to trade their excess oil directly with other countries and buyers for other commodities, goods and services they need: from tractors and generators to solar collectors, wind and water turbines and internet access to improve the lives of their own rural peoples.
Perhaps Round Three will be a win-win for OPEC, the USA and the world. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)
(*) Hazel Henderson, author, futurist and consultant on sustainable development. Her latest book is ''Beyond Globalization: Shaping a Sustainable Global Economy''.
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