Venezuela's president tells world to 'forget about cheap oil'
Agence France-Presse
March 5, 2005
uk.news.yahoo.com
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fromthewilderness.com
NEW DELHI (AFP) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, whose country is the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, said that the world should get used to high oil prices.
"The world should forget about cheap oil ... it won't happen," Chavez told a news conference in the Indian capital on Saturday, saying that the new price range for oil would remain between 40 dollars and 50 dollars.
"That is the new band for oil," said Chavez, whose country is the only South American member of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
Chavez, on the second day of a visit to India where he signed a slew of energy and other agreements, said the "world needs a fair price for oil."
"We are evaluating how we can stabilise the price of oil (within the 40 dollar to 50 dollar band)," he said.
He added later, however, he was certain the prices "will go up even further" than the 40 dollar to 50 dollar range, given rising prices of other goods.
New York's main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in April, rose 21 cents to 53.78 dollars a barrel Friday, hitting a four-month closing high.
Oil prices have been pushing higher amid growing concern that the global economy was likely to need more oil to keep up with economic growth, and that the OPEC may be keeping supplies tight.
World oil prices have nearly trebled from about 20 dollars a barrel in New York at the start of 2002. Adjusted for inflation, however, they remain far below levels reached in the wake of the 1979 Iranian revolution, when prices surged to more than 80 dollars a barrel in today's dollars.
Chavez's comments came after India, which imports 70 percent of its crude oil needs, signed a deal to take a 49 percent stake in Venezuela's San Cristobal oil field. |
