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COMMENTARY
PetroCaribe: Venezuela’s oil-for-votes program
by COHA Research Associates
Saturday, July 2, 2005
Under the patronage of Venezuelan President
Hugo Chávez, Caribbean leaders came together at last Wednesday’s inaugural
Caribbean Energy Summit to found the regional energy cooperative PetroCaribe.
The project is intended to aid weak
Caribbean economies in the face of staggering energy price increases by
providing Venezuelan-subsidized crude oil to CARICOM’s fourteen signatories.
PetroCaribe’s objective was not limited,
however, to providing cheap petroleum; it is described by its architects as a
“new political and commercial initiative” with a focus on regional solidarity
and “a broad vision that touches not only on energy, but on the social,
technological, and cultural.”
In other, perhaps more transparent language, PetroCaribe represents Chávez’s
effort to utilize his country’s massive oil reserves to solidify support in
the Caribbean.
Though the concept of exchanging of oil for
political loyalty is hardly new (Venezuela and Mexico have both provided
subsidized petroleum to the region since 1980), PetroCaribe demonstrates
Chávez’s economic and political astuteness, exploiting the fact that while oil
plays a major role in the Caribbean economies, the region, excluding Cuba and
the Dominican Republic, imports only 34,000 barrels per day.
Compared to the 1.5 million barrels per day
Venezuela supplies to the U.S., the Caribbean’s demand represents just a drop
in the oil bucket.
Effectively, with PetroCaribe, Chávez has
made out like a Beltway Bandit, securing the allegiance of his Caribbean
neighbors on a very low budget and adding a number of grateful
English-speaking islands to the pro-Venezuela vote column.
Also affected is U.S. diplomacy, which must
acknowledge that in spite of Washington’s best efforts, it is the U.S. rather
than Havana that is isolated from the area’s mainstream.
The Council on Hemispheric Affairs, founded in 1975, is an independent,
non-profit, non-partisan, tax-exempt research and information organization. It
has been described on the Senate floor as being “one of the nation’s most
respected bodies of scholars and policy makers.” For more information, visit
www.coha.org or email
coha@coha.org.
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