Chavez Bloc Races with Oil Cartel to Grid the Continent

As the left-populist Evo Morales takes office in Bolivia, a clear anti-imperialist bloc is consolidating in South America, led by Venezulea’s Hugo Chavez and also including Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and potentially Chile. Days before Morales was inaugurated Jan. 22, Chavez and other regional leaders met in Brasilia to announce ambitious plans for new gas and oil pipelines spanning the continent, linking national markets across vast areas of rainforest and towering mountains.

Now a race is on between a series of pipeline projects already being developed under the auspices of multinational corporations and the proposal unveiled at Brasilia: the first predicated on extracting resources from South America with the minimum return to the continent’s inhabitants; the other on harnessing those resources to lift the continent’s masses out of poverty.

…An imperative for Venezuela in the regional integration is to open South American markets for its hydrocarbon resources and lessen its dependence on the US, which now takes about two-thirds of the country’s oil exports.

But Venezuela is having trouble meeting its own internal demand. Venezuela in December actually cut home deliveries of heating and cooking fuel in some eastern states because of natural gas shortages. However, Chavez boasted to reporters in Brasilia that Venezuela’s capacity may double as the country develops offshore fields near the border with Colombia and off Trinidad and Tobago.

Energy Bulletin