Venezuelan firm to provide fuel oil for villagers

The Associated Press

Rural Alaska homes will stay warm this winter with help from a gift from a Venezuelan-owned oil refiner and a leader who has been a thorn in the side of President George W. Bush.

A roughly $5 million donation from Houston-based Citgo will buy 100 gallons of fuel for every household in 151 villages and comes with the blessing of Venezuela President Hugo Chavez.

Margaret Williams of Hughes said it does not matter who is providing the heating fuel, which costs about $6 per gallon in the Koyukuk River village of 69.

“We sure could welcome it,” she said. “As long as we don’t have to pay.”

In the Kobuk River village of Ambler, heating fuel is more than $7 per gallon. Residents in the village of 283 are ecstatic over the gift, said tribal administrator Virginia Commack.

“It’s a miracle,” she said.

The gift will free cash for gasoline so villagers can hunt more caribou and moose, she said.

Daniel Ellanak, who works for the tribal government on Ouzinkie near Kodiak Island, helped spur the gift. In May, he gave a presentation at a tribal environmental conference near San Diego that touched on village fuel woes, he said.

A representative of Citgo, an oil refiner owned by Venezuela’s national oil company, told Ellanak about the company’s effort to provide fuel to poor people and offered to help.

“His point was Big Oil is not without compassion,” said Ellanak.

Ellanak was aware of Chavez’s possible political gamesmanship.

Experts on Latin American policy are divided over whether the gift is genuine generosity or a political ploy.

Most rural residents do not care about the politics, said Steve Sumida, acting director of the Alaska Inter-Tribal Council. They just want to stay warm this winter, he said.

The council, a nonprofit representing Alaska’s tribal governments, agreed to spearhead the program in Alaska with help from regional Native nonprofit agencies. The money is intended to buy oil and all help has been volunteer.

Sumida hopes the program will begin Nov. 1, with nonprofit groups receiving Citgo money and buying fuel for villages with more than 80 percent Alaska Native populations, he said.

Fuel is shipped to most Bush communities by barge or plane, which greatly increases the costs.