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Lawmakers seek info on cheap Venezuela oil going to poor Americans
The Associated Press
The House Energy chairman said Feb. 16 he suspects politics, not charity, is behind the Venezuelan offer to provide cheap heating oil to poor Americans.
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton, R-Texas, and Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., chairman of the subcommittee for oversight and investigations, wrote to Houston-based Citgo Petroleum Corp., a subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, on Feb. 15 asking officials to provide them with all records pertaining to the program by Feb. 23.
They said they are concerned the oil deals are “part of an unfriendly government’s increasingly belligerent and hostile foreign policy toward” the United States.
The letter came as the U.S. and Venezuelan ambassadors began talking after a diplomatic rift marked by expulsions and threats to cut off oil supplies.
Citgo spokesman David McCollum declined comment Feb. 16, saying company officials were still studying the request. Lawmakers concerned about motivations The two lawmakers said Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s “purportedly altruistic motives may camouflage his true motivations” in providing the low-cost oil to Americans.
“Given President Chavez’s clear anti-American sentiments, his current efforts must be viewed with concern that he is attempting to politicize the debate over U.S. energy policy,” Barton and Whitfield wrote.
The letter drew a mocking response from some Northeast lawmakers, who have been supportive of the deal to help low-income families, particularly given this winter’s high fuel prices.
“It’s transparent, it’s petty, it’s political,” said Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass., who helped broker the original deal for cut-rate oil between Venezuelan officials and Massachusetts last year. “Obviously, this is an effort to politicize a program that’s really making a difference in the lives of people.”
Tensions have run high between the Bush administration and Chavez, a self-styled socialist who has been a sharp critic of American-style capitalism and has branded President Bush a “madman.”
Delahunt said he is pushing to extend the current agreement with Citgo for five years in Massachusetts.
In mid-February Citgo extended its discounted heating oil sales to Delaware and the Philadelphia area. Massachusetts, New York, Maine, Rhode Island, Vermont and Connecticut are also participating in Citgo’s program.
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