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Bitter labor dispute at Venezuelan oil monopoly begins to affect
exports
FABIOLA SANCHEZ, Associated Press Writer
Saturday, April 6, 2002
©2002 Associated Press
URL:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2002/04/06/international0329EST0446.DTL
(04-06) 00:29 PST CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) --
An escalating confrontation between the government and workers
at one of the world's largest oil companies has started to affect
exports from Venezuela -- the largest foreign supplier of oil
to the United States.
Protesting workers closed two of Venezuela's five major loading
terminals Friday, stranding a dozen ships waiting to load cargo,
Venezuelan oil officials told Dow Jones Newswires.
Staff at state-run Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, are protesting
President Hugo Chavez's appointment of five board members to
the company's seven-member board, claiming the appointments were
political. They also want fired dissident executives reinstated.
The leftist Chavez refuses to budge, creating a bitter standoff
whose outcome could rock global oil markets.
The closed terminals include the El Palito, which serves the
domestic market, and Puerto La Cruz, which ships about 12 percent
of Venezuelan exports.
A clash between government supporters and opposition party members
at a drilling site in the eastern state of Monagas on Thursday
left two oil workers dead and three injured, police said Friday.
In Caracas, police stood outside PDVSA headquarters to keep protesters
and pro- government demonstrators apart.
Venezuela's largest oil union had yet to join the month-old protest,
which is mainly by administrative workers, but the possibility
of a strike affecting all PDVSA operations was growing each day,
said Juan Fernandez, a spokesman for dissident white-collar oil
workers.
"Potentially, this is a bigger threat for the U.S. market than
disruptions in the Middle East, which are hypothetical. This
isn't hypothetical," said John Lichtblau, chairman of the nonprofit
Petroleum Industry Research Foundation in New York City.
Lichtblau said market prices could rise rapidly if the work stoppages
seriously affect production. Venezuela shipped an average 1.3
million barrels per day of crude and 400,000 barrels daily in
refined products to the United States last year. Total U.S. daily
imports of crude were 9.1 million barrels.
Chief mediator and lawmaker Luis Salas on Friday gave up on his
efforts to negotiate a solution. PDVSA's board, meanwhile, suspended
four top dissident managers in the corporation's refining sector.
PDVSA President Gaston Parra insisted that supplies were normal,
while Attorney General Isaias Rodriguez said there were legal
alternatives to a presidential state of emergency decree that
would stop disruptions and dislodge protesting workers.
Oil is the South American nation's economic lifeblood and Chavez
has vowed not to let protests disrupt production and exports.
The Fedepetrol union, which represents about 25,000 oil workers,
refused to support the executives' protests. Fedecamaras, Venezuela's
largest business confederation, endorsed the demonstrations.
©2002 Associated Press
