ogj.pennnet.com DATE: January 14, 2003 FROM: PR Newswire COPYRIGHT: Copyright © 2003 PR Newswire Association LLC. All rights reserved.

LYONDELL-CITGO Refining LP Expects Return to Near-Normal Operating Rates During February

HOUSTON, Jan. 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Lyondell Chemical Company (NYSE:LYO) today announced that operating rates at LYONDELL-CITGO Refining LP (LCR) are increasing. After temporarily limiting operations to approximately 50 percent in late December and early January, LCR expects to increase rates and have both of its distillation units in operation within the next week. LCR is a joint venture between Lyondell and CITGO Petroleum Corporation.

Since the strike in Venezuela disrupted regular contracted shipments, LCR has maintained operations by processing crude oil from a combination of sources, including shipments from Venezuela, purchases on the spot market and inventories on hand. Prior to the strike, LCR was receiving its full contract supply (230,000 barrels per day) of Venezuelan crude oil from PDVSA (Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A.). LCR's total refining capacity is 268,000 barrels per day.

"We're pleased that shipments to LCR are now increasing and that LCR has successfully plotted a course that we expect will take it to near-full rates over the next month," said Morris Gelb, Lyondell's Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. "During this time, our highest priorities continue to be safety and operational excellence at our facilities."

LCR put contingency plans in place prior to the beginning of the Venezuelan strike. Recently the refinery temporarily postponed several discretionary projects, leading to a short-term reduction in the number of contract workers at the facility. No permanent LCR employee positions have been affected. LCR will continue to monitor the situation in Venezuela and will make any necessary adjustments to operations based on delivery logistics and available information.

Lyondell Chemical Company, (www.lyondell.com ), headquartered in Houston, Texas, is a leading producer of propylene oxide (PO), propylene glycol (PG) and other PO derivatives such as butanediol (BDO) and propylene glycol ether (PGE). Lyondell also is the world's number three supplier of toluene diisocyanate (TDI) and a producer of styrene monomer and MTBE as co-products of PO production. Through its 70.5% interest in Equistar Chemicals, LP, Lyondell also is one of the largest producers of ethylene, propylene and polyethylene in North America, as well as a leading producer of polypropylene, ethylene oxide, ethylene glycol, high value-added specialty polymers and polymeric powder. Through its 58.75% interest in LYONDELL-CITGO Refining LP, Lyondell is one of the largest refiners in the United States, processing extra heavy Venezuelan crude oil to produce gasoline, low sulfur diesel and jet fuel.

Source: Lyondell Chemical Company

CONTACT: media, Anne M. Knisely, +1-713-309-2643, or investors, Douglas J. Pike, +1-713-309-7141, both of Lyondell Chemical Company

www.yomiuri.co.jp Takao Kuroi Yomiuri Shimbun Correspondent

This is the ninth in a series of articles on international security issues facing the United States and the rest of the world.

On Dec. 20 and 21 in Washington, 11 Iraqis working in the oil industry and living outside Iraq gathered for a meeting hosted by the U.S. State Department to discuss the future of Iraqi crude oil and energy.

Details of what was discussed at the meeting, and even the list of attendees and the meeting's locale, have not been disclosed by the department.

Though the U.S. government has remained silent as to the goal of the meeting, people associated with the oil industry have said Washington's decision to hold the conference reflects its desire to gain a greater say in Iraqi oil exports by cooperating even more closely with Iraqi dissidents, in the belief the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein will collapse sooner or later.

Iraq has 112 billion barrels of oil in reserves, the second-largest reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia. But under U.N. economic sanctions, Baghdad now is allowed to export crude oil only to purchase humanitarian supplies, such as food and medicine.

If crude oil from Iraq is released into worldwide markets, the supply-and-demand relationship will change and oil prices will drop quickly.

In that event, the price-controlling power of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which has dominated the global oil market, will be weakened dramatically, resulting in the "democratization of the oil market" sought by the United States.

In addition, if the United States can gain rights to Iraqi oil, Washington's influence on oil markets will increase drastically.

Though the U.S. government has denied the allegation, many in the oil industry hold the deep-rooted opinion that the purpose of the anticipated attack on Iraq is securing U.S. crude oil interests there.

The United States and OPEC leader Saudi Arabia share a special relationship, under which Saudi Arabia stabilizes oil prices and the United States protects the country from invasion by other nations, according to Joe Barnes, a research fellow at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston.

The relationship has stabilized crude oil prices since the 1980s, working as the engine for world economic growth.

However, the situation changed completely after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.

Because many of the attackers came from Saudi Arabia, hard-liners in the United States after the attacks argued even more strongly that Saudi Arabia was the United States' real enemy.

In Saudi Arabia also, anti-U.S. sentiment grew amid increasing social anxiety about various domestic problems, such as the rising unemployment rate. This sentiment was evident in the Saudi refusal to provide bases to U.S. forces in the event of an attack on Iraq.

There are lingering rumors that Saudi plutocrats are withdrawing funds from the United States.

At the end of the summer, people working in crude oil markets circulated the rumor that Nigeria would secede from OPEC to comply with the wishes of Washington.

Nigeria has actively developed its oil fields with investment from U.S.-affiliated major oil companies, and conflicts of opinion have surfaced between the African country and Saudi Arabia.

Though both the U.S. and Nigerian governments denied the speculation, an official of a Japanese company in Nigeria said, "The controversy over Nigeria's secession is a U.S. trick to estrange OPEC members."

OPEC on Sunday decided to increase crude oil output by 1.5 million barrels per day, partly because of the current general strike in Venezuela, to promote its control of the global oil market.

But the United States has been making careful preparations to reassert the control it enjoyed during the golden years of its major oil companies.

As if in inverse proportion to cooling relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia, Washington and Moscow have been warming up recently.

Russia is now the world's second-largest oil producer, due to efforts by Russian President Vladimir Putin's administration to increase oil output.

In early October, the first U.S.-Russia Energy Summit was held in Houston, the home turf of U.S. President George W. Bush.

Energy ministers and top officials of more than 100 oil and gas companies from the two countries gathered to exchange opinions about crude oil exports from Russia to the United States and expanding U.S. investment in Russia.

At a U.S.-Russia summit meeting in November in St. Petersburg, the two leaders issued a joint declaration promoting energy development cooperation by the public and private sectors, indicating the countries are still in the honeymoon phase of their relationship.

For the United States, which consumes a large volume of energy, lowering the nation's dependence on OPEC, which exports about half the oil consumed in the United States, is an urgent task also from the viewpoint of national security.

Also for Russia, which relies on exports of oil and gas for about 40 percent of its federal fiscal revenue, increasing crude oil exports by inviting U.S. investment is crucial to economic growth.

Many people believe a "gentleman's agreement" with the United States was behind Russia's vote in favor of a U.N. Security Council resolution on inspections of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, though Moscow has opposed attacks on Iraq and urged the early lifting of economic sanctions against Baghdad.

Observers say the agreement guarantees that the United States will respect Russia's economic interests in Iraq after the collapse of Saddam's government, in exchange for Russia providing a stable crude oil supply to the market.

However, it is uncertain whether the cooperative relationship between Washington and Moscow will continue unchanged.

A Russian political source with extensive knowledge of the oil industry openly expressed his distrust of Washington, describing an incident in December as "a plot by the United States."

The incident in question involved the Iraqi government notifying Lukoil, Russia's largest oil company, that its contract to develop a Iraqi oil field had been canceled.

In general, the reason for the contract cancellation was believed to have been Russia's decision to vote for the Security Council resolution on weapons inspections in Iraq.

But the Russian political source said the real reason was that Lukoil executives had contacted the Iraqi dissidents who were being wooed by the U.S. oil industry.

Russia, along with China and France, has negotiated with the Saddam administration against the wishes of the United States, and gained rights to develop oil fields and other interests in Iraq.

Therefore, Moscow is concerned over whether Washington, which targets oil interests in Iraq, really will respect Russian economic interests in the Middle Eastern country.

The interests of Russian oil producers are not necessarily the same as those of the U.S. government, which hopes to lower crude oil prices.

The cost of drilling for crude oil in Russia is about 7 dollars per barrel, much higher than the 3 dollars to 4 dollars average for drilling crude in the Middle East.

For the Russian government, which assembles the national budget on the premise crude oil will be priced at 21.50 dollars per barrel, the current price, which hovers at about 30 dollars per barrel, is "comfortable," a source in the Japanese oil industry said.

If the full-scale development of Iraqi oil fields begins and crude oil prices drop, Russia's fiscal condition would worsen drastically.

If the situation weakens the power base of the Putin administration, which has adopted a cooperative policy concerning the United States, it could result in an unstable political situation and a resurgence of regional conflicts and terrorist acts.

In this case the United States finally will have to pay the price for its policies, in the form of a new war with terrorists.

Leonidas Drollas, chief economist at the Center for Global Energy Studies, said the very survival of a cartel organization such as OPEC in the current oil market has become difficult.

The United States faces a challenging task in terms of building a new order to replace the old in the world oil market.

news.ft.com By Patrick Michael Rucker Published: January 14 2003 18:20 | Last Updated: January 14 2003 18:20

With the sugar industry in decline and tourism running flat, Cuban leaders hope that the island's oil reserves will pull it from its economic crisis while helping to thaw relations with their estranged American neighbour.

Onshore wells already cover nearly half of Cuba's domestic fuel needs. Officials predict that next year's combined oil and natural gas production will jump 17 per cent to a record fuel output equalling 34.1m barrels, equivalent to 93,400 barrels a day.

That production is due largely to foreign partnerships that help convert the heavy, sulphur-laden crude of Cuba's onshore wells into useable fuel. Cupet, Cuba's state petroleum agency, is now encouraging those same partners to search for lighter, more valuable petroleum thought to be lying offshore and in deep onshore wells.

Three years ago, Cuban officials parcelled the island's 112,000 sq km exclusive economic area in the Gulf of Mexico into 59 leaseable blocks to attract foreign investment.

Repsol-YPF, the Spanish company, optioned the first six offshore blocks between Havana and the resort city of Veradero, 100 km to the east. Last autumn, Sherritt International, the Canadian group, won rights to explore four adjacent blocks in what is becoming the centre of offshore attention. Exploratory drilling is to begin late this year.

Pebercan, a third, French-Canadian concern developing Cuba's onshore reserves, has pinned its hopes on a 4,500 metre well in central Cuba that the group thinks may hold over 600m barrels of light crude.

Geological experts agree that the hard, limestone sea terrain off Cuba's north coast could potentially hold oil. "There are promising faults and structures that could be holding oil," says Evan Richardson of Texas-based IHS Energy consulting group. "They are deep, over 1,000 metres, but the technology exists to extract oil from those depths."

However, although the geological conditions are favourable, Mr Richardson points out they also suggest light crude could be found in small, scattered pockets. "When a number of companies are bidding for drilling rights, it can build a gold rush mood," he says. "But the firms exploring offshore Cuba are small. Big companies hunt for big deposits - the last few 'elephants'. There is no evidence yet that is what exists in Cuban fields."

Cuba's foreign explorers remain quietly optimistic, but they remain tight-lipped about prospects for what is an inherently risky venture.

In the early nineties, Total, the French company, plumbed two dry offshore wells before abandoning Cuban exploration. Two years ago, Brazil's state oil company, Petrobras, sunk $16m into a highly-publicised but finally unsuccessful search for oil on Cuba's northeast coast.

Cubans would rejoice in the discovery of light crude but exploiting the product would be a much more sophisticated and expensive task that might not be profitable for many years.

"For Cuba, discovering [light] oil would be like winning the lottery," says Oscar Espinosa Chepe, an independent economist in Havana. "The news alone would improve Cuban's credit rating and bring fresh cash into the economy. If the wells are productive, Cuba could become energy independent which would certainly please the ruling regime."

Beyond the immediate windfall for the Cuban economy, some predict a Cuban oil haul would transform US-Cuban relations. Under the 43-year-old trade embargo meant to punish Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, US companies are prohibited from doing business on the island - a restriction that gives smaller oil groups crucial breathing room.

"The embargo keeps American oil firms from investing in Cuba," notes a Havana diplomat who follows the Cuban economy. "Right now, they are not making much noise but if the Cubans strike oil it will be hard for companies drilling in Florida and Texas to keep quiet."

If Cuba discovers light oil in its latest explorations, it will not be a moment too soon. Havana's transportation system is creaking for a want of fuel and rolling blackouts have swept across the city for months.

Discovering oil reserves would shield Cuba from uncertainty in the Middle East, but supplies are more closely tied to the fortunes of Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan president.

An admirer of President Fidel Castro, Mr Chávez had been providing a third of Cuba's oil needs on generous payment terms with a daily, 53,000-barrel petroleum shipment.

Those shipments have become more erratic since Venezuela's general strike began in December. Two Venezuelan oil tankers reached Cuban ports last week but future oil supplies would certainly be in jeopardy if current unrest in Venezuela leads to the ousting of Mr Chávez.

www.thisdayonline.com By Mike Oduniyi

Multinational oil companies yesterday expres-sed excitement over news of the seven percent increase in Nigeria's official Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) quota, boasting that they were fully set to meet the new production quota.

Nigeria's quota was increased by 124,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 2.018 million bpd after OPEC at an emergency meeting on Sunday, agreed to raise its production ceiling by 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) to 24.5 million effective February 1, 2003.

To oil producing companies in Nigeria, the new quota, following an earlier increase of 107,000 bpd effected at the beginning of this year, paved the way to produce from new fields that had been shut in for most part of last year while Nigeria struggled to keep within her former OPEC quota of 1.78 million.

The spokesman for Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), Mr Tom Boham, told THISDAY yesterday that the upward review of Nigeria's output quota would in the interim help solve the production constraint the companies faced.

"It (new quota) is good news for both Nigeria and the companies. We are confident to meet it and even at a short notice," Boham said.

He added that oil companies had been worried about the issue of constraint posed to operating newly discovered fields based on the country's tight production quota.

"If investment had been made on new fields, companies expect a reasonable level of returns," he said adding that Shell was eagerly awaiting the level of production increase that will be shared out to all the companies.

Shell, Nigeria's biggest oil producer started production from its new shallow offshore field EA last December, which is expected to grow into an output of 140,000 bpd. But at the time the field went into production, it was yet to be factored into Nigeria's OPEC quota.

An official of Mobil Producing Nigeria, also described the quota increase as "good news". "We have the capacity to meet increase of even 2.5 million bpd. Right now, major oil companies are producing at a little above 50 percent of their capacity," said the official.

The official added that oil producers hoped OPEC would be just be able to sustain a crude oil price level of between $22 and $28 per barrel.

Meanwhile, oil prices dropped marginally yesterday following the break of the news of the OPEC agreement to lift output.

Light crude fell by 34 cents to $31.20 a barrel while International market reference crude, the British Brent, fell 38 cents to $29.29 per barrel.

Fears that a US. assault on Iraq may be only weeks away, as well as the strike in Venezuela, are helping to support prices that recently hit a two-year high of $33.65 a barrel.

But there are equally worries about how much of the extra oil OPEC can actually deliver.

The 1.5 million bpd increase was divided pro-rata among members, meaning Venezuela was also granted its share of the higher output limit despite the 43-day-old strike that has slashed its exports by 80 percent to 500,000 bpd.

Venezuela, OPEC's third-biggest producer, is fifth in world exporter rankings, while Iraq sells up to two million bpd overseas under the United Nations oil-for-food programme.

OPEC President, Abdullah al-Attiyah, said on Sunday ministers would meet again if Venezuela restores full production. The group's next scheduled gathering is for March 11, 2003.

www.narconews.com NY Times Reporter Quits Over Conflict of Interest The Narco News Bulletin January 15, 2003 | Issue #27  

By Al Giordano Special to The Narco News Bulletin January 14, 2003

Venezuela Misdeeds Adding Up on 43rd Street The New York Times’ Venezuela problem continued to snowball yesterday as its Caracas correspondent Francisco Toro resigned.

Toro acknowledged, in a letter to Times editor Patrick J. Lyons, “conflicts of interest concerns” regarding his participation in protest marches and his “lifestyle bound up with opposition activism.”

Toro’s obsessive anti-Chavez position in Venezuela was publicly known after last April’s coup when he began sending emails to Narco News and other journalists who he placed on his own mailing list attacking Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. That the Times hired him in the first place was a violation of the Times’ own claims to objective and disinterested reporting. But regarding Venezuela, it was not the first.

Toro’s resignation – the text of his letter sent to the Times management last night appears below - is the latest in a long series of missteps and misdeeds by the New York Times and its reporters regarding the New York newspaper’s one-sided and inaccurate Venezuela coverage:

• Last April, the Times editorial board had to issue a public apology – sent to journalist Jules Siegel (a professor at the Narco News School of Authentic Journalism) by editorial board member Gail Collins. She said, “Nobody should ever cheer the overthrow of a democratically elected government. You're right, we dropped the ball on our first Venezuela editorial.”

• Also last April, New York Times reporter Juan Forero reported that President Chávez had “resigned” when, in fact, Chávez had been kidnapped at gunpoint. Forero did not source his knowingly false claim. Forero, on April 13, wrote a puff piece on dictator-for-a-day Pedro Carmona – installed by a military coup – as Carmona disbanded Congress, the Supreme Court, the Constitution and sent his shocktroops house to house in a round-up of political leaders in which sixty supporters of Chávez were assassinated. Later that day, after the Venezuelan masses took back their country block by block, Carmona fled the national palace and Chávez, the elected president, was restored to office.

• Forero – who, Narco News reported in 2001, allowed US Embassy officials to monitor his interviews with mercenary pilots in Colombia, without disclosing that fact in his article – was caught again last month in his unethical pro-coup activities in Venezuela. Narco News Associate Publisher Dan Feder revealed that Forero and LA Times reporter T. Christian Miller had written essentially the same story, interviewing the same two shopkeepers in a wealthy suburb of Caracas, and the same academic “expert” in a story meant to convince readers that a “general strike” was occurring in Venezuela. The LA Times Readers Representative later revealed that Forero and Miller interviewed the shopkeepers together. Neither disclosed that fact.

• In many ways, it has been the credibility problem posed by Forero that led to Toro’s hiring last November by the Times, and the importation of Times Mexico Bureau Chief Ginger Thompson to Venezuela last month.

• But Thompson’s reporting has also been laden with distortions. Last week she reported that there had been a “strike” by “bank workers” when, in fact, it was a lockout by bank owners supported only by the executives “union” – which represents only one percent of bank workers in the country. (That the bank lockout of its customers – conducted by 60 percent of bank branches over two days – constituted a theft of people’s access to their own money was not raised by Thompson’s article.)

• Thompson, again yesterday, continued to embarrass herself and the Times with a report that “strike” leaders in Venezuela – now completely defeated on every front – are “discussing new strategies to ease the hardship on Venezuelans, including partly lifting the strike to allow businesses and factories to reopen.” This turn of phrase is dishonest on Thompson’s part, transparently an attempt to spin the collapse of the upper-class lock-out as an intentional “evolution” in strategy.

• On December 13, Times columnist Nick Kristof quoted Toro as “a Venezuela journalist” without disclosing that he was, at that time, a New York Times reporter; hardly on the scale of the other violations of the Times’ own stated ethical practices by Forero, but still an interesting revelation of how confused the Times’ coverage of Venezuela has been in recent years. When was the last time a Times columnist quoted a Times reporter without identifying him as such?

As “strike” leaders Carlos Fernandez (the Spain-born president of Venezuela’s chamber of big business) and Carlos Ortega (a union boss whose election as head of the Venezuela Workers Federation was marred by evidence of fraud and undisclosed financial support from United States taxpayer funds) head to New York for a dog-and-pony show hosted by David Rockefeller’s Council of the Americas on Wednesday morning, the “Strike That Wasn’t” has already lost even the illusion of a “strike” made possible by the reporting of Timespersons Forero, Thompson, Toro and others.

But sometimes even the New York Times must stand naked, and the tale of the rise and fall of Francisco Toro as “Timesman-for-a-month” reveals a documented intention by Times editors to hire, in Toro, a pro-coup spin-meister. Francisco Toro: Timesman-for-a-Month

Toro first appeared on the pages of the Times last September 24, when he was quoted by Forero and identified as “an editor at Veneconomia, a financial newsletter,” bolstering Forero’s spin that Chávez had wrecked Venezuela’s economy. Two months later, Toro popped up as a Times reporter.

A LexisNexis search reveals that, in his brief career at the Times, Toro penned just two articles: on November 21 (“Venezuela Ready to License Rights to Offshore Gas “) and November 30 (“White Collar Oil Workers Key in Venezuela Crisis”). Ironically, Toro’s reports were more balanced than those of the rabidly pro-coup Forero or those of relief pitcher Thompson: Toro, at least, acknowledged that it was the “white collar” members of the state oil company’s management behind the lock-out and that “The biggest federation of blue-collar unions in the oil industry, Fedepetrol, is split between pro- and anti-government factions.”

In fact, even last fall, before the “strike” began on December 2nd, Toro acknowledged on his own Internet weblog that “this strike doesn’t have a chance… the strike will fail.” If only some of that kind of interpretation had made its way onto the Times’ pages over the past month!

Toro, with one key exception, has honored the Golden Rule of the New York Times – “Don’t Get Caught” – better than Forero or Thompson. Toro, who publicly acknowledges that he admires Mexico’s disgraced ex-Secretary of State Jorge Castañeda (who also resigned this past week from his post), plays the “objectivity game” slightly better than the official Timesmen: Mixing his rabid pro-coup sentiments with flourishes of measure and consideration of other views so as to appear more balanced.

Here is a copy of Toro’s resignation letter, sent yesterday afternoon to Times editor Patrick Lyons, and now posted to Toro’s weblog:

From "Francisco Toro" Date Mon, 13 Jan 2003 5:57 PM To "Patrick J. Lyons" Subject

Dear Pat,

After much careful consideration, I’ve decided I can’t continue reporting for the New York Times. As I examine the problem, I realize it would take much more than just pulling down my blog to address your conflict of interests concerns. Too much of my lifestyle is bound up with opposition activism at the moment, from participating in several NGOs, to organizing events and attending protest marches. But even if I gave all of that up, I don’t think I could muster the level of emotional detachment from the story that the New York Times demands. For better or for worse, my country’s democracy is in peril now, and I can’t possibly be neutral about that.

I appreciate your understanding throughout this difficult time, and I hope in the future, conditions will allow for me to contribute with the World Business page again.

Sincerely,

Francisco Toro

Toro, on January 7th, committed an act of disclosure that probably marked the beginning of the end of his Times career: He spoke “out of class” about his interactions with a NY Times editor, also on his weblog:

“It’s tough being a journalist in this country, especially if, like me, you’re trying to juggle roles as a critic in the local press and a beat reporter for a U.S. newspaper. Trying to play both roles – and trying to mediate between the sides – takes its toll. It’s the reason, in any event, for the new and regrettable need to password-protect this blog: one of my US editors was very uncomfortable with having one of his reporters taking such openly political stances on a public website.”

In other words, at least by January 7th, the Grand Poohbahs of 43rd Street were already aware of Toro’s conflicts of interest, and whatever they said to him led him to sweep his blog under the rug with password-only access. This suggests strongly that at the Times, conflicts of interest are tolerated as long as they are not disclosed or made public.

Then, last night, Toro came clean: “my lifestyle is bound up with opposition activism at the moment, from participating in several NGOs, to organizing events and attending protest marches.”

As much as I disagree with Toro’s politics (I have argued with him before in heated exchanges), I admire him for disclosing what the New York Times did not want him to disclose: his clear bias and his conflicts of interest. By resigning from the Times in an open and public manner, he did the right thing.

But the New York Times comes out of this episode with its already broken credibility regarding Venezuela reporting more damaged than ever. The Times’ Venezuela coverage is adrift, caught between its self-proclaimed “objective” mission and its hidden agenda: the distortion of news from that country in order to destabilize a democratically elected government.

If the Times International Desk had a shred of journalistic ethics, it would have either hired Toro as a partisan columnist or disclosed his activity in organizations, protest marches and the rest of what Toro himself calls his “opposition activism” on its pages when it hired him as a news correspondent.

That the Times hired Toro in the first place, did not disclose his conflicts, and then apparently encouraged Toro to hide his conflicts by blocking public access to his web blog for the past week, indicates that the cancer inside the 43rd Street offices of the New York Times that grows from its simulated Venezuela coverage is malignant. Until the Times’ management comes clean on this and previous ethical lapses, particularly those of Forero, regarding Venezuela, the patient – the newspaper’s credibility – continues to die.

Correction: At 3:15 p.m. ET we reported that the Toro weblog no longer contained the email text above. We were wrong about that: It was not removed at any time to our knowledge.

The source of the confusion was a "code" error in our URL link: The lack of the letter "s."

The correct address of Toro's weblog is:

caracaschronicles.blogspot.com

The glitch in our original posting had said "Caracas Chronicle" instead of "Caracas Chronicles" (thus, the missing "s"), which leads to the following page:

caracaschronicle.blogspot.com

That page also exists, but only contains his September 21 report.

Confusing as it is, we regret the implication that Toro pulled his archives down. He did not. His weblog still appears, with his resignation letter to the NY Times, at:

caracaschronicles.blogspot.com

Apologies for the unintentional error in our update.

• Al Giordano