www.boston.com By Andrew Caffrey, Globe Staff, 3/2/2003

The long cold winter has been unusually tough on New Englanders' pocketbooks. Geopolitics - a potential war in the Middle East and the political crisis in Venezuela, a major US oil supplier - have combined with unusually cold weather and low fuel inventories to send prices skyrocketing. Heating oil prices hit a three-year peak during one snap in February, and natural gas utilities are seeking rate increases for Massachusetts customers of as high as 36 percent.

Boston Globe reporter Andrew Caffrey talked with David L. O'Connor, commissioner of the Massachusetts Division of Energy Resources, about whether fuel suppliers will take steps in the coming months to avoid a repeat of the high prices and low inventories that have plagued us this winter.

Q. What's the outlook for next winter?

A. On natural gas, for example, we have a somewhat lower level of production from wells in the United States. The overall US production is likely to stay flat or even decline a bit over the year, and therefore suppliers would be looking for Canadian sources. In New England we want to be sure utilities put enough in storage over the summer. The utilities have done a good job in their planning for how much they have in storage. Those storages will be almost completely depleted. So one of the things we're going to see is more aggressive buying to make sure by next winter, we've got the most appropriate amount in storage. That is the most stabilizing factor in prices for consumers.

Q. So can we expect higher levels of gas storage than normal next winter?

A. Probably not. This year the volatility we've seen in prices is related to tremendous demands because of the weather. For the most part it's a necessary risk utilities take and the consumer takes that risk as well. We have been encouraging the gas companies here to enter into what we call hedging contracts - financial instruments that try to provide a hedge against this volatility. Last year the state Department of Telecommunications and Energy approved the use of those financial instruments for the first time.

I think the combination of the approval of the department and the winter we just had is going to encourage a lot of companies to take a harder look at these financial arrangements that would mitigate the volatility of short-term prices.

Q. And oil suppliers? Can we expect them to build larger inventories?

A. No. Wholesale oil suppliers would argue they have used good professional judgment - that everyone got the oil they needed, but the prices were a reflection of high demand and scarcity because of the lack of production from Venezuela.

Q. Why wouldn't they buy more for next winter just to be on the safe side?

A. As you start into the winter, if you have that outlook, ''Gee, last winter prices got really high,'' you could end up with way too much on hand at the end of the winter, and therefore absorbing significant losses and needing to charge more later. So it's a balancing act, where they've got to buy the right level.

Probably the single most important influence will be the decisions made by retail customers to enter into contracts with suppliers. I've been encouraging consumers to shop around for contracts. I think it's in the consumers' interest, and in the dealers' interests.

Q. Isn't there a risk to customers locking in because oil prices can change quickly, downward, too, especially if a war against Iraq ends quickly?

A. There is some risk, no question about it. Yes, there is a scenario where prices could be high in the summer, and then it turns out the war ends quickly, and prices fall. People under contract could pay more, but I think the chances are more likely to be the other way around.

This story ran on page C2 of the Boston Globe on 3/2/2003.

www.smh.com.au March 3 2003

Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez said yesterday that $US30 a barrel was a "perfect" price for crude oil.

"We have to sell oil at a fair price. $US30 a barrel? Perfect," Mr Chavez told state television station Venezolana de Television while touring an electricity plant in south-eastern Venezuela.

The president's comments came 12 days before OPEC meets in Vienna, Austria, to discuss whether to adjust its production quotas. Mr Chavez did not say what the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries should do.

International oil prices are soaring amid expectations of a US-led attack on Iraq and the lingering effects of a two-month strike in Venezuela's oil industry.

A day after surging to a 12-year high of $US39.99 a barrel, crude oil fell US5c to $US37.15 on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Friday.

Venezuela was the world's fifth largest exporter before the unsuccessful strike to force early elections. The strike began on December 2 and petered out this month. The Government is steadily increasing output.

Mr Chavez said current production was 2.1 million barrels a day, almost two-thirds of pre-strike levels of 3.2 million barrels a day.

But a manager at the state oil monopoly, Petroleos de Venezuela, said production was 1.5 million barrels a day.

Venezuela had to reduce output by 500,000 barrels a day as storage tanks were full, the manager said. It will take up to three days to empty the tanks and restore production to previous levels, the manager said.

In a report released yesterday, former PDVSA executives - fired for joining the strike - said production was 1.1 million barrels a day.

www.vheadline.com Posted: Sunday, March 02, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

The 31st National Guard (GN) Border Unit has seized 1.2 tonnes of cocaine hidden in a cargo of Colombian bananas aboard a truck stopped and searched on the Venezuelan side of the Limon River bridge in the Goajira region of western Zulia State.

GN General Romer Carmona says the drug was en route to the port of Rio Hacha in Colombia for transshipment to the USA or the Caribbean and had entered through the Catatumbo River in South Zulia and transported along the Machiques-Colon highway to Maracaibo where the truck remained for several days.

US Drugs Enforcement Agency (DEA), Colombian and Venezuelan police are said to be coordinating actions to tackle the latest tactic of transporting drugs. Sources indicate that traffickers are using the Zulia diversion to avoid passing through areas dominated by the Colombian Army.

www.vheadline.com Posted: Sunday, March 02, 2003 By: Robert Rudnicki

Following weeks of calls by the Colombian government for Venezuela to play a greater role in helping its neighbor to fight guerilla groups and terrorists using Venezuela as a base, Colombian officials have thanked Venezuela for its assistance in preventing a major terrorist attack. 

• Colombian intelligence discovered that a cargo of explosives was heading from Venezuelan territory to Colombia and called upon the Venezuelan National Armed Forces for assistance.

A Colombian government statement read "the Air Force and the army discovered 48 hours ago, through intelligence sources, that a vehicle carrying explosives was on Venezuelan territory."

When Venezuelan authorities were informed of the fact they quickly arrived at the location, near the Colombian border, and upon inspecting the car discovered 1,500 kilos of explosives.

Four Colombian men were arrested and handed over to the Colombian army.

www.vheadline.com Posted: Sunday, March 02, 2003 By: The Very Reverend Roger Dawson

Sunday before Lent sermon by The Very Reverend Roger Dawson Dean of St. Mary's Anglican Cathedral, Caracas

Today is the last Sunday before Lent, which means that Wednesday is Ash Wednesday and the first of the forty days of the Lenten season. Lent for many has come to mean a time for the improvement of our figures because the first thing they think of is fasting, or to use the modern word dieting. But Lent does not exist so that we can turn in a trimmer profile on Easter Day, though losing weight may be good for some of us and fasting may be good for all of us.

Some will save on the housekeeping during Lent and put the money aside so that it can be given to those who need it more than we do and that is good also but that is not what Lent is about either. In fact Lent isn't about food at all; it is about preparation.

Another word for preparation that is not very fashionable is discipline. No one much wants discipline in this world of ours, that has got progressively more liberal over the past fifty years, because most people want to believe they rule their own destiny, and so they believe that any control should come from within and not from some source outside and beyond themselves.

The Venezuelan government currently believes that it can solve all its own problems and help from outside is seen as interference. It is no more than most people believe about their own lives. But in truth, no one is suggesting that our personal lives should be disciplined from outside, indeed I would say that the Lenten discipline is all about a self-control that we develop from within ourselves.

I certainly will not give you a set of instructions as to what you must do during this season. All I will say is that if you want to succeed in becoming a good and true Christian you will need to have a discipline about yourself that is better than most people are able to achieve.

Some of us get good and useful help from outside with our discipline by joining self-help groups. There's a lot of sense in that. and nothing at all wrong with it. and other people's experience and objective views can be of great benefit to us. Such outside help is the basis of many organizations like Weight-Watchers and Alcoholics Anonymous.

Bible reading and Bible study is often a lot more profitable in a group setting than it is slogging through the same texts on your own. But if you see discipline and self-denial as the same act you may be on the wrong track from a Christian perspective in this century. Self-denial makes a virtue of giving something up and more often than not, something that was bad for us anyway, so where is the virtue there?

Christianity is about taking on a new way of life. Discipline is the extra thing we require to make us more able. Self-denial is a negative; discipline is a positive. Self-denial is giving something up and discipline is taking something on.

When I was young, I enjoyed athletics and was quite good at it naturally, and so I joined an Athletics Club. There were two coaches there, and one had me stand on the scales and said that for my height I was too heavy to be a sprinter. I should lose three kilos over the next month by eating less. I went out onto the track where the other coach was leading a group in exercises.

I joined them and the coach came up to me and said he had watched me in a race the previous week and he though I showed promise. I told him that it had just been suggested I lose three kilos to improve my performance. He laughed and said he wished it were so simple.

Look around you, he said, do you think that thin people are better athletes? I didn't know. The best athletes, he said are the fit ones, the ones who train and get the right muscles for the job. See that fellow over there, he said, and he pointed to a man who was rippling with muscles all over. He thinks he is Charles Atlas, he said, he has more muscles than you and I put together but his muscles are not in the right place. He may impress the girls but he won't win races.

Don't worry about losing weight, but come and train here regularly twice a week and we will convert any spare fat you have into muscles that you need to run well.

The discipline was in going to train twice a week, and working hard at the training when I got there. I hardly lost any weight because the training added muscle that weighs heavier than fat but I was fitter than before and my running improved.

In our spiritual life we need to make equally positive moves to gain what we might call spiritual muscle to carry out and adequately deal with the tasks that our faith assigns us.

We may need to train twice a week, and take on a Bible class or some other kind of exercise, but don't expect to be fit by doing nothing or just by getting thin.

The word lent is an old Anglo Saxon word that means, to get longer.

It is talking about the length of days in a northern climate and we, as Christians, should also be looking towards extending the light.

Our spiritual life, if carried out correctly, will avail us of more light each day when our training is on schedule. We should have training sessions all through the year, but certainly not less than once a year for the forty days of Lent that ends at Easter with the blaze of light that is the light of the world in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

It is not a secret that if we want to succeed in anything at all, we will have to have the discipline of training. If this is seen as giving something up, then it will probably be a misery to us and to everyone else who has to be with us.

For example if you want to be a pianist, you cannot achieve this by knowing the theory of music only, even though this might be a discipline in its own right. There will come a time when you have to sit down and actually play the keys, and do it over and over and over again till your hands and brain knows what to do automatically.

If we want to be Christians, we have to know the theory that we get through bible studies and a knowledge of the faith, and then we have to practice over and over again till it becomes second nature ... our first nature may want to act differently and this is what we have to subdue. Bonhoeffer said that the strict exercise of self-control is an essential part of the Christian life.

Our training regime for being a good Christian may include fasting every now and again, but its purpose has nothing to do with how we look physically but how spiritually healthy we are and to make us fit and able to accomplish the things that God would have us do.