www.vheadline.com Posted: Sunday, March 09, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

Las Ultimas Noticias reports that files on three former State Political & Security (DISIP) Police agents stored at the State Identification & Passport Office (Oni-Dex) have mysteriously disappeared.

• According to the tabloid, the three men are top suspects of carrying out the bomb attacks on the Spanish Embassy and Colombian consulate.

Two other former senior DISIP chiefs, who were dismissed for taking part in the April 11 coup attempt against President Hugo Chavez Frias’ government and supporting Dictator-for-a Day Pedro Carmona Estanga, are also said to be under government investigation for the latest destabilization efforts to oust the administration.

news.ft.com By Carola Hoyos in Vienna Published: March 9 2003 19:39 | Last Updated: March 9 2003 19:39

The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries will meet this week for what could be its last gathering before war, but doubts persist over whether the oil cartel has the ability to bring the crude price back from its historic highs before it damages the world's fragile recovery.

Oil prices have risen by almost 60 per cent since the middle of last year to nearly $40 a barrel in recent weeks - a level not seen since the 1991 Gulf war.

For Saudi Arabia, the world's largest crude supplier, Tuesday's meeting is a chance to heal the injuries to its relationship with Washington caused by the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers on September 11 2001 were Saudis. Ali Naimi, Saudi Arabia's oil minister, may meet Paul Abraham, his US counterpart, this week to discuss how best to tackle the oil price.

"This is Opec's time to shine and especially Saudi Arabia's," says Raad Alkadiri, analyst at PFC Energy, a Washington consulting firm. "It is the moment to remind the US just what a strategic asset [the kingdom] is in terms of the oil market."

But Saudi Arabia's ability to halt rising oil prices has proved limited. Analysts and officials in the main consuming nations question whether the kingdom and its nine Opec brethren have much spare crude to offer the famished market. In January, Opec raised members' output ceiling to 24.5m barrels a day in response to a shortage caused by the general strike in Venezuela, where exports continue to be disrupted. But the supplies Opec subsequently added to the market have done little to stop the climb in prices.

This time Opec may consider temporarily suspending its output limit altogether, but that will do little if the group is about to reach its maximum capacity.

Kuwait could add to the current shortfall in the market by halting as much as 700,000 barrels a day of its production as it shuts down fields to protect them from potential Iraqi sabotage.

Neither Kuwait nor Iraq's oil ministers will be at the meeting, it was revealed yesterday, as both countries prepare for a possible US invasion of Iraq.

A sign of Opec's exasperation with the rise in oil prices - much of which the oil ministers blame on the psychological effect of Washington's war drums - is the fact that the group this week will not bother to wait for the latest report on world oil demand and supply before making its decision, says Adam Sieminski, analyst at Deutsche Bank.

"It is an indication of the likelihood that fundamentals will not play a role in this decision that the ministers are meeting the day before the data release," he said. The most powerful of those statistics is the massive decline in commercial oil inventories - especially in the US.

Stocks have been hit by the cold winter and shortages created by the Venezuelan strike, reaching a level at which the industry's distribution network is at risk of faltering.

To counter that, the world still has strategic stockpiles of oil in leading consuming nations. Japan, the US and Europe have built up their stockpiles to 1.2bn barrels. Analysts say the release of some of that oil as soon as war starts d day will be critical.

But governments are not responsive to the market in timing the release of those stocks. After Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the officials who decide the timing and volume of the release acted two months too late.

Instead of helping to settle the price, when initially went to more than $40 a barrel, the decision eventually pushed oil below $15, because in the meantime Saudi Arabia had increased its production. It is an outcome Opec does not want repeated.

The cartel will do everything in its power on Tuesday to reassure the market that it will not suffer a shortage if the US goes to war while discussing with Mr Abrahams how best to return prices to the preferred $22-$28 a barrel level.

www.vheadline.com Posted: Sunday, March 09, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

Hidrocapital public water utility has started to ration water in the Metropolitan Caracas area after confirming that levels at the Camatagua reservoir are getting lower.

The summer drought, meteorologists forecast, will continue through March and Hidrocapital engineers report that the reservoir is 23 meters below its normal level.

• Rationing is necessary because current levels indicate that supplies will otherwise run out in 120 days. 

The company has notified the public about areas, times and timetable of the rationing process.

www.vheadline.com Posted: Sunday, March 09, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

Celebrating this weekend's International Women’s Day, President Hugo Chavez Frias has waved a red flag at the opposition and its Miami backers by thanking Cuba’s Fidel Castro for sending a cargo of sugar to Venezuela.

Commenting on the success of his government’s first special food supply campaign, Chavez Frias told his Sunday radio chat show audience that he would create a supply network called Mercal and set up places to sell articles of prime necessity.

Meanwhile, the President apparently continues deliberately to rouse the opposition's anger claiming “To God what is God’s, to Cesar what is Cesar’s and ... to Fidel what is Fidel’s.”

www.vheadline.com Posted: Sunday, March 09, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

Movimiento Quinta Republica (MVR) deputy Calixto Ortega says Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) rebel leader, Juan Fernandez should hand himself over to justice.  “Nobody is being politically persecuted in Venezuela …  Fernandez sparked off the oil stoppage at PDVSA should accept the consequences of his acts.”

The National Assembly (AN) Energy & Mines Committee president insists that Fernandez and companions had abandoned their PDVSA obligations to take on political leadership and must therefore respond to trial before the courts.

Fernandez has declared that he has gone "clandestine" and is playing cat and mouse with security forces, managing to fool a State Political & Security (DISIP) police unit that attempted to serve an arrest warrant on him when he showed up at an opposition rally in Caracas this weekend.