www.vheadline.com Posted: Tuesday, March 18, 2003 By: David Coleman

A principal catalytic cracker at the Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) leased La Isla refinery in Curacao has been restarted for the first time since the abortive 2-month stoppage which forced its shutdown ... in the initial phase it has begun producing 42,000 barrels of gasoline a day, according to general manager Noberto Chaclin and is scheduled to reach full 60,000 barrels a day capacity of in just two weeks.

The refinery had begun producing 120,000 bpd in January but was unable to reach full capacity because the cracker was down and repairs were inhibited by political opposition efforts to sabotage Venezuela's vital oil industry in a fruitless effort to depose democratically-elected President Hugo Chavez Frias.

PDVSA president Ali Rodriguez Araque has also revealed that Venezuela's oil production reached 3 million bpd over the weekend, close to pre-stoppage levels while Energy & Mines (MEM) Minister Rafael Ramirez says Venezuela is ready to resume production at full 3.4 million bpd capacity to make up for shortages in international markets.

www.miami.com Posted on Tue, Mar. 18, 2003
BY MARIKA LYNCH mlynch@herald.com

CARACAS - As war in Iraq appears closer, Venezuela says its production of crude oil has nearly recovered from a crippling two-month strike.

By June, this important U.S. supplier expects to be able to surpass its former output to pump 3.4 million barrels of crude a day, officials said.

But Venezuela, according to analysts, fired oil workers and opposition members, is still behind and unlikely to recover fully before year's end.

' `I don't think so.' That's the general reaction,'' said George Beraneck, manager of market analysis for Washington-based consulting firm PFC Energy.

After surveying U.S. importers and other sources, Beraneck believes that Venezuela is producing about two million barrels a day, not the three million its government says. Though not the target, he said, that number is far beyond what he would have predicted a month ago.

''They're doing a nice job, considering what they're working with,'' Beraneck said.

Venezuela accounts for about one out of every seven barrels of oil imported to the United States daily. The strike is one of several reasons that U.S. and world oil reserves have been low over the last year, causing prices to rise.

The future of world oil prices is uncertain, analysts said, above all because of a possible war in the Middle East.

Venezuela's oil industry collapsed in December, when employees at state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela, angry about changes in the company under the administration of President Hugo Chávez, walked off the job.

By the height of the strike, 16,000 employees had walked out and production had shrunk to 200,000 barrels a day, costing Venezuela $6 billion. The country had to import fuel to keep vehicles moving, and drivers waited for days at gas stations.

The strike, which failed to oust Chávez or to get early elections called, was strongest in the oil sector, though businesses around the country shut down. Because oil is Venezuela's primary source for foreign exchange, the country had to impose currency controls and ration dollars, which it hasn't sold in over a month.

The government, meanwhile, fired the striking workers and is moving to replace them with outside employees. In addition, seven oil executives, charged with sabotage, have gone into hiding. On Monday, an appeals court, citing procedural violations, struck down those charges, the executives' lawyer told reporters.

In January, President Chávez pledged a rebound by the oil industry and said crude production would be back to three million barrels a day by mid-February. On Saturday, state oil company chief Alí Rodríguez said that Venezuela had all but stopped importing gasoline, that crude production had nearly reached prestrike levels and that the company must now concentrate on stabilizing production.

Rafael Ramírez, minister of energy and mines, echoed his statements.

''We've maintained, intact, our production capacity,'' Ramírez said at a weekend oil conference.

In June, OPEC members are to gather to review the world oil situation. If the group agrees, Venezuela will surpass its limit to pump 3.4 million barrels of crude a day, Ramírez said.

But industry sources and former workers consider that level physically impossible. They note that many employees, including most top executives, have left, taking years of experience with them. And pumping crude, they say, isn't as simple as turning on a faucet; once off, it takes time for a well to be pumped again.

www.guardian.co.uk Comment Sami Ramadani Tuesday March 18, 2003 The Guardian

A couple of weeks ago I went with my partner and our little boy to see our Labour MP, Bridget Prentice, in the House of Commons. We waited for two-and-a-half hours but she neither showed up nor sent a note. I wrote her a brief letter but she hasn't acknowledged it yet.

We are British citizens of Iraqi origin. My wife, who is Kurdish from Sulaimaniyah, fled Iraqi Kurdistan in the mid-1980s, risking her life in the process. I am also an exile and cannot go back to Iraq because of my resistance to Saddam's tyranny. Our son is four, and was born here.

As a family, we wanted to tell our MP how we feel now, with war against Iraq imminent. So far, she has supported the government; we went to see her in the hope that, even at this late hour, she will change her mind and vote against war.

My wife sees Iraqi victims of torture every day where she works, at the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture; we wanted to tell Bridget Prentice that Iraq is in desperate need of regime change and the establishment of a democratic order. The Iraqi people need it much more than Bush and Blair could ever understand. But democracy for Iraq will not be achieved by bombing and invading the country. It cannot be trusted to George Bush. The US will not accept a democratic verdict which is not to its liking in a strategically important country, possessing the world's second largest oil reserves. They strangled just such a verdict in Congo in the 1960s and in Chile in the 1970s, and they are working hard to reverse it in Venezuela today.

In Iraq, the US record speaks for itself: it backed Saddam's party, the Ba'ath, to capture power in 1963, murdering thousands of socialists, communists and democrats of all shades; it backed the Ba'ath party in 1968 when Saddam was installed as vice-president; it helped him and the Shah of Iran in 1975 to crush the Kurdish nationalist movement; it increased its support for Saddam in 1979, the year he elevated himself to president, helping him launch his war of aggression against Iran in 1980; it backed him throughout the horrific eight years of war (1980 to 1988), in which a million Iranians and Iraqis were slaughtered, in the full knowledge that he was using chemical weapons and gassing Kurds and Marsh Arabs; it encouraged him in 1990 to invade Kuwait when the Arabic-speaking US ambassador in Baghdad, April Glaspie, told him on July 25 1990 that the US had "no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts" when she knew that Saddam's forces were only one week away from invading; it backed him in 1991 when Bush suddenly stopped the war, exactly 24 hours after the start of the great March uprising that engulfed the south and Iraqi Kurdistan (US aircraft were flying over the scenes of mass killing as Iraqi helicopter gunships were aiding Saddam's forces crush the uprising); and it backed him as the "lesser evil" from March 1991 to September 11 2001 under the umbrella of murderous sanctions and the policy of "containment".

Then, having caused the death of about half a million Iraqis, mostly children, through sanctions, Bush and Blair declare that containment and sanctions are not working after all. Blair must reconcile his strongly and suddenly found conviction that war is better than containment with the fact that the US hawks, now prominent in the Bush administration, have been advocating a war on Iraq for the past 12 years - not to liberate the Iraqi people, or to protect the world from weapons of mass destruction, but to impose US hegemony on a strategically important country. September 11 gave them their opportunity. Blair's "sincerity", and his sympathy for the Iraqi people are, alas, nothing but grist to Rumsfeld's mills of war.

Indeed, one of the strongest arguments against war, that should prompt all its supporters to re-examine their consciences, is the fact that if Saddam does still possess weapons of mass destruction then it is probable that this amoral tyrant will use them if his removal from power becomes imminent.

Our MPs must raise these questions in the Commons and oppose the US war plans, even at this late hour. The US desperately needs Britain as a political and moral prop, a fig leaf for claiming the existence of an international alliance for war. It is our MPs' duty to expose this and side with the Iraqi people's own struggle to remove Saddam's regime and establish democracy in Iraq. In this, they will also be acting in the British people's best interests.

If allowed to run its course, the Blix programme of inspections would have emboldened the Iraqi people to challenge Saddam's regime in the knowledge that Saddam would not be using chemical weapons to crush future uprisings. This would have been particularly likely if the inspections and monitoring regime had been combined with strict military and diplomatic sanctions, while lifting the economic sanctions, which have not only caused so much death and pain for the people but also strengthened Saddam's hand against them. If all this had been coupled with an international campaign to aid the Iraqi people to remove Saddam and establish democracy, we are confident that they would have succeeded; their past heroic struggles were always hampered by US, wider western and Soviet backing for Saddam's regime.

The acceleration of war plans coincided with Blix's announcement of active Iraqi cooperation and his demands for a few months to complete his work. The US administration was clearly panicked by the prospect of a peaceful disarmament of Saddam. They are fearful of the prospect of seeing the Iraqi people taking on the tyrant and his dictatorial state.

Much is made of Tony Blair's courage. We are told that he is being brave in his deafness to majority opinion in Britain and the world. The truth is that he is mesmerised by US power, convinced he will be on the side of the victors and bask in the glory of their might once they raise the US flag in Baghdad, that beloved city of my childhood. But Blair's glory, even if it comes to pass, will be short-lived.

· Sami Ramadani is an Iraqi political exile and a senior lecturer in sociology at London Metropolitan University.

www.euobserver.com

The Commission warned that oil prices could rise as high as $70 a barrel if the war was to drag out for half a year - up 100% from their current levels. (Photo: Notat) EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - A surge in oil prices and diminished consumer confidence are the biggest economic dangers to the eurozone economy in the event of a war in Iraq according to the European Commission.

In an extension of its usual quarterly assessment of economic performance, the Commission, set out a number of scenarios, based on past crises, which could occur if military action takes place.

The Commission warned that oil prices could rise as high as $70 a barrel if the war was to drag out for half a year - up 100% from their current price.

Such a rise in oil prices would have a substantial knock-on effect across the economy.

On the basis of past oil shocks evidence suggests that an oil price increase "pushes up inflation, weighs on real income and profitability and depresses consumption" according to the report.

"Past experience shows that major geopolitical crises can weigh heavily on confidence, especially for households." Klaus Regling, Director General of Economic Affairs told journalists.

Household confidence is already low. "[It] has been falling significantly to levels not seen since 1996." Added Mr Regling.

"Stagnation or recession cannot be excluded."

Written by Andrew Beatty Edited by Honor Mahony

www.vheadline.com Posted: Monday, March 17, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

As usual, the United States has been sending mixed signals on the Venezuelan crisis ... the US Embassy in Caracas has congratulated Banking Superintendent (Sudeban) Irwin Ochoa for the Venezuelan government’s support of the international effort against the funding of terrorists … “with its help we have been able to make positive advances towards our objectives.”

On the other hand, US military commanders have been attacking the Chavez Frias administration for its alleged scaling down of borderland sorties against Colombian guerrilla movements. US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher has dismissed charges from Venezuelan Foreign Minister (MRE) Roy Chaderton Matos that Bush administration's special envoy to Latin America, Otto Reich is promoting a “silver bullet solution" to the Venezuelan political crisis on … “it’s a ridiculous lie.”

Wall Street Journal analyst Mary Anastasia O’Grady has published what she says are details of the Venezuelan government’s alleged links with terrorist States such as Iraq and Libya, as well as contacts with Colombian guerrilla, Castro and rogue state security agents. O’Grady also suggests that, apart from placing Cuban security agents inside Venezuelan security forces, Chavez Frias has allowed agents from Middle East rogue states to join up.