sg.biz.yahoo.com Monday February 24, 9:47 PM

CARACAS (Dow Jones)--A total of 15,636 employees at Venezuela's state-owned oil monopoly Petroleos de Venezuela (E.PVZ) have been fired in the aftermath of a strike which started Dec. 2 last year, a company official said.

"Yes, we have dismissed an additional 1,088 employees in the eastern part of the country," said Mario Socorro, a spokesman of the PdVSA division in east Venezuela. The dismissals now total around 40% of the workforce that was employed before the strike started. However, the total figure varies somewhat. The local daily El Universal maintains the dismissals now stand at 16,036 while PdVSA couldn't provide a definite list.

Some 35,000 oil workers at PdVSA joined a nationwide strike Dec. 2 last year that was aimed at the resignation of President Hugo Chavez. The strike severely crippled exports and production which stood at a level of around 3 million b/d by the end of November.

Crude production at PdVSA currently stands at 2.02 million barrels per day, the company president said Sunday. "We are now at the production level of 2.02 million barrels and by the end of next week it will be 2.5 million barrels per day," Ali Rodriguez said. However, fired staff of PdVSA claim production is much lower and stands at around 1.4 million b/d while exports stand at 1 million b/d. Rodriguez didn't give any new export numbers.

Chavez, discussing production levels at his televised Sunday show "Hello President" said he expects the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, not to have any problems that Venezuela would "progressively put crude stocks on the market that haven't been used," he said, without elaborating further.

Last year, Venezuela exceeded its official output target of 2.5 million b/d by around 400,000 b/d when it drew from crude inventories that are located in the Caribbean. Venezuela's OPEC quota - at least on paper - is 2.819 million b/d.

Venezuela's request comes as the company struggles to go beyond the 2 million b/d production level. After focusing on easy oil fields that don't require much added pressure to get the oil flowing, PdVSA faces difficulties as mature oil fields are more labor and capital intensive and take more time to pump oil. Experts have said they doubt PdVSA would reach 2.5 million b/d any time soon due to a lack of financial and human resources.

However, on Sunday a local newspaper reported PdVSA plans to lift the force majeure on its operations in the coming days as the situation at the company is almost back to normal.

A declaration of force majeure three days after the nationwide strike started Dec. 2 temporarily released the company and its clients from contractual obligations.

-By Fred Pals, Dow Jones Newswires; 58414-2887461; fred.pals@dowjones.com

southflorida.bizjournals.com Robin Londner  

Coral Gables-based consultant firm Intellichem said Venezuelan workers are gradually going back to their jobs as of this month, but it also said oil workers have decided to continue their strike to press for early election.

The continuing labor problems in Venezuela's oil industry concerns South Florida because the majority of the petroleum that arrives at Port Everglades is from refineries in Venezuela, the Gulf of Mexico, Aruba, the Bahamas and Mexico. More than 1,000 petroleum tanker-trucks leave the port every day.

The Broward County port is the second-largest East Coast non-refinery center for petroleum products. In fiscal year 2001, the port processed 117.9 million barrels of fuel, or 16.77 million tons.

Problems in Venezuela and other countries have also hurt the Port of Miami. When that port released its container totals for fiscal year 2002 in November, the struggling economies of Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Chile pulled down overall tonnage from South America by 12 percent.

Fuel costs have also impacted the costs consumers pay for fuel. For businesses such as trucking and aviation that depend on fuel prices, problems in Venezuela continue to drive up fuel prices. Earlier this month, travel organization AAA blamed the continuing loss of oil and gasoline imports from Venezuela for lowering fuel inventories, but also said nothing fully justifies the dramatic increase in gasoline prices consumer are seeing across the United States.

Up about 13 cents from the middle of January, as of Feb. 11, AAA put gas prices at $1.60 a gallon. The price was the highest since June 2001 when the average price was $1.66 and the highest February price ever recorded by AAA.

Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist has indicated he thinks those prices are too high. Last week, he sent a letter asking the Federal Trade Commission to see if gasoline sellers are colluding to increase prices in the state.

"The recent spike in fuel prices is startling," Crist said.

Also last week, Juno Beach-based FPL Group (NYSE: FPL) made it clear it wants the state to help it with fuel costs. The utility cited U.S. and world events as driving up prices its electric subsidiary, Florida Power & Light Co., must pay for fuel. Because of these increases, FPL Group asked the Florida Public Service Commission to approve a 6.2 percent increase on residential bills, a 7.3 percent increase on commercial bills and an 11.6 percent increase on industrial bills, all beginning in April.

FPL Group said the average price it expects to pay for a barrel of oil to generate electricity is 8 percent more this year than last year. FPL Group said it expects to spend nearly $3 billion for fuel in 2003, but did not give a figure from last year for comparison.

"What is happening to fuel prices from events around the country and around the world has been a tremendous frustration to our customers and all of us at FPL who have worked so hard to keep our operating costs down in order to keep bills low," said Paul Evanson, FPL president.

www.barbadosadvocate.com Web Posted - Mon Feb 24 2003 By Petal Smith

THE Venezuela Community in Barbados held a special Church Service yesterday at the St. Dominic’s Roman Catholic Church in Christ Church praying for peace and solidarity in their country.

Lifting the congregation in prayer was Father Anton Dick of the Roman Catholic Church. He remarked that the Venezuelan community here had asked to be a part of their service yesterday so that prayers could be offered for the political instability in Venezuela.

Father Dick said, “We were happy to join with those Venezuelans who formed part of our regular Sunday service. We offered prayers for peace and unity in their country.” Father Dick said he hopes that through their prayers, peace and unity will be accomplished in Venezuela.

However, the Venezuelan Ambassador, Corina Russian, said that the Venezuelan community decided to pray for the peace and to seek solutions to the problems in Venezuela. She added that the community locally comprised of over 150 persons.

Their presence here, she said, was established more than 50 years ago, when the first Venezuelans came to study English in Barbados, and, instead of returning, some took up residence locally.

The Ambassador added that they are looking to God for the strength and faith to solve their problems in the best and peaceful way, and in unity.

Further, Joycelyn Hunte, a Venezuelan national living in Barbados for 53 years commended all Venezuelans and friends who have shown their solidarity during the difficult months when the political climate in Venezuela had deteriorated into alarming proportions.

She claimed also that the political crisis in Venezuela is escalating and nothing has been resolved.

Recently, Venezuelans had experienced a turmoil of a six- week opposition strike that has crippled the oil sector in the world’s fifth-largest petroleum exporter.

The strike was launched by opposition leaders on December 2, 2002 to press leftist President Hugo Chavez to resign and hold earlier elections. His current term ends in 2007.

www.forbes.com Reuters, 02.24.03, 8:50 AM ET

CARACAS, Venezuela, Feb 24 (Reuters) - Venezuela's strike-hit, extra-heavy oil project Sincor is in the process of restarting major processing units but short-term output will be determined by natural supplies, a project official said on Monday. Sincor, which upgrades ultra-heavy oil from Venezuela's Orinoco region into refineable synthetic crude, was shut when state oil firm Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) cut supplies of natural gas needed to run processing units during an oil strike started on Dec. 2 by foes of President Hugo Chavez. "We are in the process of restarting. We sent out about 2 million barrels of finished crude (from storage) over the weekend," General Manager Joris De Smett told Reuters. Last week project officials said they hoped to restore production over the weekend, after storage levels built up before the stoppage were drawn down. De Smett said start-up volumes would be determined by the amount of natural gas provided by PDVSA for the project, which partners French TotalFinaElf <TOTF.PA> and Norway's Statoil <STAT.OL> with PDVSA. Full production could be reached by the end of the week if gas supplies are sufficient, he said. Sincor has the capacity to process 200,000 barrels per day (bpd) of the Orinoco region's tar-like crude into 180,000 bpd of syncrude. The strike, which had wide support from PDVSA employees, cut Venezuela's oil production from 3.1 million bpd to under 150,000 bpd at the lowest point. The government has fired over 12,000 of the the striking employees and used replacement workers to restart the industry. PDVSA says oil production is now over 2 million bpd, while the rebel oil employees say it is closer to 1.5 million bpd. The return of all four of the Orinoco ultra-heavy projects would add about 400,000 bpd to the OPEC nation's oil output.

www.vheadline.com Posted: Monday, February 24, 2003 By: Paul Volgyesi

Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 13:00:01 +0100 From: Paul Volgyesi sanbasan@interware.hu To: editor@vheadline.com Subject: Bedside manners

Dear Editor: The only two politicians I've really seen acting like humans -- versus programmed lying robots (apart of the clinically mad ones) were French President Jacques Chirac when Zidane shot the winning goal at the World Cup ... that great show of humanity lasted about 30 seconds. The second is Chavez, who does it 24/7.

I have no doubt that he's guilty of not employing a horde of 'Yalie' speechwriters but lets it come right out of his tripes. Wherever he's going, he's not doing his revolution out of some ideological manual, the effects of which we've all seen with "applied socialism" (the one that wasn't scientific at all for not having been tried on rats!).

Oh yes! His language!

It's like homosexuality.  Chavez-like language from politicians used to be heard only when the *******s were ordered by courts to release their tapes.

Chavez only brings "bad manners" out of the closet.

But 120% of his listeners understand EXACTLY what he means, and his voters aren't Vassar undergrads anyway.

Besides, the more politicians talk their "bedside language," the more it costs us taxpayers zillions in Champagne and caviar ... and as far as I'm concerned, it's not worth the price.

Paul Volgyesi sanbasan@interware.hu