Venezuelan oil output recovering despite strike

www.alertnet.org 24 Jan 2003 00:49

(Adds Chavez reaction in paragraphs 5, 9, 11) By Tom Ashby

CARACAS, Venezuela, Jan 23 (Reuters) - Anti-government oil workers said Venezuelan crude output extended a two-week recovery on Thursday despite their prolonged strike, reaching 25 percent of capacity at 812,000 barrels per day (bpd).

The government has used troops and replacement crews to break the seven-week-old protest, intended to force President Hugo Chavez from office, but still faces huge problems restarting oil refineries and persuading foreign shippers to return to what was the world's fifth-largest oil exporter.

Opposition data lag government estimates on oil output, which peg production above 1 million bpd, but both figures show a steady recovery over the past fortnight.

"The government might get it up to 1.3 or even 1.5 million barrels per day, but alone they will never get back to the 3 million we had before," an opposition spokesman said.

President Hugo Chavez told a massive rally on Friday that output was rising faster than he had expected, and expected to reach 2 million bpd in the first week of February.

In a daily report on the oil industry, dissident employees of state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) said most of the latest output gain was in the east, where flows reached 498,000 bpd. In the western Lake Maracaibo, production dipped slightly to 222,000 bpd, while flows from southern fields near the Colombian border reached 92,000 bpd, the opposition said.

Oil used to provide more than half of Venezuelan state revenue, and the 53-day-old strike has caused an economic crisis in the OPEC member nation. Chavez announced a massive budget cut and suspended foreign exchange trading Wednesday.

Strikers want to force the left-wing leader to resign and hold early elections in the deeply divided South American nation of 26 million people.

Chavez raised the stakes in the bitter conflict on Thursday, telling supporters that he had already sacked more than 3,000 PDVSA rebels and blaming a spate of oil industry accidents on sabotage by the strikers.

The opposition said the government was neglecting crucial safety procedures in its rush to restore output, blaming the accidents on unqualified strike-breakers.

"The anti-patriotic, privatizing, neoliberal, fascist, coup-plotting, depraved oligarchy thought they would kick us out of power by the end of the year through the oil strike, or rather the oil sabotage, because there is no strike here," Chavez said, adding the strike had failed.

EXPORT STILL SLOW

Despite two weeks of higher flows at the wellhead, oil exports have remained around 500,000 bpd, a fifth of normal levels, according to shipping agents.

About 90 percent of the country's oil refining remains closed, according to opposition estimates, and foreign ship owners say insurance risks due to uncertified port staff and poor safety practices prevent them stopping in Venezuela.

Before the strike, Venezuela pumped 3.1 million bpd of crude oil and refined a third of the oil, supplying 13 percent of U.S. import needs.

The strike has helped drive world oil prices to two-year highs, and caused severe fuel shortages on the local market.

Some blue-collar oil workers have returned to work to avoid losing their jobs. But support for the strike remains strong among skilled workers at oilfields and refineries, and managerial staff in the company head offices.

Bladimiro Blanco, an anti-Chavez member of the Fedepetrol oil union, said 85 percent of his 20,000 membership, including blue collar PDVSA employees and contractors, stayed on strike on Thursday.

PDVSA chief Ali Rodriguez said last week that 75 percent of contract workers have returned to work, while half of the management was still out.

Earlier this week, oil tanker pilots in the western Lake Maracaibo oil hub went back to work after accepting a big pay packet from the government.

The move has eased port operations in the region which pumps half the country's crude oil, but export levels have not recovered partly because foreign ship owners have stayed away.

Pilots in the east of the country have been working normally since the beginning of January, but ship agents say very few tankers are leaving from these ports.