The Associated Press

Jamaica received 370,000 barrels of oil from Ecuador on Friday in an emergency shipment intended to help the country avoid a shortage caused by Venezuela's general strike.

In another consequence of the Venezuelan crisis, an oil refinery in Curacao that is one of the world's largest, shut down production Friday, company and union officials said.

Curacao's Refineria Isla, which receives most of its oil from Venezuela, is no longer processing gasoline, jet fuel, propane or oil lubricants, after shutting down its 37 refining plants, union president Elvis DeAndrade said.

The refinery, which employs more than 1,000 full-time, will not resume production until it can guarantee Venezuelan shipments of crude oil. The last two shipments of crude arrived last weekend, and there are no plans for more, the company has said.

In Jamaica, current oil reserves in Jamaica are lower than usual, enough to last only four more weeks, said Christopher Chin-Fatt of the state-run oil company PetroJam.

"This crude is coming just in time," Chin-Fatt said. "We have enough, but not as much as we'd like."

The shipment was originally scheduled to arrive Wednesday, but was delayed for undisclosed reasons.

Before the strike, Jamaica received 50 to 60 percent of its oil from Venezuela, or roughly 400,000 to 450,000 barrels per month.

Chin-Fatt would not disclose the cost of Friday's shipment. A similar-sized shipment is scheduled to arrive from Mexico in mid-January.

"But that's a little close," he said. "We're trying to advance that date."

Industry experts predict prices could soar higher as the strike continues in Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest oil exporter.

The strike, now nearly a month old, has crippled Venezuela's oil exports as opposition leaders try to force President Hugo Chavez to resign or call a referendum on his rule.

Raymond Wright, managing director of the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica, called an oil shortage in Jamaica unlikely, but said a prolonged strike would hurt the island. Since the strike, he said, Jamaica hasn't received benefits previously enjoyed under a long-standing agreement with Venezuela, such as no-interest loans and credits on shipments.

"Now we have to pay for all the oil up front," Wright said.

In the meantime, Wright said Jamaica would continue to buy oil from other countries.

Copyright 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

View From Within by Lise Alves          Week of Dec 28, 2002 - Jan 03, 2003 Lise Alves is a Correspondent based in São Paulo for several media outlets, including Vatican Radio, CNS and the International Transport Journal. She has worked for "Marketplace" and the Christian Science Monitor radio services in the United States, and Deutsche Welle in Germany. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Journalism from the University of Maryland.

Brazil’s new President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has stated that one of the first priorities of his government will be to feed the hungry. And, as promised during the campaign, just days after winning the presidency Lula launched the “Fome Zero” program, which translates loosely to “No Hunger”. According to Lula, no Brazilian should have to go a day without breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Although his intentions are noble, this is not the first time the hunger problem takes front row center in a country as large as Brazil, known among other things for one of the world’s largest gaps between the poor and the rich. The idea of having as its first major project the eradication of hunger indicates that the Worker's Party (PT) is following through on its commitment to prioritize social programs, but it also reveals that the party has learned little from others’ past mistakes.

The difficulty begins with the lack of a clear definition, and because of it, the assumption that those who are poor are necessarily under-nourished. Many living under the so-called poverty line have already found means to obtain food, either through NGOs, government programs or family members. How, then, will the government determine who really can or should qualify for the benefit? What criteria will be used?

One of the proposed means to combat hunger is the distribution of stamps – much like food stamps in the U.S. – to those who live in poverty. But the problem with food stamps is that they don't necessarily end up used for their intended purpose. Some of the project’s biggest critics fear that stamps will end up transformed into a “parallel currency”, similar to what already happens in Brazil with public transportation stamps or "passes" employers give to workers as a benefit. One does not have to look too hard in any large Brazilian city to find improvised kiosks, where anyone can swap these stamps for cash. They're also accepted in lieu of cash by many businesses, although always at less than face value. An obvious question then, still to be answered, is how will Lula’s government prevent food stamps from turning into parallel money instead of actually being used to buy food for the undernourished?

During the election campaign, Lula's Worker's Party stated it opposed aid programs created by outgoing President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, which included giving out money and letting the recipients decide how best to use it. Those who created the "Fome Zero" program started out insisting on the concept of distributing food instead of money. That brought back visions of large food depots, with lines going around the block and people camping outside warehouses to receive their monthly share. It also brought back the prospect of suppliers overcharging the government for products, and corrupting public officials to maintain a supply cartel.

All of these are not figments of anyone's imagination, but very real difficulties faced in the not too distant past when similar programs were launched. Without a firm and well thought out game plan, it is very hard to imagine that the Worker's Party would be able to maintain sufficiently rigorous control of where these resources are really ending up. In other words, it's hard to see how the new administration might be successful where so many others have failed.

At this point – and this article was written just days before Lula takes office – actual details of the program have not been released, and the scenario remains murky. No one knows the exact logistics and specifics of the "Fome Zero" program – probably not even the group in charge of drawing up the project. All that's known is that the government has made fighting hunger a top priority. So far, it has yet to provide even the most basic information about how this will be accomplished – where the funds will come from, for example.

The original idea was to obtain revenues from the existing "Fund to Combat Poverty", but that fund has problems of its own. It has expanded out of control, and is now used to rescue just about any government assistance program that is unable to obtain funds elsewhere. Programs aimed at supervising indigenous lands, or the removal of polluting agents in hydro-basins, now resort to this fund and receive money intended to combat poverty.

The bottom line: the incoming government announced its first battle without studying the territory, or thinking through a strategy to combat the chosen enemy. There are far more questions than answers, leaving the population with a deja vu feeling of past administrations.

Related sites: Official transition website, created by the Worker's Party to provide details of the transition process (Portuguese only) transicao.lula.org.br www.infobrazil.com

Larry Rohter, New York Times Friday, December 27, 2002

Rio de Janeiro -- In a show of support for Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's embattled president, the Brazilian government has sent an emergency shipment of 520,000 barrels of gasoline to help relieve shortages caused by a nationwide general strike, government officials here said Thursday.

Venezuela is the world's fifth-largest oil producer and a major exporter to the United States. But executives and an estimated 30,000 workers of the Venezuelan state oil company have adhered to the four-week strike, causing oil production to plunge and leading to growing shortages at gas stations.

A spokeswoman for Brazil's state oil company, Petrobras, confirmed that the shipment, made at Chavez's personal request, was on its way to Venezuela. She said the vessel was expected to arrive today or Saturday.

Commercial and political ties between the two countries have strengthened considerably since Chavez took office in February 1999, proclaiming his intent to lead a peaceful social revolution. President Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil approved the gasoline shipment, and there are indications that his successor-elect, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, of the left-wing Workers Party, was involved in the decision.

Da Silva takes office Wednesday and has a long-standing personal and ideological affinity with Chavez, who also is reported to have asked Brazil to supply crews to operate Venezuelan oil tankers.

"He thinks like I do," da Silva said earlier this year, adding that while the Venezuelan leader can be "excessively impetuous" at times, he is "a killer ball-handler" who deserves praise for his daring.

Chavez in turn has said, "Lula is a great man." After da Silva won a landslide victory in October, Chavez said he hoped Brazil would join Venezuela and Cuba in establishing an "axis of good" in the hemisphere.

Earlier this month, da Silva sent one of his chief foreign policy advisers, Marco Aurelio Garcia, to Caracas to assess the crisis. In interviews with Brazilian newspapers after his return, Garcia said the new Brazilian government wanted to "contribute to Venezuelan stability" and accused Chavez's foes of seeking to provoke "a situation of uncontrollable violence" that would cripple the world economy.

"Imagine the No. 5 oil producer with a civil war and Iraq with a war that is not at all civil," Garcia told the Rio de Janeiro daily O Globo in an article published Tuesday. "That would bring disastrous consequences."

Brazil's action has been condemned by strike organizers in Venezuela. They maintain that Brazil is violating a neutrality policy among Latin American nations and is illegally trying to break the strike.

"Brazil needs to understand that a political crisis exists in Venezuela and that it must be resolved by Venezuelans," Antonio Ledezma, a former mayor of Caracas, said in an interview with a Brazilian newspaper.

The move also has drawn comment in Brazil, particularly in view of da Silva's origins as a labor leader who was jailed for leading walkouts.

"To see the Workers Party playing the role of strike-buster is like that MasterCard commercial -- 'priceless,' " Ancelmo Gois wrote Thursday in O Globo.

In Venezuela on Thursday, thousands of people renewed their protests on the 25th day of the opposition strike to force Chavez to call elections. Executives of the state-owned oil monopoly Petroleos de Venezuela S.A staged a rally shouting, "Not one step back!" and "We are not afraid!" as speakers denounced government firings of striking oil workers and arrests of tanker crews.

Fears of the strike continuing well into 2003 and of possible war in Iraq sent oil prices above $32 a barrel, the highest they have been in two years.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Venezuela output well below normal BY PHIL GUNSON Special to The Miami Herald

The Venezuelan oil industry remains in a critical condition, despite claims by the government of President Hugo Chávez that what it calls ''sabotage'' by striking managers is under control and that crude oil and refined products for both the domestic and foreign markets will soon be flowing normally.

In a Christmas Eve interview with foreign correspondents, Alí Rodríguez, chairman of the state oil corporation PdVSA, described as ''titanic'' efforts to resume normal operations. But Juan Fernández, leader of the dissident managers, dismissed those attempts as ''merely [applying] hot towels'' to the crisis.

The giant Amuay-Cardon refinery complex, for instance, with its 940,000-barrel daily capacity, remains shut down. Only the Puerto La Cruz refinery, operating at well below 50 percent capacity, is in a position to produce gasoline.

The tanker Pilin León, whose striking crew held out at anchor for 17 days before being replaced by officers the merchant navy insists are unqualified, loaded 230,000 barrels of gasoline and 50,000 of diesel at Cardon on Christmas Day, according to the government.

The fuel is due to be unloaded today at the Carenero terminal, for shipment by pipeline to Caracas. That would represent perhaps two days' worth for Venezuelan consumers.

However, Capt. José Jesús Jiménez of the tanker Paramacay said the Pilin León ``did not fully load . . . [and] the last [gasoline] at Cardon is now gone. The idea now is for the Maritza Sayalero to dock at Amuay and take the little gasoline that remains there.''

The Paramacay, along with four other Venezuelan vessels, remains at anchor near Amuay-Cardon. Most of the PDV-Marina fleet remains paralyzed, while exports are running at below 10 percent of normal.

''They haven't bothered us since Dec. 9,'' Jiménez said. ''At the beginning, they cut off our food. Then they cut off the water.'' But supplies were later restored, he said. ``I think they're afraid of trying anything with us because of the danger.''

The Paramacay, which is part-loaded with isobutane -- a fuel additive -- is even more dangerous than a tanker loaded with gasoline, the captain said.

Other crews, however, have reported increasing levels of harassment, including what the merchant navy union calls physical and psychological torture. ''They have even taken officers out onto the deck in their underwear and put 9mm pistols to their heads,'' Capt. José Luis Blandín, the union president, told a press conference Thursday.

Three captains have reportedly been hospitalized with stress-related conditions.

Today, the union is to ask the supreme court to intervene to stop what it calls human rights violations. It is asking for the people of Caracas to demonstrate outside the court in support of the plea.

Meanwhile, the world's fifth-biggest oil exporter is beginning to import gasoline. The tanker Amazon Explorer, with 520,000 barrels of unleaded gas, is on its way from Brazil as part of a controversial agreement between Chávez and the incoming government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Without a settlement to the strike, however, experts doubt that even a semblance of normality can be attained.

In the city of Mérida, one of the worst-hit, gas lines are now measured in days rather than hours, and places in line are being sold.

''Place number 400, for example, will cost you 25,000 bolivares [about $18],'' said political analyst Alberto Garrido in a phone interview from the Andean city.

''There is no cooking gas, and people are selling firewood in the streets,'' Garrido added.

Jorge Kamkoff, a member of the PdVSA board who resigned over the government's handling of the strike, said the industry could not be normalized ``with all the people they have, nor by bringing in everyone, of all nationalities.''

Brazil's state-owned oil company will raise fuel prices by almost 10% on Sunday because of a reduction in global output.

The increases is expected to push Brazil's inflation rate above the 11% mark.

Prices have already been rising after the currency, the real, lost 35% of its value because of speculators' fears about leftist President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Petrobras said the price of cooking gas for consumers will increase 7.7%.

Global oil prices have risen sharply because of US threats to start a war with Iraq and a strike in Venezuela against President Hugo Chavez, which has brought output at the world's fifth largest oil exporter to a standstill.

Hostage to markets

Brazilian fuel prices are at the mercy of international oil and currency markets.

The country's fuel market was deregulated last January and Petrobras has been adjusting its prices in accordance.

Despite being a substantial exporter of oil, Brazil lacks refining capactiy and must import about a quarter of the 1.8 million barrels that it consumes daily.

Petrobras also imports about 40% of the natural gas used in the country.