www.voanews.com VOA News 12 Jan 2003, 22:23 UTC

OPEC headquarters, ViennaVenezuelan soldiers have fired tear gas at tens of thousands of opposition supporters marching on a heavily-guarded military base in Caracas.

The military show of force injured at least 19 protesters, including a newspaper photographer hit by rubber bullets.

Sunday's march was in support of a general strike aimed at forcing President Hugo Chavez to resign or order early elections. The six-week strike as crippled Venezuela's economy and choked off oil production by what was once the world's fifth-largest oil exporter.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries said Sunday it will boost oil production to make up for the drop in Venezuelan exports that has increased world oil prices to a two-year high of $33 per barrel.

The cartel says nine of its 11 member nations will raise oil production, boosting overall OPEC output from 23 million barrels a day to 24.5 million.

Meanwhile, President Chavez accused his opponents of being "fascists" in his weekly radio and television address Sunday. He also threatened to revoke the broadcast licenses of private stations that are fiercely critical of his rule. Mr. Chavez, who has refused to resign, vowed Saturday to break the general strike that began December second.

A protest at the military complex in Caracas on January third ended in clashes with Chavez supporters that left two people dead and more than a dozen wounded.

icwales.icnetwork.co.uk Jan 13 2003 The Western Mail - The National Newspaper Of Wales   OPEC needs to compensate for a shortfall in oil exports from Venezuela but it shouldn't change its output target of 23 million barrels a day, the group's most influential oil minister said yesterday.

An increase in the target "would really flood the market", Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali Naimi said before an emergency meeting of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries in Vienna.

Opec called the meeting last week hoping to calm fears of supply problems caused by a strike in Venezuela begun on December 2 by political opponents seeking to oust President Hugo Chavez. The strike has slashed the country's exports by about 2m barrels a day. Venezuela is normally Opec's third-largest producer and a major oil supplier to the United States.

Opec pumps about a third of the world's crude supplies, which total 79m barrels a day.

Naimi acknowledged the Venezuelan strike has deprived the market of crude. "I care about what the market needs," he said.

But he added that Opec's production ceiling of 23m barrels a day should remain unchanged.

Crude prices surged in recent weeks but fell in anticipation of Opec's boosting production.

www.afxpress.com

VIENNA (AFX-ASIA) - Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) president Ali Rodriguez said Venezuela was aiming to increase production to two mln barrels per day (bpd) as it fixed and regained control of refineries and other oil facilities.

Rodriguez, speaking on the sidelines of the weekend OPEC meeting that agreed to increase production quotas in response to Venezuela's crisis, described the six-week strike as "not a labour strike, this is a political conflict."

"The intention of these people is not to obtain benefits for workers but to defeat the government," said the head of the coutnry's state-owned oil company.

In Venezuela yesterday, thousands of opponents of the government marched to a heavily guarded military complex as they pressed demands that President Hugo Chavez resign.

The 11-nation Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, of which

Venezuela is a member, agreed yesterday to increase oil production by 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) in a bid to curb a surge in prices triggered by the strike.

OPEC agreed to raise its combined output ceiling by 6.5 percent to 24.5 million bpd from next month to try to cool world oil markets.

OPEC President and Qatar Oil Minister Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah said the Venezuelan crisis had taken over two million bpd of oil off world markets, adding that OPEC would roll back the output hike once Venezuelan exports recovered.

Rodriguez described the situation in Venezuela as a "force majeure."

"In the meantime we are now very positive as far as reaching a level in order to satisfy our commitments to our customers," he said.

Rodriguez said Venezuela had not ruled out turning to foreign oil technicians, saying that "in certain cases, the need for specialist help, notably in refining, is felt." afxasiadesk@afxnews.com msa/rl/tjc

www.rapidcityjournal.com By ALEXANDRA OLSON

Soldiers in riot gear blocked the entrance to a park outside a military base Sunday as opponents of President Hugo Chavez prepared to march on the site, where rioting left two dead and dozens injured two weeks ago.

The march is aimed at persuading the military to support a 42-day-old strike that has paralyzed the world's fifth-largest oil exporter but hasn't rattled Chavez's resolve to stay in power.

The military _ purged of dissidents after a brief April coup _ has supported Chavez, with troops seizing oil tankers, commandeering gasoline trucks and locking striking workers out of oil installations. Top commanders have professed their loyalty to the government. Dozens of soldiers used barbed wire and armored personnel carriers to block the entrance to Los Proceres park, outside the Fort Tiuna military base. The park is one of eight security zones in Caracas as decreed by Chavez. Protests are banned in those areas unless authorized by the defense ministry.

A few residents protested the show of force, chanting, "The government will fall!"

"This is totally out of proportion. It's no way to control a march," said Carlos Melo, of the opposition Democratic Coordinator movement. "If the government thinks these trucks and weapons are going to stop us, it won't."

Venezuela's largest labor confederation, business chamber and opposition parties called for the strike on Dec. 2 to demand that Chavez resign and call early elections if he loses a nonbinding referendum on his rule.

The National Elections Council scheduled the referendum for Feb. 2 after accepting an opposition petition signed by 2 million people. Chavez says the vote would be unconstitutional, and his supporters have challenged it in the Supreme Court. He was elected in 1998 and re-elected in 2000, and his term ends in 2007. Opponents accuse the president of running roughshod over democratic institutions and wrecking the economy with leftist policies. The opposition has staged dozens of street marches, called for a tax boycott and held a two-day bank strike last week.

Chavez has threatened to order troops to seize food production plants that are participating in the strike and to fire or jail striking teachers and have soldiers take over their duties.

He already has fired 1,000 oil workers after some 30,000 of 40,000 workers joined the strike, which has caused fuel shortages and slowed oil exports to a trickle.

The strike is costing the country an estimated $70 million a day.

On Jan. 3, Chavez supporters and opponents clashed while police fired tear gas to keep the sides apart during an opposition march on Los Proceres. Two Chavez supporters died after being shot and at least 78 were injured, five with gunshot wounds. It was unclear who fired on marchers.

Police also intervened Saturday when Chavez supporters blocked the route of a planned opposition march through the streets of Maracay, the military's nerve center, and on Margarita island off Venezuela's coast.

The country's crude output is estimated at about 400,000 barrels a day, compared with the pre-strike level of 3 million barrels. Exports are a fifth of the 2.5 million barrels a day the country usually produces.

The country's $100 billion economy shrank an estimated 8 percent in 2002, largely due to constant political instability. Inflation has surpassed 30 percent while unemployment reaches 17 percent. Negotiations sponsored by the Organization of American States have produced few results.

asia.reuters.com Sun January 12, 2003 05:41 PM ET By Tom Ashby

VIENNA (Reuters) - Embattled Venezuelan officials on Sunday accused striking oil workers of sabotaging the country's energy industry, while assuring fellow OPEC states the government would restore output swiftly.

State oil company chief Ali Rodriguez said he would start criminal prosecutions against workers he said had sabotaged oilfields, refineries and computer systems during the six-week-old strike that has brought the industry to its knees.

"There are criminal and civil cases to answer in this and of course we will apply the law in Venezuela," Rodriguez told a press conference after an OPEC meeting in the Austrian capital.

Striking executives of Petroleos de Venezuela, many of whom have now been sacked by Rodriguez, say incompetence by replacement workers is to blame for a recent spate of accidents, including oil spills in the western Lake Maracaibo.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries met on Sunday in emergency session to deal with the Venezuelan stoppage, lifting quotas by 1.5 million barrels a day, seven percent.

In response to Venezuelan assurances that output would resume swiftly, OPEC included the South American country in the production hike despite its current inability to fill its quota.

OPEC President Abdullah al-Attiyah said OPEC was hopeful that Venezuela would return to full production soon and said the other cartel members would reverse the hike when that happened.

OUTPUT SLUMP

Opposition oil executives said output fell below half a million barrels per day last week, from more than three million in November. Government officials peg it closer to a million.

"Internal market distribution is being normalized, we have managed to free up port operations and we have drawn down stocks whose build-up had blocked production," Rodriguez said.

"This has helped a sustained rise in output, so this month we should achieve our objectives."

Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said oil output should rise to two million barrels per day by the end of January and 2.5 million by mid-February.

Asked if Venezuela would pump its full 2.8 million bpd quota by the end of February, Rodriguez replied: "Not totally because damage has been very great and we don't know if there has been sabotage in some wells, so we have to be very careful."

The government has repeatedly failed to meet previous deadlines for restarting the industry, and still faces a major obstacle from a crashed central computer system. Striking workers say Venezuela will take months to get back to quota. "There has been electronic sabotage and sabotage on valves because the campaign is aimed at causing accidents, and we have to take anti-sabotage measures to start up safely," said Rodriguez, a former OPEC secretary-general.

The United States welcomed OPEC's big output hike, having lost some 13 percent of its imports from Venezuela.

The country's main oil refineries have ground to a virtual halt, export terminals have drastically reduced loadings and long lines have formed at gasoline stations, while Venezuela resorts to importing fuel.

Rodriguez said the small El Palito refinery was now being started again after a seal blew in last week's attempt to restore the flow of refined products to the domestic market. Rodriguez said the country's largest refinery complex at Amuay-Cardon had been shut down incorrectly by striking workers, leaving deposits of asphalt and sulphur in some units.

Nevertheless, he said operations there would resume in two or three weeks.

"Our objective is to re-establish basic production this month and restart the refineries to satisfy the internal market because we are importing gasoline at prices far above what we sell it at, which is creating losses for the company," Rodriguez said.