Chavez offers cheap oil to America's poor

Maybe he is taking a page from the New Testament and wants to help the poor. Maybe he just wants to show up a certain Christian minister who called for his assassination. Or perhaps he can't stomach the high profits US oil companies are making in the wake of post-Katrina gas hikes.

For whatever reason, Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela and thorn-in-the-side of the Bush administration, is planning to sell gas and heating oil at below market prices to poor people in the United States.

In an interview with Juan Gonzalez of the New York Daily News and Democracy Now, Chavez said he will begin by offering cut-price oil in a Mexican-American community in Chicago next month. Then expand the program to the South Bronx and Boston.

Citgo Petroleum Corp. is a subsidiary of Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., so Chavez has the infrastructure in place to make good on his promise. And the need will be great this winter with high prices for heating oil.

But he also had advice for Americans about our oil consumption. "Americans must reorder their style of life" because "this planet cannot sustain" our "irrational" consumption, especially when it comes to oil, Gonzalez quotes Chavez as saying.

The Center for American Progress is also calling for action to deal with this oil crisis, and last week issued a proposal to address wasteful patterns of energy use. See also last year's YES! issue: Can We Live Without Oil?