Published January 7, 2003
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - President Hugo Chavez's government said yesterday it was steadily reviving the world's fifth-largest oil exporting industry a month into a strike led by Venezuela's opposition.
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Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said production was about 800,000 barrels a day and would reach more than 1 million barrels a day by the end of the week. Venezuela normally produces 3 million barrels a day.
Gasoline imports were helping restock domestic supplies after weeks of long gas lines, Ramirez said. Shipments totaling 1.2 million barrels of gasoline were arriving from the United States, Trinidad and Tobago and Russia, Ramirez said.
The stakes are crucial in Venezuela, a top supplier to the United States, and a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
About 35,000 workers at the state owned oil monopoly Petroleos de Venezuela S.A. joined a general strike called Dec. 2 to demand that Chavez hold a nonbinding referendum on his rule Feb. 2.
But Chavez has refused and invited his opponents to call a binding referendum as allowed by Venezuela's constitution in August, or halfway into Chavez's six-year term.
The standoff has helped send international oil prices to two-year highs.
Chavez vowed to use the strike to tighten government control over PDVSA and make it a trimmer, more profitable corporation. He has appointed loyal board members at the semiautonomous company and fired almost 300 executives.
PDVSA President Ali Rodriguez said last week that the company would split into eastern and western divisions to eliminate the dissident and costly Caracas-based bureaucracy. He also said the government planned to cut some 6,000 jobs in Caracas, a center of anti-Chavez resistance, and the western oil town of Maracaico.
Rodriguez said he would personally manage PDVSA while managers Felix Rodriguez and Luis Marin report to him and handle separate PDVSA operations in eastern and western Venezuela - bypassing central and dissident PDVSA bureaucracy and tightening government control.
Ramirez said the government was contemplating other actions, including sales of non-essential assets, including the possible sale of Venezuela's wholly-owned U.S. subsidiary Citgo.
Chavez on Sunday branded the PDVSA strikers as "traitors" and said they should be tried for jeopardizing the nation's security.
