Venezuelan oil flows to Philly

Philadelphia has become the latest major U.S. city to receive discounted home heating oil from revolutionary Venezuela. Citgo, the Houston-based arm of Petro-Venezuela, will ship 5 million gallons of oil for distribution at a steep discount.

Geraldine Shield, who had been using her oven to heat her North Philadelphia home, became the first beneficiary of the program that will provide heating oil at a 40 percent discount to 25,000 low-income families in the five-county Philadelphia region. Shields was so short on money after paying her December heating bill that she couldn’t buy Christmas gifts for her grandchild. “Maybe I can now,” she said. (Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 29)

Venezuela’s ambassador to the U.S., Bernardo Alvarez, was on hand as a truck brought the oil to Shield’s home. He was joined by U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah, who brokered the arrangement, and State Sen. Vincent Hughes.

Fattah described Venezuela’s program as “a humanitarian gesture of extraordinary magnitude.”

Hughes challenged other oil companies to follow Venezuela’s example. “Citgo has stepped up, where’s everybody else?”

No other companies have offered subsidized heating oil. John Palomo, a spokesperson for the American Petroleum Institute, said he knew of no plans to do so. U.S.-based oil companies reported $33 billion in 2005 third-quarter profits, while they reduced production to drive up prices.

Since the election of President Hugo Chávez and the launching of the Bolivarian Revolution, profits from oil production in Venezuela—the world’s fifth-largest producer—have been used to finance much-needed social programs for literacy, health care, job training and childcare. After visiting the Bronx, N.Y., earlier in the year, Chávez offered to help the poor in the U.S. who faced a winter with record high oil prices.

Citgo’s program in Pennsylvania follows similar heating assistance programs offered by Venezuela to Boston, the Bronx, Rhode Island, Vermont and the Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, Micmac and Maliseet Native nations in Maine.

Talks are ongoing for similar programs in Connecticut, Delaware and in Harlem and Queens, N.Y.. Citgo has worked with the non-profit group Citizens Energy Corp. to facilitate the distributions.

In Philadelphia, the discounted oil will be offered initially to more than 7,602 families who have exhausted their LIHEAP (Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program) aid. Fattah announced that Citgo officials and his aides also plan to meet with Gov. Edward Rendell to discuss expanding the program to the rest of the state.

In September, PGW (Pennsylvania Gas Works) and other area utility companies were quick to capitalize on the devastation from Hurricane Katrina. Gas rates shot up between 30 to 50 percent over the last year. The rate hikes took effect on Dec. 1.

In addition, changes made by the Pennsylvania Legislature last year allow utility companies to shut off power without notice if just one payment is missed. High fees add to the financial burden of restoring service.

Fattah and Philadelphia community leaders who praised Venezuela’s aid dismissed a verbal attack on Chávez this week by U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). McCain said that the United States must explore alternative energy sources to avoid “being held hostage by Iran or by Venezuelan ‘wackos.’”

Commenting on Venezuela’s act of solidarity in coming to the rescue of poor people in Philadelphia, Jonathan Stein of the Community Legal Services here said: “The issue is whether you freeze to death in the winter. No one, Democrat or conservative Republican, should raise questions about where it comes from, but should applaud it.”