Bronx, N.Y., workers benefit from Venezuelan oil

The profit-gouging U.S. oil giants made $33 billion in profits in the last quarter. But so far they have not given one dime to help the people weather the coming winter.

Dec. 6 news conference announces heating oil discounts.

The revolutionary government of Venezuela, headed by President Hugo Chávez, on the other hand, is helping the poor in the Bronx, N.Y., and in Mas sa chusetts to heat their homes with discount oil supplied by CITGO, the Venezuelan-owned oil company that has outlets all over the United States.

U.S. Congress member Jose Serrano and Venezuela’s ambassador to the U.S., Bernardo Alvarez, announced a plan on Dec. 6 in which CITGO will supply 8 million gallons of fuel at a 40 percent discount to 75 apartment buildings in the Bronx, benefiting 8,000 people.

The heating oil is being provided to three nonprofit housing corporations: Mount Hope Housing, Fordham Bedford Housing and VIP Community Services. The subsidies are being given to nonprofits to ensure that landlords don’t swallow up the savings.

According to Serrano, CITGO officials insisted that all fuel contracts stipulate how individual residents would benefit. The money saved gets to the tenants by reducing their monthly rents and by providing money for social programs, according to the arrangement worked out between CITGO and the housing companies.

Shaun Belle, president of Mount Hope Housing, “wants to find a way to generate much-needed funds that, in recent years, have been diverted to pay for the ever-higher price of heating fuel,” wrote the Daily News of Dec. 6.

“This allows us to save $400,000 to $500,000 for the winter,” said Bell. “We can pass the savings along to our tenants, who are very much under financial pressure.”

Serrano said that more schools, churches and nonprofits will soon be eligible for similar aid. Many have applied.

Last month CITGO made its first delivery in Massachusetts as part of 12 million gallons of oil that will benefit 40,000 households there.

President Chávez, according to Juan Gonzalez in a Dec. 6 column in the Daily News, vowed during an interview last month to set aside 10 percent of CITGO’s U.S. production to aid poor people.

Democratic senators recently held a hearing with the top oil executives in this country and chastised them for having excessive profits. That was for the television cameras. But when it comes to forcing these profit-gouging monopolies—who live off the suffering of homeowners, tenants and workers who have to drive to work every day—to give back some of their stolen profits, nothing is done.

But the Chávez government, which the Bush administration has been trying to overthrow, has come through with concrete aid. This aid to the workers and oppressed in the U.S. flows from Chávez’s policy of empowering the workers and the poor of Venezuela.

The head of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation, Larry Goldstein, denounced the fuel discounts as propaganda “designed to embarrass us,” according to the News. But Serrano said he is not bothered by that charge.

“If people think that the Venezuelan government and Chávez are trying to score points in my district, as a Congressman from the district, I welcome that.… And I welcome any other American corporation that wants to come here and score points.”