NEW YORK – An unprecedented gift of warmth is destined for North American reservations this winter, where tribal governments have been offered drastically discounted heating oil by Venezuela’s nationally owned petroleum company.
The offer comes through Houston-based CITGO Petroleum Corp., which has committed to 10 million gallons of fuel for tribes at a 40 percent discount, with the discounted portion treated as a charitable donation to American Indians and Alaska Native governments.
CITGO is a subsidiary of Venezuela’s Petroleos de Venezuela S.A., which distributed 40 million gallons of discounted fuel through nonprofit organizations last winter in the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The program has been expanded to a total of 100 million gallons this year.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez inaugurated the program before an enthusiastic audience in New York on Sept. 21, where blacks, Latinos and more than 300 American Indians packed Harlem’s Mount Olive Baptist Church.
“It makes us feel good to give,” Chavez told the festive crowd that waved Venezuelan flags and chanted his name.
Chavez, who is of mixed indigenous, African and Spanish ethnicity, greeted the tribal representatives as “our indigenous friends, our brothers and sisters.”
“They are the original tribes of this country and the real owners of this land,” he said. “The British and Spanish colonists, the Portuguese, Dutch, French, the whole of Europe came to America and devastated it. We have to remember this without any kind of hatred. It’s just the truth, and today we are here 500 years later. As Jesus said, we should love each other. We should live as brothers and sisters without prejudices. It’s the only way to bring equality and peace in our world.”
Chavez became interested in supplying affordable heat to northern Natives after Maine tribes participated last year. Now the initiative has expanded to 18 states and more than 200 tribes from Maine to Alaska, with a potential savings of more than $10 million to Indian communities.
Penobscot Chief James Sappier, who is also president of the National Indian Environmental Council, said he thinks it’s a good deal.
“I’ve been in the business of Indian affairs since 1969,” Sappier said. “This is probably one of the most exciting programs I’ve seen in Indian country. It’s strange that it’s coming from a country outside the United States.”
A founding member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Venezuela has one of the world’s largest oil reserves and supplies the United States with about 11 percent of its petroleum. Chavez, who promulgates socialist ideologies, is on a mission to free Venezuela from imperialist interference by forming alliances to help re-establish sovereignty over its vast oil wealth while funneling profits towards social programs.
The Maliseet, Micmac, Passamaquoddy and Penobscot governments worked through a nonprofit group last winter, but CITGO is now prepared to deal directly with tribal authorities, due largely to the efforts of the Penobscots, who administered distribution to Maine tribes and helped develop the expanded program.
“It was really an administrative nightmare, but we did it,” Sappier said. “We had a language problem. We had industry using business and oil language, talking to a government who had tribal government language. It was difficult. They have an accent and they talk fast. We had to tell them many times, ‘E-mail me.’ Telephone conversations were rough.”
Natives from America’s chilliest region are among the first to sign up.
Ian Erlich, chairman of the Alaska Inter-Tribal Council, said his group struck a deal with CITGO on behalf of some 140 tribes from the Aleutian Ranges above the Arctic Circle, where wind chills reach 75 below zero and heating fuel averages $7 a gallon.
“The Alaskan Inter-Tribal Council is thankful for the help CITGO has extended in such a generous and practical way to the villages of Alaska,” Erlich, who attended with a contingent of 50 Alaska Natives, said. “The oil companies in America and throughout the world are enjoying unprecedented, skyrocketing profits. The state of Alaska has a budget surplus from oil of well over a billion dollars this year, and this while Alaskan villages face a crisis due to the high cost of heating fuel. Where are the oil executives from Alaska and where are the politicians?”
Notwithstanding the gratitude radiating from those who appreciate CITGO’s generosity, the offer comes amidst political controversy surrounding Chavez, who attended the Sept. 21 event a day after making worldwide headlines for personifying President George Bush as the devil before the U.N. General Assembly.
“Yesterday, the devil came here,” Chavez told the world body. “As the spokesman of imperialism, he came to share his nostrums, to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world.”
Similar assertions sparked a probe into his fuel program last February by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which questions Venezuela’s ties to Cuba, Syria, Iran and Libya.
“Many of President Chavez’s public statements concerning the United States government suggest that his purportedly altruistic motives may camouflage his true motivations,” Committee Chairman Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, and Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., wrote in a letter to CITGO, demanding information and corporate records.
The company remains in the committee’s investigative crosshairs, but no hearing has been scheduled, a staff member said.
Far from any evil intentions, however, CITGO says the oil is a gift to America’s poor spurred by the request of several U.S. senators who wrote to major petroleum producers requesting relief for the needy in the wake of skyrocketing energy costs and record profits. Only CITGO responded favorably.
The National Congress of American Indians has not taken a position on the program, but encourages tribes to embark on innovative economic development opportunities that affirm their authorities as sovereigns and allow them to better meet the needs of their people, according to a statement by President Joe Garcia.
“While NCAI does not have a specific position on the Venezuelan oil proposal, we will closely monitor the Venezuelan government’s proposal and their relationship with tribes,” Garcia said.
