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Chavez's oil has nothing to do with his barbs at Bush
While I personally am not eligible to receive the Venezuelan oil Chavez has donated to low-income Native Americans in Alaska, my roommate is.
- By Leah Bower, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 22:54 December 17, 2007
I'll be burning Hugo Chavez's oil this winter to stay warm.
While I personally am not eligible to receive the Venezuelan oil Chavez has donated to low-income Native Americans in Alaska, my roommate is. Because she's Tlingit, a native tribe located in Southeast Alaska and western Canada, we'll be warming ourselves during the cold Alaskan winter with oil donated by a man who has called US President George W. Bush more nasty names than Hillary Clinton.
Frankly, I don't care if some people bluster on about it being un-American to accept oil from a country whose leader routinely vilifies the US, calls its leader the "devil" and generally runs around wielding its energy resources like a weapon.
I would be beyond angry, however, if I was Venezuelan. Chavez suffered a surprising defeat during a referendum earlier this month, which would have taken the country down the road towards a more socialist-leaning government than it has now. Why? Well, not everyone is happy with the government's management of the economy. I can't imagine why.
But with a hair below 38 per cent of the Venezuelan population below the property line - compared to only 11.2 per cent in Alaska - I'd be pretty grumpy if my supposedly Socialist-leaning government was handing out freebies in the other, generally richer, hemisphere just to take a pretty ineffective potshot at a fellow president.
So I see it as striking a blow against the blustery Chavez, even if we are occasionally both looking at Bush askance.
This is the fourth year of the programme, which appears to have grown in size and scope each year. The programme is hoping to reach 200 US indigenous communities in Maine, New York, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Nebraska, Arizona, Oregon, Washington and Alaska.
Last year, about 150 native villages in Alaska accepted money for heating oil from Citgo, including the small fishing village of Wrangell, where my roommate and I live. Sadly, it isn't Venezuelan oil because the company does not operate in Alaska.
So in lieu of shipping oil north, which would be somewhat funny considering how much of it we ship south, Citgo is donating roughly $8 million to nonprofit organisations, up from more than $5 million last year. That translates to 100 gallons this winter for me, my roommate and more than 15,540 other households in Alaska.
Steve Sumida, deputy director for Alaska Inter-Tribal Council, told the Cordova Times that the money is welcome, since oil prices are steadily climbing and heating oil prices in rural Alaska can be extremely expensive thanks to the cost of transporting it to isolated rural locations.
But not everyone feels that taking the oil is a great way to show our collective frostbitten thumb at Chavez.
The Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association, a native nonprofit organisation that would have handled the heating oil donation on behalf of 291 households last year, rejected the offer because of Chavez's penchant for slinging barbs at Bush.
"As a citizen of this country, you can have your own opinion of our president and our country. But I don't want a foreigner coming in here and bashing us," Justine Gunderson, administrator for the tribal council in the Aleut village of Nelson Lagoon told the Associated Press. "Even though we're in economically dire straits, it was the right choice to make."
All I know is that it has just started to snow outside, oil prices are rising yet again as winter storms buffet the northeast United States and my heating oil tank is sounding a little too hollow.
- The writer is a freelance journalist based in Alaska, USA.
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