Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez proposed OPEC should come up with a plan to sell oil to poor countries at dramatically lower prices than those paid by wealthy states.
Chavez said late Tuesday he will ask members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries at a summit in Saudi Arabia this weekend to consider a plan to aid poor countries struggling with rising oil prices.
"I would sell oil to a rich country at $100 (US) and to a poor country perhaps at $20 (US)" a barrel, Chavez said.Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez tells foreign media OPEC should sell oil cheaper to poor countries at a news conference in Caracas, Venezuela, Tuesday.
(Fernando Llano/ Associated Press)
"That breaks with the schemes of capitalism … OPEC could do it, although there are hard positions on it but I'm taking the issue to discuss it."
He said Venezuela is setting an example by selling oil under preferential credit terms to various Latin American and Caribbean countries. But he suggested with world crude prices near record levels, oil producers all have a moral obligation to help the neediest countries with below-market prices.
"How are you going to sell oil to Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the world, at $100, the same price that you sell it to the United States? It's not right ethically," Chavez said in an interview broadcast on Venezuelan television late Tuesday.
"We're going to try to obtain the support, if not of all OPEC countries, of some of them and of other major producers to design a formula thinking of the coming years," he said.
OPEC supplies about four out of every 10 barrels on world oil markets. Chavez said he believes it is time for the cartel to "raise its level of political action."
During a news conference earlier in the day, Chavez said if oil producers agree to the effort, they could also establish a $100-billion US fund that could finance health, education and housing for poverty-stricken countries.
"I always say it would be marvellous if we sold oil to the rich countries at $200 a barrel and to the poor countries at $5 a barrel. It would be a marvellous mechanism of redistribution of the world's wealth but it's an explosive issue," Chavez said.
Leaders from many of the world's top oil producers, including Chavez, will meet this weekend in the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh to discuss the challenges a potential global recession and the weakening value of the U.S. dollar present to the international oil market.
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