Venezuela suspends subsidised oil to US poor

06 January 2009

Venezuela's Texas-based oil subsidiary Citgo has suspended its scheme to provide cheap heating oil to thousands of low-income families in the US.

The programme is being halted because of falling world oil prices, Citizen Energy, the group that administers the scheme said.

Over the past two years, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez gave village families more than $16 million worth of heating fuel through his country's government-owned oil company, Citgo Petroleum. Last year, Citgo provided roughly $100 million in free fuel, 90 per cent of the programme's funding.

Citizens Energy, the Boston-based non-profit that oversees the programme that gave the free fuel. Joe Kennedy, the president of the programme is a former Congressman and nephew of the late President John F Kennedy.

"Citgo has been forced to re-evaluate all their social programmes, including the heating oil programme," Kennedy said on the group's website.

The Citgo donations have been controversial because of the perception that Chavez, a notorious anti-American, was using the programme for propaganda purposes. Kennedy has countered that the US gets much of its oil from far more controversial nations, such as Saudi Arabia.