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© 2021 The Somerville Times. All rights reserved.
Venezuelan oil flows into Somerville
By Benjamin Witte
A controversial heating program that’s raised shackles among some conservative politicians in Washington is being well received here in Somerville, where despite a mild winter, high oil prices make keeping warm a luxury some simply can’t afford.
Since November, the CITGO oil company, working in collaboration with two Boston-based non-profits, Citizens Energy Corporation and Mass Energy, has been offering low-income Massachusetts residents and qualifying organizations major discounts on heating oil.
One such organization is the Little Sisters of the Poor, a religious group that operates a pair of senior residence halls on Highland Ave. Together, the two units house 110 low-income senior citizens. It’s a sizeable facility – the larger of the two units is six stories. It’s also, according to Mother Celine Therese, the woman in charge of the facility, incredibly expensive to maintain.
“It’s always difficult,” she said, “because we cannot get enough money to keep up our life here, and keep up with the demands of the residents, and to maintain [the building].”
The Little Sisters of the Poor, said Mother Therese, rely on a combination of Medicaid and public charity to cover their approximately $4.5 million annual budget. Heating costs make up a sizeable chunk of that budget. Therese estimates that by season’s end, oil bills alone should add up to about $75,000.
Fortunately, under the CITGO discounted oil program, which the Little Sisters of the Poor applied for back in December, the group expects to save a sizeable chunk of money – $21,000 in total.
“It could have really broken us if we had to pay another $21,000 just to get through this mild winter. Can you imagine if we had another winter like last year?” said Therese. “We thank God for whomever was the original person who thought this up. We will pray for that person.”
So who did think this up?
It’s hard to say exactly, though according to Larry Cretien, executive director of Mass Energy, the Massachusetts version of the program (several other states have initiated similar deals with CITGO) really began with a conversation last year between Congressman William Delahunt (10th District) and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
During that meeting, explained Cretien, Delahunt lamented to the Venezuelan leader that despite this country’s overall wealth, some sectors of the population have been hard hit by rising oil prices. “Chavez expressed sympathy for that, saying he would help if Delahunt could identify some ways that Venezuela could offer some discounted heating oil to folks in this country,” said Cretien.
Since first being elected in 1998, the charismatic yet controversial Chavez has consolidated a tremendous amount of power within Venezuela. That power includes essential control over the nation’s sizeable oil supply. Venezuela, the world’s fifth leading oil producer, currently supplies an estimated 15 percent of U.S. oil imports. The company in charge of all that oil is Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA), a state-owned enterprise. As president of the republic, in other words, Chavez is also the de facto head not only of PDVSA but also of its U.S. subsidiary, CITGO.
As it turns out, CITGO, which operates more than 13,000 gas stations here in the United States, is, for all intensive purposes, a Venezuelan company. So when Chavez announced in November that he wanted to help low-income Americans with their winter heating bills, not only did he apparently mean it, but with CITGO already so well established here, he also had the means to follow through.
CITGO has since worked with various state representatives and local organizations to set up discounted oil programs throughout the North East. Vermont, Maine, Delaware, Connecticut, parts of New York City and Philadelphia and of course Massachusetts have all taken CITGO up on its offer.
Locally, discounts are being made available through the non-profit groups Citizens Energy Corp. – an organization headed by former U.S. Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy – and Cretien’s Mass Energy. While Citizens Energy works with individual households, Mass Energy is using savings passed on from CITGO to provide heating assistance to non-profits and other organizations – like the Little Sisters of the Poor – that offer services for low-income people. Due in large part to the mild winter, both Mass Energy and Citizens Energy say they have leftover funds and will continue to accept applicants interested in the CITGO discounts.
The application process, said Mother Therese, was really quite simple. The Somerville News contacted another local resident – an 80-year-old widow who received her discount through Citizens Energy – who said basically the same thing. It’s easy money. The savings are real. Who knows if CITGO will extend the deal beyond this year? But for right now, discounts to low-income individuals and the organizations that serve them are out there for the taking.
“There’s an expression in Spanish,” according to Harvard professor and former Venezuelan government minister Ricardo Hausmann. “A caballo regalado no se le miran los dientes.” Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
So is CITGO and the Venezuelan government – Hugo Chavez – really that concerned about low-income Americans? Is this a purely altruistic move on the oil company’s part? Or is there some ulterior motive at play here?
The answer to the last question, said Professor Huasmann, is really quite simple. “This is an investment in public relations. And it’s a very efficient investment in public relations. It’s so efficient that you’re calling me. They couldn’t have bought as much space as they are getting from this coverage.”
Hugo Chavez, who for the past several years has been involved in a back and forth name-calling and rhetoric battle with the George Bush administration, always wants to make a distinction between being anti-United States and anti-American people, Huasmann explained. “This was a relatively cheap way to signal that his confrontation is with the U.S. government and not the U.S. people.”
Hausmann, for one, has a few bones to pick over the CITGO program. Why, he asks, should Venezuela, a country with a fraction of our per-capita income, be funding poor U.S. citizens? “The people in New England that are receiving this subsidized oil are much wealthier than the median Venezuelan,” he said. “While Venezuelan hospitals are running without medicine, and people are dying because there is insufficient equipment, there are people here who weren’t expecting help and yet they’re receiving this gift.”
Some conservative lawmakers in Washington – convinced that Chavez, who they label a “dictator,” is a threat to stability in South America – have made similar arguments against the CITGO programs. While the White House itself has remained tight-lipped on the subject, two high-ranking Republican house members called last month for an investigation into the discount program. The CITGO plan is, Reps. Joe Barton (Texas) and Ed Whitfield (Kentucky) wrote in a statement, “ part of an unfriendly government’s increasingly belligerent and hostile foreign policy toward the United States.”
Locally, however, the program has received virtually no formal opposition, both Cretien and Citizens Energy spokesperson Brian O’Conner insist. “For the most part it’s been overwhelmingly positive,” said Cretien. “As a reminder, Venezuela exports a lot of oil to this country. CITGO sells oil every day at gasoline stations and in the heating oil market. They are duly authorized. They’re not on any list I know of that says we shouldn’t be doing business wit
h them.”
And talking to people like Mother Celine Therese, whose home for low-income seniors can benefit so very tangibly from the oil discounts, a discussion of the deeper politics behind the program seems rather silly and maybe a bit off the mark.
“Whoever he may be, regardless,” said Mother Therese, “thank God we were recipients, because our residents deserve this. They really don’t have money. And those that are here taking care of them, we really don’t have money to keep up.”
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