Chávez's gasolene rationing plan causes uproar

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP):As home to the world's cheapest gasoline, Venezuela has long had to contend with the haemorrhaging of supplies as smugglers haul gas across the border to cash in where the fuel costs far more.

In neighbouring Colombia, drivers pay 40 times as much as Venezuelans to tank up - $1.25 a litre, compared to 3US cents a litre.

So much gasolene is being taken out of Venezuela illegally that President Hugo Chávez's socialist government imposed rationing on motorists in one state bordering Colombia last year, and now it's touched off a furore in a second border state by announcing it will ration gasolene there, too.

"We transport workers are not to blame for this scourge," said Olivio Fernandez, a bus driver in Maracaibo, which is Venezuela's second-largest city with two million inhabitants.

It's also the capital of Zulia state, where the expanded rationing is planned and where Chávez planned a visit yesterday for his re-election campaign.

Drivers will have microchip-embedded stickers affixed to their windshields to regulate purchases, just as motorists have been required to do in neighbouring Tachira state for the past year.

Rationing in Tachira, home of the busiest Colombia-Venezuela border crossing, varies with a motor vehicle's size, location and use.

Private automobiles in the border town of San Cristobal are limited to buying no more than 42 litres a day, for example, while buses are limited to 150 litres.

Announced two weeks ago, Zulia's rationing was supposed to have gone into effect next month. But after heated criticism from local officials, the government decided to postpone the plan, saying it will start no later than August 2013 but suggesting it could be implemented before that.

Oil analysts say the new rationing may indicate something graver than a contraband problem, noting the anger-inducing plan was announced in an opposition-dominated state just three months before the presidential election.

The measure could mean that production and refining troubles are worsening in the less-than-transparent state-run petroleum industry, the analysts say.

Venezuela is a major oil exporter but its refining capacity is limited, so the government buys gasolene from the United States, losing money by then selling it at home for almost nothing.

Those imports have been steadily rising since 2009.

The Chávez government has not explained why the gasolene imports from the United States, the principal market for Venezuelan crude, continue to climb and the press office of state-owned oil company PDVSA did not respond to repeated requests by The Associated Press for an explanation.

Ramón Espinasa, a Georgetown University economist, blames "operational problems" at some Venezuelan refineries as well as rising demand from power plants built in the past two years that burn gasolene and diesel fuel.

"They're not producing specialised (petroleum) products and must import finished products," Espinasa said.