Venezuela on a gusher

摘要

Hugo chavez is not a man of understatement. This week's summit meeting of opec heads of government in Caracas was "the most important event in a hundred years of history", he claimed. As the meeting's host, and one of the architects of opec's resurrection, Venezuela's president might be forgiven a little hubris. Every extra dollar on the price of a barrel of crude oil, if maintained over a year, adds another $1 billion to his country's exports. Up to two-thirds of this money goes to the government's coffers.