December 19, 2002	Thursday	Shawwal 14, 1423

NEW YORK, Dec 18: Oil refiners are casting a hungry eye at US strategic petroleum reserves as the Venezuela general strike begins to bite, two major companies said on Wednesday.

The refiners, which usually rely heavily on Venezuelan oil, said they had begun negotiations with the Department of Energy (DoE) about use of the strategic petroleum reserve (SPR).

But the US government has said it is keeping the reserves of oil, much of it stored in salt caverns along the Texas and Louisiana coastlines, locked up for now.

“DoE continues to monitor the situation in Venezuela and its possible impact on US markets. Currently, lending or exchanging oil from the SPR is not an active consideration,” it said in a statement Tuesday.

The US strategic petroleum reserve is at a 25-year high of 598.7 million dollars. US President George W. Bush announced in November 2001 plans to build the reserve to full capacity: 700 million barrels.

But major refiners are being caught short by unexpected duration of the Venezuelan general strike, in which strikers have slashed crude output from the world’s fifth-largest exporter.

“They certainly have managed to reduce production to a third of the levels we had achieved, and they want to paralyze it completely,” Petroleos de Venezuela President Ali Rodriguez said in Caracas.—AFP