Oil gift opens up retaliatory options

Oct. 1, 2006

VALLEY VOICES/Chuck Legge

Thank you, Hugo Chavez! I don't think anyone has thought to thank this guy for bailing us out. So let's all give a collective thank you to this third-world tin-horn despot for helping us in our time of need.

I'm not talking about the sulfurous exchange with our president at the U.N. Dictators can be a little cranky. I'm talking about the gift of 100 gallons of heating oil to every household in Alaska's Bush communities.

People in Alaska's villages were facing a pretty grim situation this winter. Places in the interior hit 50 below zero on a fairly regular basis. With heating oil approaching $7 a gallon in some areas, and little to no employment in the villages, it was adding up to a very hard winter for rural Alaskans.

Enter Venezuela's president, Hugo Chavez. Chavez is giving 100 gallons of heating oil to Alaska's families in need. Actually, he's giving the oil to villages with a native population of 80 percent or more. This amounts to 12,000 homes in 151 villages with a price tag of about $5 million.

This is a gift. It's free, and Venezuela's oil company, Citgo, will be footing the bill.

It does strike me as odd, however, that we find ourselves in a position where we need help from Venezuela. Alaska sits on top of one of the world's largest reserves of oil and gas. Even without going into ANWR, we have enough of the stuff to float a fleet of battleships. So why are some Alaskans desperate for heating oil?

The state does have some programs. Alaska will give $48 million in subsidies to 157 communities. That's a lot of money, but our people are still coming up short. Too many families have to choose between heat and food.

With the burden of outrageous profits, oil companies have had their hands full trying to find places to stash their money. ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil, and BP are under no obligation to do any more for Alaskans than what is legal. Actually, in BP's case, it appears they felt obligated to do a little less than what is legal.

My point is that the $5 million gift from Hugo Chavez isn't even walking-around money for the big three oil companies. Maybe a little PR would go a long way. Well, if I lived in a village that could be helped by these oil titans, I'd make sure I had a lot of firewood.

So the question is: How do we retaliate in the face of this generous assault. We could do what a friend of mine suggested and give every man, woman and child in Venezuela a hot meal.

The scenario might go something like this. Hugo Chavez opens with a salvo of free oil. We counter by carpet bombing Venezuela with halibut nuggets.

Not to be outdone, the crafty Chavez strikes with 50 more gallons of No. 2 diesel. We answer with tartar sauce.

After that, things really escalate. Machine oil is met with fries. Gasoline is countered by slaw.

Sensing that he is losing the war, Chavez calls on an old ally and lays down a withering barrage of Cuban cigars. Faced with nothing but salmon patties as a response, we are in danger of being outgifted.

Our only hope is to go for broke, so we ship the entire Alaska Legislature down to Venezuela. This group can't agree on anything, and the local government comes to a grinding halt, which, of course, frees the people of Venezuela from an oppressive regime. Take that Chavez!

I suppose we should be gracious and thank this friend of Iran for his generous gift. Hey, our taxes aren't going to go up. We don't have to trouble ourselves with helping out our neighbors. We won't have to clog our medical infrastructure with the added cases of frostbite and hypothermia.

We should be very happy with ourselves. But, just in case we want to respond, I'm thawing out last year's halibut.

Chuck Legge is a free-lance editorial cartoonist whose work appears in every edition of the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman. His Valley Voices guest opinion column appears every four weeks.