CARACAS, Friday February 22, 2008 | Update
Venezuela' crude oil export price soared USD 3.84 to a weekly
average of USD 90.13 (compared to USD 86.29 last week), thus
hitting a new record, said the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum
on Friday.
"Average crude oil prices remained strong this week, hitting
new historic high levels," said the Ministry on its official
website, Efe reported.
The Ministry of Energy and Petroleum pointed to "the forecasts
of temperatures below the normal in northeastern US," as well
as "the explosion of a Texas-based refinery owned by Alon,
supply outages in Russia and Nigeria, and weakening US dollar
to the Euro and other currencies" as two major factors for
the increased price.
04:17 PM. Western Hemisphere. "Damned empire; I curse you one thousand times; some day you will be finished off and wrecked. I curse you one thousand times, empire." This is the least that President Hugo Chávez has uttered to refer to the US government. In urging the Bolivarian Armed Forces to prepare for war, he said that a US raid on Venezuela through Colombia would trigger and spread over the region "the 100-year war."