Cienfuegos.- At the IV Petrocaribe Summit, the President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, proposed the enlargement of the exchange scheme based on the energy bill which ranks at 40% and amounts to $1.166 billion. Similarly, he highlighted the importance of defining a payment compensation mechanism by providing goods and services.

 “Petrocaribe seeks to solve asymmetries and goes beyond a simple hydrocarbon trade mechanism; it is a unifying, integrating mechanism and moreover it is freeing”, affirmed President Chavez during this speech.

In this sense, the Venezuelan President revealed that the grace period of many countries will expire in 2008, and that the energy bill will allow crafting a payment compensation mechanism by providing goods and services or other products. “We are proposing that based on this, we start including a basket of local products from member countries”, he stated.

President Chavez commented that Petrocaribe could be emerging as a new space with another profile and values that go beyond free trade and capitalist anti-values, using the oil bill for this purpose.

On the other hand, the Venezuelan President indicated that representatives from Petrocaribe member countries set up a series of objectives for the organization which include the establishment of the Cienfuegos refinery as a processing center.

Some of the next steps that countries members of this Venezuela-driven energy initiative will undertake include agreeing on products, volumes, prices and transportation means, among others. With regards to transportation, Chavez insisted on the need for nations of the region to have their own transportation infrastructure through the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA).