Caracas.- During his speech at the IV Petrocaribe Summit held in the city of Cienfuegos, Cuba, the Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, proposed to his counterparts to work based on three general objectives: increasing the region’s processing capacity, promoting the development of alternative energies, and promoting an exchange system based on the financed bill of member countries.

“We are always thinking about Petrocaribe as an ongoing dynamic, we are always thinking about ways to search, find and create new strategies to go beyond the simple objective of exchanging energy supply, we are putting forward a series of objectives so we can discuss them today and we can continue to move forward in this enriching dynamic”, explained President Chavez.

Increasing processing capacity
The first objective, already discussed by the Ministers of Energy in the Meeting of High Officials that took place in Cienfuegos, is related to building infrastructure in Cuban territory. “Establishing the Cienfuegos refinery here in Cuba as another processing center, this is a very important step reached thanks to revolutionary Cuba and the joint effort we have carried out since up to today processing centers were located only in Venezuela”, the President stated.

Similarly, the President highlighted the importance of diversifying the processing capacity to benefit the peoples of the region. “From now on you will see that this is an important step, Cienfuegos will become another oil processing and gathering center that produces fuels to be distributed among Petrocaribe member countries”.

It was the right opportunity to praise the joint work carried out by the workers of Cuba and Venezuela’s state-owned industries so that the Cienfuegos refinery could begin operations this Friday with a shipment of 500 thousand crude barrels already in Cuban territory. President Chavez stated “we will soon be refining 65 thousand barrels per day and we have a plan ready to push that number to 100 thousand or 150 thousand barrels per day”.

Development of alternative energies
The second objective proposed by Venezuela in the meeting was based on the studies carried out by Petrocaribe’s General Secretariat, and is related to the potential of Caribbean nations to develop solar, geothermal and wind energy.

“Crafting conceptual engineering for selected projects to develop alternative energies in the region a strategic element, as well as the creation of a fund to finance these projects through loans given to joint venture companies incorporated in the Petrocaribe framework”, Chavez affirmed when highlighting the progress of the Cuban Government in this sense.

Enlarging the exchange scheme
Finally, the Venezuelan President explained the third objective and described it as strategically important because it allows creating exchange mechanisms that favor the countries that currently belong to this Organization.

“There is great potential here to leap forward, I believe it will become another freeing mechanism to fight against asymmetries and promote our development models”, President Chavez stated.

“This third objective seeks to enlarge the exchange scheme based on the financed portion of the energy bill which is derived from the fuel supply agreements in the Petrocaribe framework. We will start including a basket of local products from member countries”, explained President Chavez.

Similarly, the Venezuelan President highlighted that from now on they will work on strategies to crystallize this proposal. “We plan to propose actions to finish and implement a payment compensation mechanism of the oil bill by supplying goods and services. We suggest starting with countries whose grace period will expire in 2008. It is a mounting debt for these countries and it has already exceeded one billion dollars”, he stated.

President Hugo Chavez remembered this cooperation initiative began with the participation of 14 countries (Antigua and Barbuda; Bahamas, Belize, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Granada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines; Saint Lucia, Saint Kitts and Nevis; Surinam and Venezuela). The subsequent inclusion of Haiti and Nicaragua resulted in 16 sister nations that support this initiative, and has led to the creation of cooperation mechanisms such as the Energy Security Treaty (TSE by its initials in Spanish) which was signed by 9 member countries (Belize, Cuba, Dominica, Haiti, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Surinam and Venezuela).