Words of the President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Commander Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, at the Opening Session of the Third Summit Meeting of the Heads of State and Government of the Organization Of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)
Saturday, November 17, 2007 Riyadh, capital of Saudi Arabia

Your Majesty King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, dear brother and guardian of the two sacred mosques, your royal highnesses, princes, who accompany us. Mr. Abdala Salem El-Badri, general secretary of our Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, most excellent Heads of State and Heads of Governments of our 13 countries who today make up the OPEC, chancellors, energy and oil ministers, member governors of the OPEC, delegates and senior representatives of international bodies, and participants in this Third Presidential Summit, this Third Summit of Heads of State and of Government of the OPEC, special guests, ladies and gentlemen. 

Firstly, I bring from Venezuela our best wishes to all the countries represented here today, from the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Latin America and from all over the world, and very specially to the Arab people with whom we share a deep cultural identity. People with whom we have shared long years of fighting, battles, intense days, searching for a better world, searching, said Christ, peace, peace for all, and we know, brothers and sisters that the only route to peace, said Christ, is justice, justice. Therefore this is also a meeting of cultures, traditions, beliefs, in a better world, brotherhood, justice, peace. I render homage to the Arab people and to all the peoples represented here.

Your Majesty, Abdullah, today I must deliver to you the Presidency of the OPEC, the OPEC was born, we know, around 1960, within the framework of intense fighting all over the world, Bouteflika, against colonialism. I was a six-year-old boy, you were already fighting for the liberation of Algeria and all of you here fighting, these people of ours, the “third world”, the people who were colonized, invaded, plundered for centuries, those were the sixties, the Cuban Revolution triumphed, anti-colonial struggles began in Latin America, in the Caribbean, in Africa, in Asia, the flags of socialism were raised, the search for a path of equality, of justice and of peace.

It was born in those years with the strength of the non-aligned, after the group of the 77. What intense days they were! Those decades of the 60s, of the 70s, the OPEC was born. And the OPEC was born as a new geopolitical actor on the world scene, without doubt, not only as an economic actor, technocratic to agree upon a market and oil prices, no, the OPEC was born with a geopolitical sign of great importance.

Those were the days, it must be remembered, Excellency, of the bipolar world. Then the most developed countries of the world, led by the United States, attacked the OPEC. I remember the expressions of a President of the United States of America, President Ronald Reagan, when he said one day: “we will bring the OPEC to its knees,” and they managed to do it, they not only brought the OPEC to its knees, they almost made it disappear, they almost broke it up into pieces. They arrived like that, after the 60s, after the Summit of Algiers, the First Summit of Sovereigns, Heads of State and Heads of Government in Algiers in 1975, a Summit, you all well know, but I invite you to review with me the Solemn Declaration, I have it here and I was coming in the plane that Fidel Castro lent me, I was reading the Solemn declaration adopted by the First Conference of the Sovereigns and Heads of State and Heads of Government in Algiers of March 6, 1975.

An OPEC essentially political, and OPEC I myself would say more than political, revolutionary, much was said of the revolution of the OPEC, an OPEC whose sovereigns said, for example, the following:

“They make emphasis of the fact that the cause of the current world economic crisis originates mainly in the profound inequalities of the economic and social advances among peoples, that such inequalities characteristic of under-development have been generated and aggravated mainly by foreign exploitation and become more serious with the passing of the years due to the absence of international cooperation in development” and I’ll continue reading if you’ll allow me – “this situation has encouraged the drainage of natural resources of the developing countries, has prevented the effective transfer of capital resources and technology, and in this way has brought about a basic imbalance in economic relationships.” This is what was said by the presidents, Bumedien was the president in charge and leader of that meeting.

Then they say: “They note, therefore, that the imbalance that weighs on the current international economic situation has become worse by generalized inflation, by a universal reduction in economic growth and by the instability of the international monetary system, due to the absence of discipline and moderation in the handling of economic policy.” An OPEC giving its opinion of the world economy, on the worldwide disruptions, on the imbalances in the international financial and economic system.

Then, further on, they continue to make anti-imperialist declarations, they denounce, (it says here), take note Bouteflika: “They also denounce any group of consumer nations that seek a confrontation and also condemn any plan or strategy conceived by this or that group, for economic or military aggression against any of the countries that are members of the OPEC.” And they raise the flags of their fight for social justice, for equality in the world and for north-south cooperation and the respect for the sovereignty of our people, not only the people who are represented here, not only the member countries of the OPEC, but to the people of the “third world.” A fraternal OPEC, an OPEC that assumes the leadership of the world of the south in its fight for progress, a conservationist OPEC that suggests to the consumer countries that they rationalize the use of petroleum, a finite and non-renewable resource, as it says here, an OPEC that establishes mechanisms to guarantee the supply at a fair price, an OPEC that places itself at the front of the development programs, especially with the poorest people of the earth; in short, an OPEC for geopolitics, and OPEC, without doubt, revolutionary. We ought to read and then read again the Algiers Declaration.

But well, that is the way the OPEC was born and that was the first Conference of Presidents, of Heads of State, of Sovereigns, of Heads of Government. Then came the 80s, the 90s, as Joseph Stiglitz says, “the happy 90s”. And we know what happened. The bipolarity of the world came to an end, the Soviet Union fell, and the victorious flag of neo-liberalism was raised and of the imperialist world hegemony of the United States of America. A significant part of the fights of the “third world” freezes. The Washington Consensus and with it the cooling of the OPEC and a dangerous drop that brings it close it to death. And it is there, in that context, apart from the collapse of the prices, investment, technology when the idea arises – just when the Bolivarian Government was inaugurated in Caracas – of calling a second meeting of Sovereigns, of Heads of State and Heads of government. And so it was that since 1999, the first year of our government, we began to make contact, have meetings, the first journeys. And thanks to you, thanks to King Fahd, I want to render homage to that good brother and good friend, and thanks to all of you and to the cooperation of all the member countries of our organization we held that memorable meeting in Caracas, in September of the year 2000.

There it was, it could be said, that the OPEC was reborn and the process of strengthening began that has not ceased during the last seven years. I said to his Majesty and brother, King Abdullah, that when I received the Presidency of this Conference, in the year 2000, the price of the barrel of oil was around US$ 10. Today I deliver to his majesty the Presidency with the barrel at US$ 1090. I am sure that his majesty and all of us will manage to consolidate the fair price of our oil.

Finally, in these seven years I want to congratulate all the governments, presidents, your Majesty King Abdullah, the ministers, our general secretaries – and there have been many over these seven years – for this intense work and the excellent results. Today the OPEC is on its feet, strengthened as never before, before the world. And you can be sure that it has to be this way.

I want, however, before delivering the Presidency of the Conference to our brother, King Abdullah, to invoke the principles under which our Organization was born; to suggest that we continue to strengthen the OPEC within. But beyond that, that the OPEC become in these years to come an active political agent, in a political actor, geopolitical, with several objectives.

First, to demand respect for our countries, as was said in Algiers in 1975; to demand of the most powerful countries in the world that they stop threatening the countries of the OPEC, because in all these seven years you will know – I’m sure – how much we in Venezuela have had to resist; imperialist aggression, coups d’état, conspiracies, attempted assassination; and the basic reason for all these aggressions is petroleum. This is the underlying reason, it is the fundamental reason. We have seen and we know the situation in Iraq. We have seen and we are witnesses to the permanent threats against Iran. I think that the OPEC should strengthen itself in this dimension and demand respect for the sovereignty of our peoples, if the developed world wants the guaranteed supply of our petroleum.

Someone asked me, a few days back in Santiago, Chile, about the threats to Iran and Venezuela, and I said that if the United States of America were to commit the madness of invading Iran and Venezuela, the price of petroleum could quite well reach not US$ 100, but would go up to US$ 200. We need stability, tranquility, and that the world powers no get desperate, that we guarantee the reliable supply and that we can perfectly well cooperate with the great consumer countries to give stability to the market and stability to the prices.

But I also implore the OPEC to put itself to the forefront as another actor, but at the spearhead in the fight against poverty and the misery in the world, in Latin America, in Africa, in Asia. I think that we have debts there that we can pay off in the years to come. The OPEC ought, from the point of view of Venezuela, take a frontal position in the design of new international economic structure and it is here that lies the importance of the proposal that we have been making in Venezuela, the creation of an OPEC bank to bring to that bank our own resources and with them carry on developing our countries and helping the poorest countries of the third world.

The OPEC can perfectly well increase its studies, the search for alternative sources for ensuring the supply of energy for our future generations. The OPEC can perfectly well increase its actions, its investigations to cooperate in the reduction of the climatic imbalance, which is a threat to humanity. The OPEC finally, must convert itself in the coming years, from this Summit onwards into a much stronger actor in geopolitical matters, in geo-economical matters, in social questions, in the fight for progress, in the search for peace, that universal equilibrium for the route to justice. Venezuela will continue to fight, together with you, in that direction.

I would like to emphasize, apart from this, the entry of Angola and of Ecuador to the OPEC. Look at it like this, 8 years ago the OPEC was more like a victim of a centrifugal force. Venezuela, for example, was about to withdraw from the OPEC about 8 or 9 years back. Venezuelan was the Trojan horse. The governments of the past violated the quotas; they worked against the unity of the OPEC. Today we have an OPEC with 13 members and other countries that wish to join. I spoke to Lula, the President of Brazil. For example, in Brazil they have found a huge reservoir of oil a few weeks back in the depths of the ocean and Lula has said it, Brazil has as one of its strategic objectives its entry to the OPEC.

So therefore it is an organization that has been very much strengthened; a market well supplied, stronger and fair prices for our petroleum. Because it has to be said, to those ho attack us saying that we are manipulating the market to increase petroleum prices; they have to be told that the price of US$ 100 per barrel of oil is practically equivalent to the prices of US$30, US$35 of the 70s. This is a fair price.
Venezuela brings a formula as a proposal, a proposal for us to discuss. And let us hope that we can agree upon this all together in order to cooperate, to guarantee the safe supply of petroleum and with financing mechanisms that are fair to the poorest countries of the world, on whose weak economies weighs the fair price of today’s oil. In this way, the OPEC will be every day more helpful, more humanistic and an actor who cooperates at the forefront, eliminating the imbalances that are now making the whole world suffer.

Finally, these have been seven years of intense labor, intense work and I recognize that from Venezuela to all of you, I thank the cooperation of everyone, I thank the attentions rendered at all the different meetings, the cooperation, the patience you have had.

I am pleased to hand over the Presidency of this Conference for the next years to our brother, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud. I am sure that in his hands, in his wise hands, our organization will continue to sail on the seas of progress, the seas of development and strengthening it both outside and inside, in a world that must be fairer every day, more balanced.

I therefore greet everybody, with these reflections of how the OPEC was born, of its first stages, of its second almost moribund stage, of its resurrection in Caracas seven years ago at the Second Summit, since I am pleased to continue to invite his Majesty, our brother, King Abdullah to assume the Presidency of the Conference of Sovereigns, of Heads of State and of Heads of Government of our Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Let God continue to orient the paths of our peoples, Salam Aleikum (peace be with you). Good night and thank you very much.