Political Clashes Shake Venezuela's Strained Oil Industry

Venezuela's national oil company is being shaken by claims of corruption and by internal dissent, indicating fissures within the institution largely responsible for financing President Hugo Chávez's widening array of social welfare programs and foreign aid projects.

The problems at the company, Petróleos de Venezuela, have been compounded by a rare acknowledgment by Rafael Ramírez, the energy minister and president of the company, that it cannot hire enough drilling rigs, raising concern over its ability to halt declines in oil production.

"Our sovereignty is at risk if we allow Petróleos de Venezuela to remain in this situation," Luís Tascón, a pro-Chávez lawmaker, said in a telephone interview. "We cannot allow this company to remain an indecipherable black box." Mr. Tascón has summoned Mr. Ramírez to the National Assembly to respond to accusations of corruption against senior executives.

Mr. Ramírez has emerged as a focus of criticism amid claims of illegal deals with oil-services companies on his watch. The attacks on him are viewed as part of a power struggle among Mr. Chávez's supporters, with ideological loyalists clashing with the relatively less radical technocrats in charge of the strained oil industry.

The tension within Petróleos de Venezuela follows other feuds within political institutions under Mr. Chávez's control that began earlier this year when several political parties in his coalition resisted his move to gather supporters into a single Socialist party.

The armed forces also experienced an internal uproar after Gen. Raúl Isaías Baduel delivered a speech as he prepared to step down as defense minister this month saying that Mr. Chávez's Socialist-inspired transformation of Venezuelan society should not be contaminated by Marxist orthodoxy.

But the depth of problems within Petróleos de Venezuela, which is responsible for about half of total government revenues and three-quarters of Venezuelan export revenues, illustrates how the feuds within Mr. Chávez's coalition may weaken his ability to carry out his plans.

In comments that jolted global energy markets last week, Mr. Ramírez, the energy minister, acknowledged that Petróleos de Venezuela had hired 40 percent fewer drilling rigs than its target for this year, in part because of new rules requiring contractors to donate 10 percent of the value of their contracts to social welfare projects.

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