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Labor Dispute Affecting Oil Exports
By FABIOLA SANCHEZ
CARACAS, Venezuela, April 6, (Associated Press) - An escalating confrontation between the government and workers at one of the world's largest oil companies has started to affect exports from Venezuela - the largest foreign supplier of oil to the United States.
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Protesting workers closed two of Venezuela's five major loading terminals Friday, stranding a dozen ships waiting to load cargo, Venezuelan oil officials told Dow Jones Newswires.
Staff at state-run Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, are protesting President Hugo Chavez's appointment of five board members to the company's seven-member board, claiming the appointments were political. They also want fired dissident executives reinstated.
The leftist Chavez refuses to budge, creating a bitter standoff whose outcome could rock global oil markets.
The closed terminals include the El Palito, which serves the domestic market, and Puerto La Cruz, which ships about 12 percent of Venezuelan exports.
A clash between government supporters and opposition party members at a drilling site in the eastern state of Monagas on Thursday left two oil workers dead and three injured, police said Friday.
In Caracas, police stood outside PDVSA headquarters to keep protesters and pro-government demonstrators apart.
Venezuela's largest oil union had yet to join the month-old protest, which is mainly by administrative workers, but the possibility of a strike affecting all PDVSA operations was growing each day, said Juan Fernandez, a spokesman for dissident white-collar oil workers.
``Potentially, this is a bigger threat for the U.S. market than disruptions in the Middle East, which are hypothetical. This isn't hypothetical,'' said John Lichtblau, chairman of the nonprofit Petroleum Industry Research Foundation in New York City.
Lichtblau said market prices could rise rapidly if the work stoppages seriously affect production. Venezuela shipped an average 1.3 million barrels per day of crude and 400,000 barrels daily in refined products to the United States last year. Total U.S. daily imports of crude were 9.1 million barrels.
Chief mediator and lawmaker Luis Salas on Friday gave up on his efforts to negotiate a solution. PDVSA's board, meanwhile, suspended four top dissident managers in the corporation's refining sector.
PDVSA President Gaston Parra insisted that supplies were normal, while Attorney General Isaias Rodriguez said there were legal alternatives to a presidential state of emergency decree that would stop disruptions and dislodge protesting workers.
Oil is the South American nation's economic lifeblood and Chavez has vowed not to let protests disrupt production and exports.
The Fedepetrol union, which represents about 25,000 oil workers, refused to support the executives' protests. Fedecamaras, Venezuela's largest business confederation, endorsed the demonstrations.
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