Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez addressing OPEC this morning
Source: Associated Press, via Yahoo!

OPEC is holding its quarterly meeting in Caracas right now and sure enough, Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez and his new best-friends-forever in the Iranian regime have sought hard to cut oil production to drive up prices and stick it to the Americans.

That’s gone over like tar sands in the Hummer tank among the OPEC heavies, and these nations, mostly Arabs, who KNOW what the oil cycle is like, and who know that $70 a barrel oil is always a prelude to $8 a barrel oil, have resisted the Venezuelan ignoramus. (They’ve always despised the guy, by the way.)

The Carlos-the-Jackal-admiring Venezuelan dictator, in fact, was rebuffed hard at OPEC today as these Arab states vowed to keep production as it is, currently at max. The Jackal, you will recall, is in a French jail for killing people in the course of his long career as an international terrorist. Before he got fat, one of his exploits was to shoot up an OPEC meeting in Vienna, so you can just imagine what the Arabs are thinking of Chavez’s Jackal-worship.

Meanwhile, at the demand end, here in the U.S., as the Priuses roll out on the assembly lines, the Brazil ethanol tariffs are dropped in U.S. Congress, the conservation measures take over, Alaska gets a green light to pump oil and a growing groundswell of public voices rises over the U.S. failure to drill its very abundant deep water resources, oil prices in time will head for a certain fall.

The Arabs want to be as responsible as they can about oil, and are prudently keeping demand as is for their product so that they can save and invest in their natural resources and enjoy their bounty for a long long time.

Hugo Chavez, by contrast, has a philosophy of spend and waste his country’s resources, the better to amass political power all through the hemisphere. Never mind investing, take the oil and run – once the hemisphere becomes Cuba, no one’s gonna need oil anyway.

None of the Arabs have much respect for that approach, and instead seek to keep their markets healthy.

Fausta has a non-pareil roundup of all the Venezulean oil activity going on right now as OPEC meets and is great reading. It’s a must-see here.

UPDATE: Oh my god. Speaking of the Jackal, Venezuelan dictator Hugo ACTUALLY PRAISED the Venezuelan terrorist at the OPEC meeting! This is the thug who assaulted the OPEC meeting in Vienna, killed people, and kidnapped others. Right in front of the OPEC ministers, Hugo Chavez praised Carlos the Jackal. The Thug really doesn’t get it, does he? Must be read to be believed here.