Today’s El Universal reports an increasingly serious situation with Venezuela’s oil supply, which is sure to have implications for its largest buyer, the U.S.

Not only is the country running its oil industry into the ground with fires and accidents, something that’s never occurred until these Chavista years, a result of the firing and blacklisting of all of Venezuela’s talented and dedicated engineers and managers – who have since been replaced by Chavista operatives known for their political loyalty and not their expertise – intransparency has grown.

Citgo recently announced that it would end supply to gas stations in 10 U.S. states due to the fact that it no longer can internally access enough Venezuelan oil, and the effort to supply these stations with imported oil at world prices was a burden.

El Universal now says that a new report out from Congress suggests that the U.S. needs to prepare for an oil cutoff from Venezuela, because they’re betting it’s something ahead of us. Whether through Chavez’s malice, or Chavez’s destruction of the oil fields themselves, it’s something we need to get serious about. Venezuela supplies about 12% of the U.S.’ energy needs, its fifth or sixth biggest supplier, down from number one in 1998, the year Chavez was elected president of Venezuela.

Today, I noticed some weird new Citgo ads, underlining and emphasizing that Venezuela is a reliable supplier of the U.S. I don’t know what it means except that maybe Venezuela is afraid we may cut THEM off or boycott them or something. They clearly don’t want the lunatic image of Hugo Chavez to extend to them. It’s called “fueling tomorrow” and the whole slick thing can be seen here.