VENEZUELA:Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has announced he will nationalise his nation's telecommunications and electricity industries and take over four major oil production facilities controlled by foreign oil companies.
The moves would accelerate the pace of Mr Chavez's pledged socialist transformation of Venezuela, the eighth largest exporter of crude oil worldwide and the fourth largest foreign supplier to the US. "We are in an existential moment of Venezuelan life," he said in a televised address on Monday. "We're heading toward socialism and nothing and no one can prevent it."
The announcements took many by surprise and immediately led to speculation about how soon the nationalisations would take place and whether the government would reimburse owners for their stakes.
Squarely affected is Compania Nacional Telefonos de Venezuela (CANTV), Venezuela's largest telephone concern, which was privatised in 1991. Trading in CANTV's shares over the New York Stock Exchange was halted on Monday after falling 14 per cent on the announcement.
Although Mr Chavez did not name specific electric companies susceptible to takeover, Electricidad de Caracas, the largest power generator in Venezuela, is apparently targeted. The AES Corporation of Virginia holds an 86 per cent stake in the 100-year-old company, according to the companies' websites.
Mr Chavez wants to consolidate his country's hybrid private-public utility system into one company under state control.
The nationalisation of the four oil fields will most affect US- based oil companies Conoco-Phillips and Chevron, each of which depend on the fields in the so- called Orinoco belt in eastern Venezuela for a sizeable percentage of their global oil production and reserves.
ExxonMobil and France's Total also have major interests in the Orinoco, but they are less significant shares of their total.
The four Orinoco plants produce about 550,000 barrels of crude a day or about one-fifth of Venezuela's total production.
The takeover of the Orinoco projects has been hinted at by Chavez loyalists in the national assembly in recent months. Last year, Mr Chavez forced foreign companies to turn over majority control of 32 oil fields to the state company, Petroleos de Venezuela.
Mr Chavez was returned to office by a landslide in December and immediately announced he would take measures to deepen his "Bolivarean Revolution".
The moves are consistent with his plan to shift the economy from private enterprise to a hybrid model favouring ownership of businesses by the state and worker co-operatives.
He sees his "socialism for the 21st century" as a means of redistributing oil wealth and creating jobs for the poor.
The model is a response, he says, to failed market-driven economic policies promoted by the United States that swept Latin America beginning in the late 1980s. The move on Monday gave rise to speculation that other industries might come under state control.
On December 28th, Mr Chavez announced he would not renew the broadcast licence of RCTV, the largest network in Venezuela, for allegedly supporting an abortive coup in April 2002.