Chavez falls for Chinese ploy

A little-noticed piece of news: A few weeks ago, Venezuela announced an agreement with PetroChina to build a large refinery in Guangdong Province capable of refining Venezuela's unique, heavy oil. At first glance that looks like very bad news for the United States. Right now, Venezuela refines nearly all of its oil in the United States, about 1.2 million barrels a day, and then sells it here. What would happen if, one day down the road, Venezuela simply cut off the supply? At the least, that would cause severe market disruptions, leading to a large jump in the price of gas. That's the stated aim of Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president. He has been casting about for an alternative market to end his dependence on the United States. Nothing would please him more than to discomfit President Bush, whom he calls 'the devil.' But Chavez's foreign policy is so heavily dependent on vilifying Washington - 'the Empire,' he calls it - that it almost doesn't matter who sits in the White House. In May, Venezuela and China announced a 'preliminary agreement' to build a massive new refinery on Gaolin Island in the southern province of Guandong. They agreed to split the cost and ownership. Since then, American oil experts and Latin America scholars have been debating the refinery deal, and a curious consensus has developed. Nobody seems to believe China will actually build it.