This one hits a lot closer to home. Sens. Rockefeller and Snowe sent this letter to the CEO of ExxonMobil Mr. Tillerson gently reminding him of his responsibilities as global citizen and just mentioning that bad things could come his way. Apparently ExxonMobile is wasting its money on ridiculous ne'er-do-wells and the senators just can't let that happen. Seriously, the way these senators speak about "non-refereed" think tanks and about how the Internet is being used to spread unauthorized ideas makes me wonder why the blogging community isn't all over this. Politicians are sounding more and more like gang thugs with scary legal authority. [emphasis mine]

October 27, 2006

Mr. Rex W. Tillerson
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
ExxonMobil Corporation
5959 Las Colinas Boulevard
Irving, TX 75039

Dear Mr. Tillerson:

Allow us to take this opportunity to congratulate you on your first year as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the ExxonMobil Corporation. You will become the public face of an undisputed leader in the world energy industry, and a company that plays a vital role in our national economy. As that public face, you will have the ability and responsibility to lead ExxonMobil toward its rightful place as a good corporate and global citizen.

We are writing to appeal to your sense of stewardship of that corporate citizenship as U.S. Senators concerned about the credibility of the United States in the international community, and as Americans concerned that one of our most prestigious corporations has done much in the past to adversely affect that credibility. We are convinced that ExxonMobil's longstanding support of a small cadre of global climate change skeptics, and those skeptics access to and influence on government policymakers, have made it increasingly difficult for the United States to demonstrate the moral clarity it needs across all facets of its diplomacy.

Obviously, other factors complicate our foreign policy. However, we are persuaded that the climate change denial strategy carried out by and for ExxonMobil has helped foster the perception that the United States is insensitive to a matter of great urgency for all of mankind, and has thus damaged the stature of our nation internationally. It is our hope that under your leadership, ExxonMobil would end its dangerous support of the "deniers." Likewise, we look to you to guide ExxonMobil to capitalize on its significant resources and prominent industry position to assist this country in taking its appropriate leadership role in promoting the technological innovation necessary to address climate change and in fashioning a truly global solution to what is undeniably a global problem.

While ExxonMobil's activity in this area is well-documented, we are somewhat encouraged by developments that have come to light during your brief tenure. We fervently hope that reports that ExxonMobil intends to end its funding of the climate change denial campaign of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) are true. Similarly, we have seen press reports that your British subsidiary has told the Royal Society, Great Britain's foremost scientific academy, that ExxonMobil will stop funding other organizations with similar purposes. However, a casual review of available literature, as performed by personnel for the Royal Society reveals that ExxonMobil is or has been the primary funding source for the "skepticism" of not only CEI, but for dozens of other overlapping and interlocking front groups sharing the same obfuscation agenda. For this reason, we share the goal of the Royal Society that ExxonMobil "come clean" about its past denial activities, and that the corporation take positive steps by a date certain toward a new and more responsible corporate citizenship.

ExxonMobil is not alone in jeopardizing the credibility and stature of the United States. Large corporations in related industries have joined ExxonMobil to provide significant and consistent financial support of this pseudo-scientific, non-peer reviewed echo chamber. The goal has not been to prevail in the scientific debate, but to obscure it. This climate change denial confederacy has exerted an influence out of all proportion to its size or relative scientific credibility. Through relentless pressure on the media to present the issue "objectively," and by challenging the consensus on climate change science by misstating both the nature of what "consensus" means and what this particular consensus is, ExxonMobil and its allies have confused the public and given cover to a few senior elected and appointed government officials whose positions and opinions enable them to damage U.S. credibility abroad.

Climate change denial has been so effective because the "denial community" has mischaracterized the necessarily guarded language of serious scientific dialogue as vagueness and uncertainty. Mainstream media outlets, attacked for being biased, help lend credence to skeptics' views, regardless of their scientific integrity, by giving them relatively equal standing with legitimate scientists. ExxonMobil is responsible for much of this bogus scientific "debate" and the demand for what the deniers cynically refer to as "sound science."

A study to be released in November by an American scientific group will expose ExxonMobil as the primary funder of no fewer than 29 climate change denial front groups in 2004 alone. Besides a shared goal, these groups often featured common staffs and board members. The study will estimate that ExxonMobil has spent more than $19 million since the late 1990s on a strategy of "information laundering," or enabling a small number of professional skeptics working through scientific-sounding organizations to funnel their viewpoints through non-peer-reviewed websites such as Tech Central Station. The Internet has provided ExxonMobil the means to wreak its havoc on U.S. credibility, while avoiding the rigors of refereed journals. While deniers can easily post something calling into question the scientific consensus on climate change, not a single refereed article in more than a decade has sought to refute it.

Indeed, while the group of outliers funded by ExxonMobil has had some success in the court of public opinion, it has failed miserably in confusing, much less convincing, the legitimate scientific community. Rather, what has emerged and continues to withstand the carefully crafted denial strategy is an insurmountable scientific consensus on both the problem and causation of climate change. Instead of the narrow and inward-looking universe of the deniers, the legitimate scientific community has developed its views on climate change through rigorous peer-reviewed research and writing across all climate-related disciplines and in virtually every country on the globe.

Where most scientists dispassionate review of the facts has moved past acknowledgement to mitigation strategies, ExxonMobil's contribution the overall politicization of science has merely bolstered the views of U.S. government officials satisfied to do nothing. Rather than investing in the development of technologies that might see us through this crisis--and which may rival the computer as a wellspring of near-term economic growth around the world--ExxonMobil and its partners in denial have manufactured controversy, sown doubt, and impeded progress with strategies all-too reminiscent of those used by the tobacco industry for so many years. The net result of this unfortunate campaign has been a diminution of this nation's ability to act internationally, and not only in environmental matters.

In light of the adverse impacts still resulting from your corporations activities, we must request that ExxonMobil end any further financial assistance or other support to groups or individuals whose public advocacy has contributed to the small, but unfortunately effective, climate change denial myth. Further, we believe ExxonMobil should take additional steps to improve the public debate, and consequently the reputation of the United States. We would recommend that ExxonMobil publicly acknowledge both the reality of climate change and the role of humans in causing or exacerbating it. Second, ExxonMobil should repudiate its climate change denial campaign and make public its funding history. Finally, we believe that there would be a benefit to the United States if one of the world's largest carbon emitters headquartered here devoted at least some of the money it has invested in climate change denial pseudo-science to global remediation efforts. We believe this would be especially important in the developing world, where the disastrous effects of global climate change are likely to have their most immediate and calamitous impacts.

Each of us is committed to seeing the United States officially reengage and demonstrate leadership on the issue of global climate change. We are ready to work with you and any other past corporate sponsor of the denial campaign on proactive strategies to promote energy efficiency, to expand the use of clean, alternative, and renewable fuels, to accelerate innovation to responsibly extend the useful life of our fossil fuel reserves, and to foster greater understanding of the necessity of action on a truly global scale before it is too late.

Sincerely,

John D. Rockefeller IV

Olympia Snowe

Cc:
J. Stephen Simon
Walter V. Shipley
Samuel J. Palmisano
Marilyn Carlson Nelson
Henry A. McKinnell, Jr.
Philip E. Lippincott
Reatha Clark King
William R. Howell
James R. Houghton
William W. George
Michael J. Boskin

And here is a good article from The Wall Street Journal's Editorials [HT: Galileo Blogs]:

Global Warming Gag Order
Senators to Exxon: Shut up, and pay up.

Monday, December 4, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

Washington has no shortage of bullies, but even we can't quite believe an October 27 letter that Senators Jay Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe sent to ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson. Its message: Start toeing the Senators' line on climate change, or else.

We reprint the full text of the letter here, so readers can see for themselves. But its essential point is that the two Senators believe global warming is a fact, and therefore all debate about the issue must stop and ExxonMobil should "end its dangerous support of the [global warming] 'deniers.' " Not only that, the company "should repudiate its climate change denial campaign and make public its funding history." And in extra penance for being "one of the world's largest carbon emitters," Exxon should spend that money on "global remediation efforts."

The Senators aren't dumb enough to risk an ethics inquiry by threatening specific consequences if Mr. Tillerson declines this offer he can't refuse. But in case the CEO doesn't understand his company's jeopardy, they add that "ExxonMobil and its partners in denial have manufactured controversy, sown doubt, and impeded progress with strategies all-too reminiscent of those used by the tobacco industry for so many years." (Our emphasis.) The Senators also graciously copied the Exxon board on their missive.

This is amazing stuff. On the one hand, the Senators say that everyone agrees on the facts and consequences of climate change. But at the same time they are so afraid of debate that they want Exxon to stop financing a doughty band of dissenters who can barely get their name in the paper. We respect the folks at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, but we didn't know until reading the Rockefeller-Snowe letter that they ran U.S. climate policy and led the mainstream media around by the nose, too. Congratulations.

Let's compare the balance of forces: on one side, CEI; on the other, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Sierra Club, Environmental Defense, the U.N. and EU, Hollywood, Al Gore, and every politically correct journalist in the country. We'll grant that's a fair intellectual fight. But if the Senators are so afraid that a handful of policy wonks at a single small think-tank are in danger of winning this debate, they must not have much confidence in the merits of their own case.

The letter is so over-the-top that we also wonder if Mr. Rockefeller in particular has even read it. (He and Ms. Snowe didn't return our call.) The Senator hails from coal-producing West Virginia, where people know something about carbon emissions. Come to think of it, Mr. Rockefeller owes his own vast wealth to something other than non-carbon energy. But perhaps it's easier to be carbon free when your fortune comes from a trust fund.

The letter is of a piece with what has become a campaign of intimidation against any global warming dissent. Not only is everyone supposed to concede that the planet has been warming--as it has--but we are all supposed to salute and agree that human beings are the definitive cause, that the magnitude of the warming will be disastrous and its effects catastrophic, that such problems as AIDS and poverty are less urgent, and that economic planners must therefore impose vast new regulatory burdens on everyone around the world. Exxon is being targeted in this letter and other ways because it is one of the few companies that still thinks some debate on these questions is valuable.

Every dogma has its day, and we've lived long enough to see more than one "consensus" blown apart within a few years of "everyone knowing" it was true. In recent decades environmentalists have been wrong about almost every other apocalyptic claim they've made: global famine, overpopulation, natural resource exhaustion, the evils of pesticides, global cooling, and so on. Perhaps it's useful to have a few folks outside the "consensus" asking questions before we commit several trillion dollars to any problem.

Imagine if this letter had been sent by someone in the Bush Administration trying to enforce the opposite conclusion? The left would be howling about "censorship." That's exactly what did happen earlier this year after James Hansen, the NASA scientist and global warming evangelist, complained that a lowly 24-year-old press aide had tried to limit his media access. The entire episode was preposterous because Mr. Hansen is one of the most publicized scientists in the world, but the press aide was nonetheless sacked.

The Senators' letter is far more serious because they have enormous power to punish Exxon if it doesn't kowtow to them. A windfall profits tax is in the air, and we've seen what happens to other companies that dare to resist Congressional intimidation. It's to Exxon's credit that, in its response to the Senators, the company said that it will continue to fund free market research groups because "there is value in the debate" that helps promote "optimal public policy decisions." Too bad that's not what the Senators care about.

From the Christian Science Moniter: http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0123/p01s03-woeu.html

Gazprom: rising star of new Kremlin capitalism

The Russian energy giant fuels Moscow's agenda, blurring the line between business and politics.

By Fred Weir | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

MOSCOW - A golden skyscraper, soon to thrust 1,300 feet above the crumbling riverside palaces of Russia's ancient czarist capital, St. Petersburg, will announce the rapid emergence

Russia's gas exports

of a powerful new Russian company that's acting boldly, growing fast, moving West, and changing whatever it touches: Gazprom.

As Russia's No. 1 firm, the energy giant can certainly afford to house its new petroleum wing, Gazprom-Neft, in such extravagance. In the first nine months of last year, Gazprom's net profits leapt 80 percent. Roaring past industry behemoths Shell and BP last year, the state-owned natural gas monopoly is now the world's second-largest energy company after Exxon-Mobil.

But critics say the conglomerate, which owns a bank, soccer team, and media wing, is much more than the successful new kid on the global energy block. They describe the company as the Kremlin's flagship – and chief battering ram – in a strategy to restore state control of Russia's booming but petroleum-dependent economy, and use that accumulated power to further Moscow's agenda at home and abroad.

Worries over Gazprom's growing political role were boosted this month when, for the second time in just over a year, energy supplies to Europe were cut off amid a pricing dispute between Russia and one of its post-Soviet neighbors.

Since 2004, state control of Russia's oil industry has jumped from around 7 percent to over 35 percent, and is set to grow further this year, experts say. Gazprom and the state oil company Rosneft, headed by Kremlin-appointed officials, have been the key agents in takeovers of private oil companies such as Yukos, Sibneft, and, late last year, the Shell-run Sakhalin-2 project on Russia's Pacific coast.

Recently, the Kremlin has begun to apply the same business model to other sectors as well. Last year Russia's aircraft producers were deprivatized and merged into a single state-run conglomerate. The world's largest titanium producer, AVISMA, a profitable private company that supplies Airbus and Boeing, was taken over by the state arms monopoly Rosoboronexport. A massive state-run expansion of Russia's nuclear power industry is looming. Experts say the Kremlin has either begun, or is eyeing, forays into diamonds, forestry, telecommunications, automobiles, and banking.

"The Kremlin intends to build big industrial groups, something like South Korea's chaebol system, to stimulate Russia's economic development,"says Alexei Mukhin, director of the Center for Political Information, an independent Moscow think tank, referring to the monopolistic Korean conglomerates that have received government support.

Mr. Mukhin says the process has to be state-led, because Russia's experience in the 1990s showed that private businessmen became power-hungry and tried to buy their way into government. "Free capital is too unruly, and that's why [President Vladimir] Putin prefers to work with state officials whom he can control."

Fueling Russia's energy dominance

Gazprom's name has become a household word in the West, thanks to its recent role in forcing higher gas prices on Moscow's recalcitrant neighbors like Ukraine and Belarus, leading to brief supply disruptions and lasting political jitters in downstream Europe. Such moves have triggered accusations that Gazprom was acting as a political tool of the Kremlin.

"Gazprom is the core of the Russian state, and it expresses the will of the Kremlin," says Lilia Shevtsova, an expert with the Carnegie Center in Moscow. "It is not a normal company," but is closed, nontransparent, and unaccountable to all but its political masters, she says. "It operates like an intelligence agency."

Although Gazprom executives, rather than Russian diplomats, were the first to bring the bad news of higher prices to post-Soviet capitals, the company denies any political motives.

Gazprom's top public relations official, Anastasia Ivanova, insists that the Rus- sian government – which owns 51 percent – is "just a shareholder" and says the company's only goal is to commercialize the energy business and bring "normal market relations" to the former USSR after years of politically motivated subsidies from Moscow. "It is absolutely incorrect to say that Gazprom is an instrument of Rus- sian government foreign policy," says Ms. Ivanova. "Gazprom is a company with mixed capital, whose management works according to the rules laid down in the company charter."

The government has, however, taken extraordinary steps to spur the company's growth. Last year the Kremlin-dominated State Duma, the lower house of parliament, passed a law giving Gazprom the sole right to export Russian gas, squeezing out independent producers. The energy giant has also benefited from the government's pressure on foreign companies with shares in Russian oil-and-gas projects.

In December, Shell threw in the towel after being accused by the state of massive ecological violations in the Pacific-coast Sakhalin-2 project it managed, and agreed to sell 50 percent of its stake to Gazprom at a substantial discount.

Other foreign companies with stakes in Russian oil-and-gas projects coveted by Gazprom have found themselves under similar pressure from law enforcement and state environmental agencies. Experts say the next likely target is the British-Russian joint venture TNK-BP, which runs operations at Russia's largest natural-gas field, Kovytka in eastern Siberia. The state licensing agency Rosnedra is threatening to revoke the company's permit over a list of alleged violations, ranging from illegal logging to failing to meet production quotas.

Critics say state agencies like Rosnedra are clearly acting in cahoots with Gazprom, using tactics aimed at restoring key resources to state control while expanding the energy firm's grip.

"Sometimes it looks like a tail-wagging-the-dog situation," says Igor Tomberg, an expert with the independent Center for Energy Research in Moscow. "Gazprom is clearly part of the Kremlin's economic strategy, but at the same time the state works to improve Gazprom's market position, to help it expand beyond Russia's borders, and so on."

$262 billion company

Assembled from assets of the former Soviet Gas Ministry and largely privatized in the 1990s, Gazprom holds about a quarter of the world's natural-gas reserves and is currently valued at about $262 billion. According to company figures, its net profits increased from $490 million in 2001 to $11.7 billion in 2005. The jump was largely due to soaring global energy prices but, experts say, also reflecting the Kremlin's growing discipline over the company.

In 2005, the Russian government increased its former minority stake to a controlling 51 percent, and Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev, a top Kremlin aide and potential Putin successor, was appointed as the company's chairman.

Beyond its rapidly growing oil-and-gas empire, Gazprom has its own bank, an insurance company, and recently purchased the Zenit football team in St. Petersburg. Another wing, Gazprom-Media, has been widely criticized for buying up vibrant media properties, such as the independent NTV network and the central newspaper Izvestia, and turning them into Kremlin mouthpieces.

"The private share of the economy is shrinking rapidly," says Ms. Shevtsova. "The logic of bureaucratic capitalism is to grab more. Soon all the juiciest chunks of the economy will be under state control."

From the Baltimore Sun: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.russia14jan14,0,5753647.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines

Russia tightens grip on energy reserves

Kremlin pushes out foreign developers as it seeks control over oil, natural gas

By Alex Rodriguez

Originally published January 14, 2007

MOSCOW // Russian authorities have never been known for their eco-friendliness, but late last year inspectors swooped down on the vast Kovykta natural gas field in east Siberia and came away with a long list of alleged misdeeds, including excavation violations and illegal logging.

Few in Russia, however, believe that the government has suddenly gone green.

Kovykta is Russia's largest natural gas field, storing enough natural gas to keep the world's largest energy consumer, the U.S., supplied for two years.

And while its 1.9 trillion cubic meters of gas are being developed by joint venture involving British Petroleum, Kovykta is seen as the Kremlin's next move in a methodical campaign to elbow foreign oil majors aside and commandeer the country's energy sector.

A consortium led by Royal Dutch Shell once oversaw the world's largest oil and natural gas development project, an energy venture called Sakhalin 2 in the Russian Far East. But after relentless pressure from Russian authorities that included a series of environmental inspections and a permit revocation, the consortium buckled and sold a majority stake to Russia's state-owned natural gas monopoly, Gazprom, for $7.45 billion.

The Dec. 21 sale was viewed as a milestone in the Kremlin's quest for energy sector dominance and a sobering message to foreign oil companies that their role in developing Russia's vast energy wealth will be second-tier.

Analysts say Kovykta, being developed by BP and its Russian partner, TNK, is next in line. Russian environmental inspectors have asked prosecutors to begin acting on their findings, and a Russian agency that governs subsoil natural resources licensing will decide this year whether to revoke TNK-BP's license on the grounds that it isn't producing the levels of natural gas it initially promised.

"TNK-BP is in a situation where they just don't have much of a choice," says Nadezhda Kazakova an analyst with MDM Bank in Moscow. "With energy sector revenue now linked to the state, it's hard to see how the state will let [Kovykta] go."

Russia once desperately sought the involvement of foreign oil majors in its energy sector. After the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia's shaky economic outlook forced the Kremlin to bring in international oil giants like Shell to develop difficult-to-reach oil and natural gas deposits.

As an enticement, the Kremlin under Boris N. Yeltsin signed so-called production sharing agreements that set restrictions on how much of the profit would be set aside for the state.

Under President Vladimir V. Putin, the Kremlin has adopted a radically different energy strategy that calls for state dominance over oil and natural gas, collectively the engine behind the Russian economy. Putin's approach allows foreign oil majors to bring their capital and technical know-how to Russia, but their holdings in Russian energy ventures should be limited to minority stakes.

With Sakhalin 2 firmly in the Kremlin's grip, observers say, authorities are turning their attention toward Kovykta.

Rosprirodnadzor, Russia's environmental watchdog agency, has accused TNK-BP of illegally piling mounds of fill onto the banks of the Lena River and unauthorized logging. The agency has asked Russian prosecutors to take up the case.

TNK-BP faces an even bigger problem from Rosnedra, Russia's subsoil licensing agency. TNK-BP's license requires the company to produce 9 billion cubic meters of natural gas from Kovykta by this year. That mark is attainable, TNK-BP officials say, but should be amended since the local market for gas, the Irkutsk region, requires only 2 billion cubic meters.

To comply with the 9 billion cubic meter requirement, TNK-BP would have to burn off what the local market doesn't consume.

Kovykta's full potential could be realized if TNK-BP were allowed to export natural gas to energy-hungry China to the south. However, Gazprom, which under Russian law is the only entity permitted to export natural gas, has balked at the idea, saying gas exports from Kovykta shouldn't begin until 2015.

"We are talking right now with both Gazprom and with Russian officials," said TNK-BP spokeswoman Maria Drachova. "We never give up hope."

Industry observers warn that Russia's strategy could backfire. Russia's energy sector still needs participation from Western majors to realize its potential. State-owned giants like Gazprom continue to be hamstrung by stifling inefficiency, and lack of infrastructure investment that impedes growth of Russia's energy sector.

Reducing foreign developers to the role of minor players, said William Ramsey, deputy executive director of the International Energy Agency, is only going to further discourage those companies from doing business in Russia. [emphasis added]

From the Gulf Times in Qatar: http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=127488&version=1&template_id=43&parent_id=19

Venezuela and Iran boost anti-US alliance

Published: Monday, 15 January, 2007, 11:52 AM Doha Time

CARACAS: Iran and Venezuela expanded their anti-US strategic alliance on Saturday with the two controversial leaders signing 11 new bilateral agreements and pledging to boost the price of oil.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived on Saturday in Caracas for his second such visit in four months to meet Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
After the two men met at the government palace, Chavez noted the deep relationships between the two countries and said one can speak of a “single fatherland” when speaking of Iran and Venezuela.
The Iranian people will “stand side to side with Venezuela” for now and evermore, Ahmadinejad vowed.
“We are spreading revolutionary thought throughout the world,” the Iranian leader said.
Yesterday, Ahmadinejad travelled to Nicaragua, where the Sandinista and former US foe Daniel Ortega was inaugurated as president earlier this week, and to today’s inauguration in Ecuador of leftist populist Rafael Correa, a Chavez admirer in the oil-rich but otherwise impoverished country.
The new Iran-Venezuela agreements call for more intense cooperation on energy, industry, trade and building construction. Last year, Ahmadinejad offered to help Venezuela develop its nuclear power industry at a time that Iran is under intense international pressure to stop enriching uranium, a process that can produce weapons-grade fuel.
During the September visit in Venezuela, the two men signed 28 co-operation agreements, with heavy focus on energy and economy. The two countries plan to start co-operative oil companies, and factories to produce cement, airplanes, bikes, automobiles and gunpowder.
The presidents on Saturday agreed to speed up establishment of a $2bn bilateral fund to invest in countries that join their anti-US alliance and free themselves from the “yoke of imperialism,” Chavez said.
The two leaders also pledged mutual support in foreign affairs, including efforts to keep oil prices high by lowering production from the oil group, the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec). Iran and Venezuela are the world’s fourth and fifth most important oil exporting nations.
Ahmadinejad charged that “all problems of the world are caused by the false policies of the most powerful countries” that have caused poverty, conflict, discrimination and injustice. The rich are only interested in economic profits and have nothing left over for the dignity of humanity, he said.
“Instead of love, hate and enmity rule the day,” the Iranian leader said.
Chavez compared his Bolivarian revolution, under which he has been building a Latin American base to confront the US, with the Islamic revolution that governs Iran.
During last year’s visit, Chavez declared his “unlimited support” for Iran’s controversial nuclear programme. Iran is developing a nuclear programme for peaceful purposes, he insisted. – DPA [emphasis added]

From the International Herald Tribune: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/14/business/chavez.php

Chávez vows to nationalize all energy

Reuters

Published: January 14, 2007

CARACAS: President Hugo Chávez plans to nationalize Venezuela's entire energy sector, reinforcing his socialist revolution and possibly giving himself more targets for state takeover.

But he said Saturday that he would permit foreign firms to hold minority stakes in energy deals.

Chávez, in power since 1999, announced last week that he would nationalize power utilities and the country's biggest telecommunications firm, confirming his status as the catalyst of Latin America's swing to the left.

"We have decided to nationalize the whole Venezuelan energy and electricity sector, all of it, absolutely all," Chávez said in his annual state of the nation address to Parliament, potentially opening up more projects for state acquisition in the fourth-ranking exporter of crude oil to the United States.

Chávez's growing control of Venezuela's economy is accompanied by his political influence. After the opposition boycotted last month's elections, he has full support in Parliament and dominates the judiciary.

Chávez was inaugurated last week for a term that runs through 2013, and has said that only his supporters can work in the army and the oil industry. He uses his presidency to spar with Washington, which he had accused of imperialism.

Chávez is an ally of Cuba and Iran, whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, visited Venezuela on Saturday. Chávez said Venezuela and Iran had agreed to push for a cut in world oil supplies to counter plunging prices.

Chávez has already pursued oil and gas projects and power utilities, but he left no leeway Saturday for a private company to hold a majority in operations anywhere in the energy sector.

It was not immediately clear whether his pronouncement on nationalizing the whole sector was a precursor to moves against specific projects or companies.

Huge oil service companies such as Halliburton and Schlumberger operate in Venezuela, but Chávez gave no indication whether deals involving such businesses were in his sights.

In his address to Parliament, Chávez also said Venezuela was almost ready to take over the foreign-run oil projects of the Orinoco Belt, which produce about 600,000 barrels per day. Those projects are run by such big foreign companies as Chevron, Conoco Phillips, Exxon Mobil, Statoil and BP. [emphasis added]