Chavez Cancer Imperils $7 Billion Caribbean Oil Funding: Energy

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s battle with cancer threatens $7 billion of subsidized oil exports that help prop up Cuba’s economy and contain inflation in Caribbean nations from Jamaica to the Bahamas. Chavez, hospitalized in Havana after a fourth operation, sent Cuba $3.6 billion of oil in 2011 through the Petrocaribe program that serves 70 million people across Central America and the Caribbean. Cuba failed to make discoveries in the first offshore drilling effort since 2004 as Repsol SA, Petroliam Nasional Bhd. and Petroleos de Venezuela SA reported dry wells. While Chavez’s avowed “political father” Fidel Castro used guns and medicine to spread his socialist revolution abroad, the Venezuelan leader relies on the world’s biggest oil reserves. If Chavez’s successor ends the funding, Caribbean economies still struggling to bolster tourism after the 2008 financial crisis would face further budgetary strains.