Hugo Chavez Oil Quotations

I'm not giving away oil for free. Just using oil, first to benefit our people, to relieve poverty.

For a hundred years we have been one of the largest oil-producing countries in the world but with a 60 percent poverty rate and now we are canceling the historical debt.

The world should forget about cheap oil. [The price] will keep going up and some day arrive at US$100 per barrel.

The revolution will survive. It does not rely solely on oil for its survival. There is a national will, there is a national idea, a national project.

If the United States was mad enough to attack Iran or aggress Venezuela again the price of a barrel of oil could reach $150 or even $200.

Oil is a very valuable resource for life - electric heaters. We must have to transition ourselves to a post-oil era. And that's what we must discuss: searching and developing new sources of energy. And that requires scientific research. That requires investment. And the developed countries must be the ones to assume this responsibility first.

We also exchange oil for software technology. Uruguay is one of the biggest producers of software. We are breaking with the neoliberal model. We do not believe in free trade. We believe in fair trade and exchange, not competition but cooperation. I'm not giving away oil for free. Just using oil, first to benefit our people, to relieve poverty.

We have suffered from this tragedy as though we were from Martinique, as though we were French, ... I pray that this tragedy ... on Venezuelan soil helps us reinforce our unity ... We are all Caribbean.

What is the U.S. government looking for? And the elite governing this country? They're looking for oil.

Venezuela has the biggest oil reserves in the world. And the biggest gas reserves in this hemisphere, the eighth in the world. Venezuela was a U.S. oil colony. All of our oil was going up to the north, and the gas was being used by the U.S. and not by us. Now we are diversifying. Our oil is helping the poor.

The problem is not the oil, but what they do with the oil. The United States is the biggest spender of oil and of all the planet resources.