Yet another example of why you can never really trust the U.S. media's favored sources on Latin America

By Justin Delacour

Latin America News Review

May 17, 2010

My apologies for not posting lately, but I need to concentrate on the dissertation this year. However, I wanted to drop in to provide yet another example of just how unreliable the media's favored sources have been on Latin America for the past decade. Back in the year 2000, the world price of oil was running at about $30 a barrel. On September 26, 2000, NPR summed up Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's position on OPEC production quotas as follows:

NPR REPORTER MARTIN KASTE: Chavez says the current price, hovering around $ 30 a barrel is fair, and he says anything much lower than that is tantamount to exploitation. Consequently, OPEC says it will now use its production quotas to stabilize prices at around $ 25.

The Venezuelan multi-millionaire and business editor Robert Bottome then gave NPR this little nugget of wisdom in response:

Mr. ROBERT BOTTOME (Business Editor): The model is not workable.

KASTE: Robert Bottome, a Venezuelan business editor, says Chavez is living in the past, specifically the 1970s, when OPEC still controlled the lion's share of world oil exports.

Mr. BOTTOME: I mean, if these guys had 80 percent of the market, 90 percent of the market and discipline, you might say, 'OK, then they can control the price.' But with 35 percent of the market, there's no way they can control the price.

Now, with the price of a barrel of oil holding at about $75 dollars a barrel, it would seem that Mr. Bottome was the one living in the past.