Chavez may move away from US oil export dependency

~~Adz:Right~~CARACAS, Venezuela-PRESIDENT HUGO CHAVEZ is expected to visit China sometime next week to continue talks with the emerging superpower, which may include an energy deal that would help the South American nation reduce its dependency on oil exports to the United States.

Chavez’s visit with Chinese President Hu Jintao will take place over September 23 and 24, with cooperative deals expected to be reached in matters such as “sports, judicial affairs and other areas,” Jiang Yu, spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a press conference Tuesday (Sept. 16).

Reporters asked Jiang if the talks would usher in a new era of energy sharing between oil-rich Venezuela and communist China, but she remained resistant to either confirm or deny such plans.

“Energy cooperation is a constitutive part of mutually beneficial cooperation between China and Venezuela. As to whether both sides will sign other agreements, they are continuing consultations,” she stated.

It is likely that Chavez’s continually growing distance from the United States and their foreign policy would lead him to seek a more active partnership with China, though Venezuela currently only supplies about four percent of the country’s annual oil imports.

Venezuela’s current energy policy plans outline the shipping of one million barrels of crude oil per day to China by 2011, but Jiang made it clear that her nation had no intention to be drawn into any rivalry between Venezuela and the United States.

“Chinese and Venezuelan cooperation in this sphere will not affect Venezuela's oil supplies to other countries,” Jiang told gathered media.

Earlier in the year, China’s state run oil and gas company PetroChina signed a deal with Venezuela to jointly build a new refinery in China’s southern province of Guangdong.