Ali Rodriguez, secretary-general of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, has spent the week in Caracas, Venezuela, mulling Chavez's invitation to take the top job at Petroleos de Venezuela SA. Rodriguez had served earlier as energy minister under Chavez, and an OPEC source said there was a 70 percent likelihood that he would accept the president's offer.
Venezuela is the third-largest supplier of oil to the United States and a leading member of OPEC. Petroleos de Venezuela was at the center of a dispute that sparked last week's failed coup against Chavez.
As boss at OPEC, Rodriguez has shared Chavez's interest in trying to keep oil prices high by sharply limiting crude production by the group's 11 member countries. But Jan Stuart, head of research for global energy futures at ABN AMRO in New York, said Rodriguez would be more than just a Chavez puppet if he took the job at PdVSA.***
International audiences -- and in fact, many Venezuelans -- were baffled by Chavez's tumultuous overthrow and swift return to power between April 11 and April 14. Many have speculated that Chavez launched a controlled auto-coup to flush out his numerous opponents within the FAN and opposition political groups.
In fact, as Caracas returns to normalcy, it's becoming clearer that extremist groups on both sides that strongly support or oppose the Chavez regime likely took advantage of this situation -- the largest anti-government demonstration in Venezuela's history -- to trigger a violent confrontation that unseated Chavez, but ultimately restored him to power. STRATFOR has pieced together the following chain of events April 11-12 from public and private sources in Venezuela:***