[IamConservative]

Oil being a fungible commodity, short of an outright halt in production, how could Chavez selectively boycott sales to the US?

Greed is at least as powerful and emotion as hate.

[Uriah_lost]

The oil producing countries are as addicted to our consumption as we are to their oil....

[kinghorse]

Furthermore, refineries to process their slop are not laying around everywhere. In fact I believe China has exactly -0- refineries capable of processing their stuff. The USA on the other hand....

And yeah what he said. When supplies are inflexible, who cares where it comes from. Every drop not sold to the USA will open up inventory for whatever it's replacing.

[VRWCTexan]

The short answer is that even though Chavez may hate the US and attempt some sort of short-term caitiff it cannot be sustained - i.e. in as much as there are very few countries with the types of refineries required to process the heavy - sour crude that Chavez has to sell.

Likewise the added shipping / transport costs to be incurred - if Chavez were to find other potential buyers - would make the price for this crude unacceptable on the world market
And most of all Chavez could not go very long without the oil income - thus he is stuck with the US as his only real market