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Energy

Venezuela’s Chavez Threatens US With Oil Prices In “Hundreds Of Dollars”

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, does not seem to be a stable sort, but he does have a flare for the dynamic. Opening the current meeting of OPEC, he threatened the the West saying ”If the U.S. attacks Iran or Venezuela, the price of oil will jump to hundreds of dollars, not just 100,” according to the AP.

The US is unlikely to attack the South American country, but, with tensions around Iran’s role in terrorist activity in Iraq, it is possible that there could be a dust up between the countries.

Chavez’s comments point once again to the likelihood that oil is going higher and not lower over the next few months. There is no reason to believe that OPEC will increase production or that the the West and China will decrease their use of crude. The man from Venezuela wants to remind everyone that any political instability among the cartel’s members could make matters much, much worse.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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