VENEZUELA:There is a world where oil costs $100 a barrel, where motorists wince as they fill up the tank and where energy efficiency is a mantra. And then there is Venezuela.
At a Caracas petrol station last week, Gloria Padron, a paediatrician, ticked off items that would cost about the same as the 60 litres of fuel gurgling into her Land Cruiser.
"Let me think. A Magnum ice cream. A cup of coffee. A cheese and ham arepa [ sandwich]. Small stuff like that. Can't say I've ever really thought about the price. Why would you?"
When filling the tank of a 4x4 costs €0.56, it is a fair question. Petrol is so cheap here - reputedly the cheapest in the world - as to be almost free.
So while oil-importing nations appeal for relief , major exporters like Venezuela bask in their immunity from the petro-inflationary pain.
Venezuela has the seventh-largest oil reserves in the world, and petrol is lavishly subsidised. "If it gives us nothing else, at least the government lets us have our own petrol this cheap," says Padron (44), revving her engine. "It may be crazy and have no logic, but I'm not complaining. Nobody is."
That perhaps is the problem. The subsidy warps the economy, drains government coffers, disadvantages the poor, pollutes the air and paralyses cities with traffic jams. Yet it is hugely popular and the government dares not end the insanity.
This phenomenon is common to oil producers such as Burma, Indonesia, Iran and Nigeria: their people feel cheap petrol is a birthright and tend to revolt if the price rises.
With massive price inflation, governments are now obliged to forfeit windfall revenues to divert ever-greater quantities of oil to domestic markets.
Venezuela, a major oil producer which introduced the subsidy as a populist measure in the 1940s, is probably the most extreme case of a gas-guzzling dream becoming a nightmare.
A lack of rigs and other problems has reduced the output of the state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, just as domestic consumption has soared to 780,000 barrels a day.
The subsidy costs the government about €6 billion annually. It also encourages a brisk trade in contraband petrol across the Colombian border, where prices are higher.
A consumer boom has doubled the number of cars on Venezuela's roads, with 500,000 sold last year alone. Some economists call the subsidy "Hood Robin" because it steals from the poor and gives to the rich by favouring relatively wealthy car owners above the poor, who rely on public transport.
When a previous government raised prices in 1989, the resulting riots left hundreds, possibly thousands, dead and destabilised the political system. A price rise now could worsen the galloping 22 per cent rate of inflation by having a knock-on effect on the cost of haulage and public transport.
President Hugo Chávez's extensive oil diplomacy, which subsidises exports to friendly countries, notably Cuba, has further sensitised Venezuelans to prices at the pump. "You can't give a stranger a present of something from your own home and then deny it to your children," says decorator Alfredo Lozano (55) as he fills his 4x4. "The government has to keep the price low."