May 31

　　When most Americans think of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries — OPEC, the world's most powerful energy cartel — they usually envision Arab sheikhs lording over oil drills in the desert. But the organization's more important home today arguably lies half a world away among the lush hills and beaches of Venezuela, which has the hemisphere's largest oil reserves.

　　In an interview with TIME last week in Bolivia, where Venezuela is aiding the oil and natural-gas nationalization decreed this month by leftist President Evo Morales, Chávez's Energy Minister Rafael Ramírez affirmed that he and Chávez will again call on OPEC to curtail oil production. The reason, he insisted, is to keep prices at "simply the fair market level for our most important natural resource," which now generates $83 billion per year for Venezuela compared to $53 billion in 2000. OPEC ministers will probably decline to cut back output much. Ramírez says he doubts the cartel will ever again allow prices to sink as low, or outputs to rise as high, as they did at the end of the 20th century, when Venezuela was even considering dropping out of OPEC shortly before Chávez's election.