Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Chavez's Heating Oil Program Goes Up in Smoke

For the past three winters, CITGO Petrolium, a Houston-based oil company and a subsidiary of Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., has provided several Bronx landlords with low cost heating oil on the condition they pass the savings onto tenants. The program was expected to continue in 2009, but a press release sent out yesterday announced its suspension.

In the statement Joseph Kennedy, president of Citizen Energy Corporation, an organization that helped administer the program, said:

Citizen Energy has recently been informed by CITGO that due to falling oil prices and the world economic crisis, CITGO has been forced to re-evaluate all the their social programs, including the heating oil program, which has provided hundreds of thousands of low-income U.S. households with much-needed fuel these past three years. As a result, the heating oil program has been suspended until further notice. It remains unclear how long this postponement, if it is one, will last.
Mount Hope Housing Company, a non-profit that owns and manages 31 buildings in the west Bronx, is one of the affected landlords. "It's a big hit," said Pamela Babb, vice-president of development and communications. She said the program also helped fund a number of Mount Hope's youth programs.

More here.
at

3 comments:

  1. Home Heating Oil PricesDecember 9, 2009 at 6:56:00 PM EST

    I don't know if I understand. They cancelled the program BECAUSE heating oil prices have fallen? Wouldn't that make it cheaper for them to administer?

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousFebruary 10, 2010 at 10:41:00 AM EST

    Kennedy collected $1.5 million in salary to "assist" the program. I guess its one reason they elected a Republican senator to help combat that kind of graft and corruption.

    ReplyDelete
  3. ken 'heating oil' loweFebruary 21, 2011 at 8:34:00 PM EST

    it sounds like a blow to regular people. it sounds as if there's more to it than meets the eye. we are talking about politics here. let's not forget that.

    ReplyDelete

Bronx News Network reserves the right to remove comments that include personal attacks, name calling, foul language, commercial advertisements, spam, or any language that might be considered threatening, libelous or inciting hate.

User comments are reviewed by BxNN staff and may be included or excluded at our discretion.

If what you have to say is unrelated to this particular post, please visit our readers' forum.