WorldWatch has mentioned in this blog several times that some attitudes of certain crude producers will with time turn against them, the speculation will stop and the first nation to fell the back slash is Venezuela as its President Hugo Chavez grinning at about 300 business leaders and company executives he usually calls ``oligarchs,'' implored for help relieving a drought in investment.

``Those of you who have money abroad, bring some home, let's ally ourselves, let's elevate production as much as we can,''

After squeezing the private sector for almost a decade with nationalizations and foreign exchange controls, Chavez is holding out the lure of lower taxes and $1 billion of loans to spark growth and combat spiraling inflation that only ramped up production can solve.

Investment fell for the first time in four years in the first quarter and state spending, the driving force behind four and a half years of economic expansion, is showing diminishing returns as output growth lags behind a boom in oil-fueled consumptionn.

The vocabulary the government has used over the past two years, above all the president, includes expropriation, confiscation, and it isn't well-received by the private sector, there's less investment, this means less supply, and that's going to keep driving up prices in Venezuela.