It is the best of times; it is the worst of times. Oil companies across the globe are profiting mightily from the current high price of oil. The state government in Alaska isn’t doing too shabbily either. While that price will fluctuate over time, the reality of peak oil is likely to keep the price well above its historical base lines for the indefinite future.

     Yet while the oil companies and the oil owners prosper, others suffer real privations because of the high cost of oil. One of the ironies of living in an oil colony like Alaska is that we can see oil billionaires and oil paupers right next to each other in the same state.

     The Alaskans who suffer the most from high oil prices are the rural residents, mostly Alaska Natives, who support themselves with a subsistence lifestyle. They typically have far lower levels of cash income than urban residents do, but they still need to heat their houses. The cost of fuel oil in the bush is far higher than the cost of the same fuel in Anchorage.

     With all of the hundreds of billions of dollars that they have extracted from the ground in Alaska, you might think that the oil companies would be willing to help the rural subsistence residents with the price of heating oil. Now, one oil company is stepping up to do just that, with a program to give away 1.2 million gallons of free heating oil to low income residents of rural Alaska.

     It is not Exxon, which spilled millions of gallons of crude oil in Prince William Sound, and has spent millions of dollars fighting the resulting judgment against it with repeated appeals. Exxon doesn’t care about Alaskans.

     It is not BP, which ignored repeated warnings about its failing infrastructure on the north slope, and which fought tooth and nail this year to avoid a tax on its gross production of oil so that it could write off the cost of rebuilding the corroded pipes it had neglected for so many years. Don’t expect that kind of assistance from BP.

     No, the oil company that is stepping up to help rural residents in Alaska is Citgo, which has never extracted even a single barrel of oil from Alaska.

     Citgo, for those who don’t know, is a state run oil company from Venezuela. Citgo is not just helping rural residents of Alaska. It has been providing assistance with fuel costs to low income people in many parts of the United States and in many other places around the world.

     The Bush administration hates the government of Venezuela. It hates it so much that it supported a military coup against Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez a few years ago. Since failure of that coup, it has poured money into support for his political opponents.

     The Bush administration calls Chavez a “dictator.” It is a baseless accusation, because Chavez has won several free elections, and independent polls show that he enjoys strong support from about 60 percent of the population of his country.

     His support comes from the fact that he is actually helping the poor people of Venezuela. He has wiped out illiteracy with free educational programs. He has built medical clinics all over the country, which provide basic health care free of charge. And he has given away millions of gallons of oil to low income people around the world. Not exactly standard fare for a dictator.

     The behavior of Citgo, compared with the very different behavior of the oil companies that operate in Alaska, illustrates an important point. Corporations can be made into forces for social justice if they are properly motivated. Now, I don’t claim that Citgo is perfect. But the world would be a much better place if corporations like Exxon and BP were required to devote more resources to the promotion of social justice.

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