In the October 3 edition of the Anchorage Daily News, a story by Alex deMarban reports on the donation of fuel oil to some rural Alaska villages. Charity is generally a good thing, but it is not always newsworthy. What makes this donation particularly interesting is the complex motivations which underlie it.

     I previously wrote about the much larger donation of fuel oil that is being made to Alaska villages by Citgo, the Venezuelan owned oil company, in my column “A Tale of Two Oil Companies.” That fuel oil has been offered to residents of 151 rural Alaska villages, for free. Most of the villages were very happy to accept it.

     Leaders in four of the 151 Alaska villages, however, decided not to accept the donated fuel oil. They were upset because the leader of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, had made a speech at the United Nations in which he criticized President Bush and called him names.

     The exact motivations of the leaders of the four villages are not known with certainty, but their thinking appears to go something like this. Chavez criticized President Bush. Therefore, we don’t like Chavez. Citgo is controlled by Chavez. Therefore, we don’t like Citgo, and want to hurt it. Therefore, we will refuse Citgo’s offer to give us free fuel oil.

     It is not the most compelling logic I have ever seen. It does not hurt Citgo if a tiny percentage of the villages refuse to take its gift. Citgo can still give away as much oil as it chooses. Refusing the fuel oil hurts the villages far more than it hurts Citgo or Chavez. The Anchorage Daily News reports that the decision angered people in some of the four villages. The leaders of the other 147 villages decided to accept the fuel oil from Citgo.

     But now there have been some offers made to supply free fuel oil to the residents of the four villages. While there have been some donations made by individuals, the largest chunk of donated money, $92,000, comes from four fishing related organizations. The Anchorage Daily News article does not list any oil companies as donors.

     Officials from the four fishing related companies called the rejection of the fuel oil from Citgo “patriotic” and claimed that their gift was intended to make sure that the four villages didn’t suffer this winter. Here the motivations are even more attenuated, and go something like this: We don’t like Chavez. These four villages refused to take a valuable gift from an oil company that is controlled by Chavez. That refusal does not really hurt Chavez or Citgo, but we want to reward the villages for their pointless gesture. Rewarding these four villages might encourage other villages to refuse valuable gifts in the future. Therefore, we will donate some money to the villages to help cover the value of the gift they refused to take from Citgo.

     The sad truth is that most of these donations to the four villages are not motivated by concern about the villages or their residents. Many rural Alaska residents have struggled with fuel oil costs for years. But as the cost of oil has risen, Alaska has profited greatly while doing little to help rural residents cope with their added burdens. Most of these private donors have not previously donated money for rural fuel oil costs. At least one of the fishing companies which has been making these donations has previously been identified by Ray Metcalfe as being involved in the alleged fisheries bribery scandal involving Ben and Ted Stevens. These are not the kinds of organizations that are primarily motivated by compassion and charity.

     So let’s compare the Citgo gift to rural Alaska villages with the more recent replacement gifts to the four villages. The Citgo gift has been valued at about $5 million, while the donations to the four villages is apparently less than $100,000 to date. The Citgo fuel oil was offered to 151 qualifying villages. The more recent gifts are only offered to villages that have not received fuel from Citgo. Citgo has no specific economic interests in Alaska, while the fishing companies making the donations have extensive economic interests in Alaska.

     With friends like these, I am afraid that there will be a village somewhere that will end up missing its fuel.

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