It’s hard to believe Hugo Chavez was on the ropes just two years ago. Venezuela’s oil industry was paralyzed by a crippling strike and exports were choked off to its most important market - the U.S. - at the start of the winter.

Fast forward to a buoyant Chavez, claiming a greater mandate in a parliamentary vote boycotted by rivals, and some very curious doings by the man who dreamed of stardom in the Bronx.

While Chavez grew up with aspirations of playing baseball in Yankee Stadium, his latest endeavor is to provide low-cost heating oil to residents of the New York borough. Plans are set to be announced Tuesday, when the city may be under several inches of snow, and follow a similar offer of 12 million gallons of discount heating oil in Boston last week. Venezuela, which owns Citgo, the huge U.S. fuel retailer, offered the oil as prices soared in the wake of Gulf Coast hurricanes.

What Chavez wants to accomplish from the move - apart from burnishing his image with some in Washington even as he falls further out of favor with the Bush administration - isn’t clear. But the move is certain to make him more of a thorn in the side of the White House. Chavez has flat out accused Bush of plotting to overthrow him and said the U.S. was behind the election boycott. His relations with Cuba’s Fidel Castro and his support for Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, despite global sanctions, rankled the White House. While oil exports have stablized at normal levels and Caracas ranks reliably as the U.S.’s fourth-biggest source of crude, the feud grows. It came to a head last month at the Americas summit in Argentina when Chavez, a former paratrooper who once tried to seize power in a coup, claimed credit for sinking a regional free trade agreement sought by Washington.

Now Chavez is being viewed favorably in parts of the U.S. where he’s scarcely been heard of.
Maine’s Gov. John E. Baldacci, a Democrat, is trying to rally other Northeastern governors to press the Bush administration for more funding under a federal fuel subsidy program for low income residents known as LIHEAP. But so far more funds haven’t been forthcoming, and Maine, too, is in talks with the Venezuelans.

‘’If we only imported oil from the countries whose politics we agreed with, we’d be very cold and we’d probably have to go back to the horse and buggy,'’ said Beth Nagusky, the Maine governor’s top aide on energy matters.

While cold temperatures are just now arriving in the Northeast, the Energy Department shows residential heating oil prices have dropped by 9.4% in the region in the past nine weeks. Residential heating oil prices in the first week of October are the high for the season so far. In eight of the past 15 years, the first week in October registered the lowest price in the heating season.