Caracas Daily Journal (Jeremy Morgan): Having decided to turn up the taps for natural gas, President Hugo Chavez is now intent on reaping Venezuela's equally hitherto unrecognized potential in petrochemicals.

It's a natural and logical next step given that natural gas is a key feedstock for petrochemicals ranging from industrial polypropylene to household polythene.

If anything, the President's plan merely poses questions about why nobody else thought of it, and much less did something about it before. Speaking on his regular Sunday broadcast, Chavez said Venezuela had never properly tapped its petrochemicals potential. In this, he was echoing decades of questions among industry analysts about Venezuela's tendency to focus all its attention on black gold and the state oil corporation, Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA).

For years, the industry looked on agog, asking why Venezuela apparently couldn't see the blindingly obvious. Much the same question was raised as decades went by while natural gas went virtually undeveloped -- or wastefully flared at well-head to boost oil output rates. Speaking at El Tablazo, a petrochemicals complex near Lake Maracaibo in Zulia state, Chavez said that when he came to power, officials were in the throws of privatizing PDVSA's petrochemicals subsidiary, Pequiven.

"The plants were abandoned, there was almost no production, almost no investment, there wasn't enough gas," he declared. Chavez went on to proclaim that Venezuela was now set to become a "world petrochemical power" -- and developing the sector would create 700,000 new jobs.

He set his sights on 2013 as the year when Venezuela would have 70 companies actively producing petrochemicals. And there would be indirect employment, too. "We're going for a million jobs," he said, "we're going to get approximately $100 million in petrochemicals revenues."

There was, of course, the by now customary swipe at the Bush administration -- which, Chavez claimed, wouldn't like his planned petrochemicals drive one little bit.

"The Empire doesn't want there to be income here, the Empire doesn't want there to be employment here," he intoned. Chavez and Oil & Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez duly laid the foundation stone for build a plant to produce high and low density polyethylene. Given that output will be about 60,000 tonnes a year, this is modest by the standards of the global petrochemicals industry.

However, the $45 million investment will apparently be a first step towards much more ambitious things.

• Six more complexes are planned under a Socialist Petrochemicals Revolution Plan.

Officials say the plan is divided into two phases, the first up to 2014 and the second from then onwards up to 2021, by when Venezuela would have at least nine complexes in operation.