This commercial ship, partly powered by a giant kite, set off on its maiden voyage from the German city Bremen to Venezuela in the third week of January. Designers of the vessel, MS Beluga

AFTER winning a new term as president by a landslide a year ago, Hugo Ch

Rafael Ramirez, Venezuela's energy minister, on Friday rejected concerns that PDVSA, the state oil company, would be affected by attempts by ExxonMobil to freeze assets worth $12bn. Exxon won court orders on Thursday in the UK, the Netherlands and the Netherlands Antilles to freeze PDVSA's global assets in an attempt to secure compensation for operations lost to President Hugo Chavez's nationalisation drive last year.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has called on his cabinet to devise a plan for nationalizing oil imports. The move follows a series of clashes between the government and Exxon Mobil subsidiary

>> RCTV, the opposition-aligned Venezuelan TV station forced off the air by the country's president Hugo Chavez, has resumed broadcasting on cable and satellite television. The station was off air

As the first South American energy summit finished in the third week of April in the Caribbean island of Margarita, Venezuela, participant countries agreed to set up an energy council to follow up

Hundreds of people are suffering from

Lake Maracaibo, South America's largest lake, has been severely polluted because of careless discharge of sewage and chemicals. "The toxic level is incalcu