CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - Venezuela will soon impose a new tax on oil companies to recoup a larger share of their rising profits, President Hugo Chavez said Monday.
His administration has readied a bill outlining the new tax -- although he said it has not yet determined what the tax rate will be.
'They're earning money that they haven't accounted for,' Chavez said in a televised speech. 'Those large additional earnings aren't a product of any extraordinary effort.... It isn't that they've invested more.'
Chavez called it a tax on 'unexpected earnings' as a result of sudden rises in world oil prices. He has mentioned plans for the tax before.
The socialist president could approve the new tax by decree if he chooses to, under fast-track powers that the solidly pro-Chavez National Assembly granted him last year. Those powers expire in July.
Chavez has moved to increase state control over the oil industry in recent years, while letting foreign companies stay on as minority partners in oil fields they once managed under contract.
In 2005, Chavez raised royalty rates to 30 percent from 16.6 percent on foreign firms operating heavy oil projects in the crude-rich Orinoco River region, and last year the government assumed majority control of those projects.
Companies operating in Venezuela include U.S.-based Chevron Corp., France's Total, Britain's BP PLC and others.
Chavez said the idea for a new tax arose from a conversation with Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.
'Those who are going to criticize me, well criticize me, but they'll be criticizing the Nobel laureate in economics Joseph Stiglitz,' Chavez said.
Soaring oil prices have been linked to the falling value of the dollar, Chavez noted, blaming the U.S. slowdown on the 'imperialist ambition of the president of the United States, among other things.'
Chavez has called the U.S. war in Iraq an attempt to seize control of that country's oil.
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