Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is today wrestling to loosen the oil industry shutdown damaging the country's economic lifeline.
Venezuela's army, in whose ranks the leftist leader once served before winning the presidency in a 1998 election, has given him its backing to act against opposition strikers whose two-week-old stoppage has paralysed oil operations there.
In a message to the nation yesterday, army commander Gen Julio Garcia Montoya condemned the oil industry shutdown as a "sabotage against Venezuela's principal source of wealth".
He pledged army support for government efforts to counter it, accusing the strikers of trying to "kidnap Christmas".
The oil shutdown has pushed oil prices skywards, boosting US oil futures by more than a dollar yesterday to over $30.
The strike, begun on December 2nd by opposition leaders pressing Mr Chavez to resign or call early elections, has pinched off the country's economic lifeblood and brought supporters and foes of the president onto the streets in an escalating conflict.
Mr Chavez has vowed to break the strike, sending troops to seize control of idled oil tankers, production fields, refineries and loading ports.
But strike leaders, accusing the president of acting like a dictator, said they were continuing the shutdown.