This should tick you off.

[UK Telegraph] To win allies and forge an anti-American front, Mr Chavez sells oil to friendly countries at low prices. Ironically, the only big customer buying Venezuelan oil at the full market price is the United States, which the president routinely denounces as the “Empire”.

“As production falls, the sales to the US become more important,” said Pietro Donatello, an oil analyst from Latin Petroleum in the capital, Caracas. “Only the US is paying the full amount for Venezuelan oil and in cash, the rest are in some kind of barter agreements.”

Venezuela ranks fourth in American oil imports behind Canada, Saudi Arabia, and Mexico. And they’re admitting they purposely punish Americans who are too foolish to drill their own oil.

Forget that nonsense drilling opponents claim about the U.S. only holding “3 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves.” That word “proven” is the key. How the heck would we ever know what our true oil reserves are when we don’t bother exploring and drilling for oil on our own territory?

Instead we ship between $400-$700 billion annually (the latter being the same price of that bank bailout) to other countries for their oil, which many drilled off our own shores, including those like Venezuela who are purposely gouging us.

China, Venzuela, Spain, India, Vietnam, Malaysia, Canada, Cuba, India, etc., are drilling for oil in that same Gulf of Mexico that we label too “pristine” to touch.