You’ve got to be kidding. Venezuela sending cheap oil to Massachusetts.

QUINCY, Massachusetts (AP) — Thousands of low-income Massachusetts residents will receive discounted home heating oil this winter under an agreement signed Tuesday with Venezuela, whose government is a political adversary of the Bush administration.

Citgo Petroleum Corp., a subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, will supply oil at 40 percent below market prices. It will be distributed by two nonprofit organizations, Citizens Energy Corp. and the Massachusetts Energy Consumers Alliance.

The agreement gives President Hugo Chavez’s government standing as a provider of heating assistance to poor U.S. residents at a time when U.S. oil companies have been reluctant to do so and Congress has failed to expand aid in response to rising oil prices.

U.S. Rep. William Delahunt of Massachusetts, a Democrat, met with Chavez in August and helped broker the deal. He said his constituents’ needs for heating assistance trump any political points the Chavez administration can score.

“This is a humanitarian gesture,” Delahunt said, speaking after a news conference with Venezuelan officials and others outside the home of a constituent in Quincy who will receive heating aid.

UPDATE at 11/23/05 12:19:40 am:

And it isn’t just Massachusetts: A Gift Of Heating Oil To The Bronx. (Hat tip: zombie.)

(New York - WABC, November 22 , 2005) - It’s no secret that’s there no love lost between President Bush and the president of Venezuela. But now, Hugo Chavez is perhaps trying to politically one-up the president by offering an incredible gift to the Bronx.

That gift — eight million gallons of heating oil at cheap prices to low income families. …

During a visit to the Bronx back in September, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez offered to begin selling the heating oil at low market prices to poor communities in the U.S. — including the south Bronx.

Critics said the arrangement would allow Chavez to score political points against the Bush White House.

But Congressman Jose Serrano (D), who help brokered the deal, sees it as humanitarian, not political: “One of the things we are hoping to do is that this semi-foreign corporation in a way sets a tone for American corporations who are making more money than ever to realize they can share.”