http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/nat-gen/2006/feb/28/022801325.htmlHARTFORD, Conn. (AP) - Connecticut has given social service agencies permission to supply low-income residents with discounted heating oil from Venezuela, whose energy aid program for the needy has rankled the Bush administration.
The state Department of Social Services began notifying the nonprofit agencies Monday after Attorney General Richard Blumenthal ruled that the Venezuelan oil program is legal, said David McDonald, spokesman for the Connecticut Association for Community Action, a coalition of the private nonprofit groups.
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Venezuela, the fifth-largest foreign supplier of oil to the U.S., has been supplying millions of gallons of heating oil at a 40 percent discount to poor Americans and free heating fuel to homeless shelters.
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In Washington, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton, R-Texas, and Rep. Ed Whitfield, the Republican chairman of the subcommittee for oversight and investigations, have voiced concern that the oil deals are "part of an unfriendly government's increasingly belligerent and hostile foreign policy" toward the United States.
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