The United States, eager to find new sources of oil at the time when petroleum prices are skyrocketing, is increasingly giving up its strategy of promoting democracy, analysts here say.
The government of US President George W. Bush has recently made contradictory moves towards key foreign oil producers, sowing confusion about its policy goals, according to Frank Verrastro of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.
If democracy and support for human rights are the main engine of US diplomacy, "then you have to wonder why we have not taken a tougher line with Russia, why we have not taken a tougher line with Kazakhstan, why we have not taken a tougher line with Libya?" he asked.
Yet US officials "use it when we talk about Venezuela, and we use it when we talk about the Middle East," said Verrastro, an expert in energy policy.
"Increasingly it is looking like a case-by-case application of what is more important," he said. "It is depending on what the perceived needs of the day are."
Washington announced on May 15 it was normalising relations with Libya, which has important crude oil reserves, despite the lack of political reforms visible in a country led since 1969 by the same man, Moamer Kadhafi.
On the same day US officials imposed sanctions on Venezuela, a country that supplies 15 percent of US oil imports. The stated reason: populist President Hugo Chavez's lack of co-operation in the US-led "war on terror".
Washington also charged Chavez's government with restricting the freedom of the press and harassing his political opponents.
One day later US officials suspended free trade negotiations with Ecuador, another important oil supplier, after Quito cancelled its contract with US-based Occidental Petroleum and took over their assets.
On May 4, US Vice President Dick Cheney took a swipe at Russia over democratic reform, accusing Moscow of "improperly restricting" human rights and using oil and gas supplies as a weapon.
"No legitimate cause is served when oil and gas become tools of manipulation or blackmail," Cheney said, referring to the cut-off of gas supplies to Ukraine last January which also affected parts of Europe.
Yet just hours later Cheney was praising the authoritarian government of Kazakhstan for its "economic development and political development".
Since 1993, the US has invested about 12 billion dollars (9.42 billion euros) in Kazahkstan, which has oil reserves of 24 billion barrels, making the US the biggest single investor in the country.
The Bush administration claims it is pursuing a coherent energy policy, but recognises that oil producing countries are politically profiting from the high price of crude, a US State Department energy expert said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"You have the bulk of the world hydrocarbons resources owned by state owned oil companies. And they are feeling very powerful now, as we saw in Ecuador and Russia and Venezuela," the official said.
However, Washington has not given up defending the democracy. "We have principles," the official said, pointing to Libya, which had to meet strict guidelines to be withdrawn from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism.
"The evidence would suggest that America has put ... our values above the mercantilist energy issues," the official said.
Richard Haass, president of Council on Foreign Relations, another Washington-based think tank, disagreed.
"Today's situation may lack drama in the sense that there has been no successful terrorist attack on some tanker or refinery," Haass wrote in the most recent issue of Newsweek magazine.
"But current energy policy (or the lack of one) empowers some of the most repressive and reckless regimes in the world, further impoverishes hundreds of millions of the world's poor and contributes to global climate change."