General view of the 'Camilo Cienfuegos' oil refinery in Cienfuegos city center of Cuba. The plant was inaugurated yesterday in a grand ceremony with the participation of Cuba's interim President Raul Castro and Venezuela's President, Hugo Chavez, as part of the activities of the IV Petrocaribe summit. (EPA)

CIENFUEGOS, Cuba • Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez met yesterday with a dozen leaders of Caribbean and Central American nations he is supplying with cheap oil that has bolstered his regional influence.

Chavez, the fiercest antagonist of the United States in the region despite being a major US oil supplier, also opened a revamped Soviet-era refinery in Cuba that will supply fuel products to members of his Petrocaribe initiative.

The refinery was mothballed 12 years ago after the Soviet Union collapsed, depriving Cuba of subsidised oil supplies and technology and plunging it into a deep economic crisis. The first shipment of Venezuelan oil, 274,000 barrels of Mesa 30 and Merey 16 crude, arrived in Cienfuegos bay three weeks ago for the refinery's start-up.

Venezuelan Energy and Petroleum Minister Rafael Ramirez said $166m was invested to restart the refinery, which will produce fuel oil, diesel, gasoline and jet fuel for the Cuban domestic market and for export to Nicaragua, Belize and Honduras, which has asked to join Petrocaribe.

"We have begun to create a new geopolitics of oil that is not at the service of big money interest," Chavez said in a speech criticising the unfair distribution between developing and industrialised nations he said were squandering resources.

Billboards of Chavez and ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro, greeted the Venezuelan president in Cienfuegos, a port city 256km southwest of Havana. But Castro has not appeared in public since falling ill in July 2006 and his brother and acting Cuban President Raul Castro hosted the meeting with Chavez. Chavez met with Castro for 2 ˝ hours in Havana on Thursday, the ruling Communist Party newspaper Granma said.