CARACAS—"Ladies and gentlemen, Energy and Petroleum Minister Rafael Ramirez!"
Hundreds of people explode into frenzied cheering as a towering, white-haired figure stepped onto the stage at a gathering last November at Venezuela's state oil company.
Although he is treated more like a rock star than a bureaucrat, Ramirez, a leading player in President Hugo Chavez's drive to nationalize companies and advance a self-styled socialist revolution, is in truth a quiet and soft-spoken person.
People who knew him before he became energy minister describe a quiet, almost forgettable character who no one expected to see running Venezuela's oil industry.
"My initial impression of (Ramirez) was this shy guy who doesn't seem to fit in, a fly in the buttermilk," said Roger Tissot, an analyst at PFC Energy in Washington. "But it's evident that he really believes the ideology, and has been pragmatic in delivering the things Chavez wants."
Ramirez's low-key style contrasts with the provocative and sometimes boisterous Chavez, a close ally of Cuba who last year called U.S. President George W. Bush "the devil" at the United Nations.
Ramirez, 43, serves as both energy minister and president of state oil company PDVSA. He is Chavez's powerful point man in his push to increase state control over oil fields.
He has also helped change PDVSA from a profit-driven company into the financial engine of Chavez's social development crusade, investing more in health and education than exploration and production.
This has been of particular concern to the United States, which gets about 11 percent of its oil imports from Venezuela.
Ramirez will also play a key role in the nationalization of power company Electricidad de Caracas And it was Ramirez who coined the phrase "red, really red" to demand top-to-bottom support for Chavez from government institutions, which became the president's main slogan in his successful re-election campaign.
Ramirez, who once played guitar in a rock band with Chavez's brother, has the leftist pedigree to make him a close Chavez confidant.
He grew up in close contact with the thinkers who later formed Chavez's state-driven energy policy, and also rubbed shoulders with leftist rebels who were fighting a political order they said was getting fat on oil money.
In the 1960s and early 1970s, Ramirez's father hid guerrillas in his house -- one of them being former PDVSA President Ali Rodriguez, with whom Ramirez maintains a long-time friendship.
Despite what has been described as a demure demeanor, Ramirez has shown he is not afraid to play hardball.
Earlier this month, he cut off negotiations with Exxon Mobil Corp. And in 2003, he oversaw the dismissal of nearly 20,000 PDVSA employees who took part in a two-month shutdown, a failed effort by the company's top brass to force Chavez from office. The same PDVSA managers had backed a two-day coup against Chavez in 2002.
He also broke his even-tempered mold in a video released last year, in which an agitated Ramirez was shown insisting that PDVSA workers follow Chavez or leave the company.
His critics said the speech was an example of how he is promoting political discrimination at PDVSA, leading to an unqualified workforce that has contributed to a decline in oil production.
Rafael Quiros, a former PDVSA executive who opposed the anti-Chavez shutdown of the oil company in 2002 and 2003, now accuses Ramirez of the same politicization of the oil industry.
"We opposed the way (the) opposition used the oil industry to promote political destabilization," said Quiros, who briefly worked alongside Ramirez at PDVSA. "So we also have to question the way Rafael Ramirez is using the industry for political ends."
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