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New Measure Of Wealth Shows That Many Developing Countries Are In The Red
Staff, World Bank
Accounting for the actual value of natural resources, including resource depletion and population growth, shows that net savings per person are negative in the world’s most impoverished countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, according to a new World Bank publication, Where is the Wealth of Nations?, launched on the eve of the 2005 U.N. World Summit.
Current indicators used to guide development decisions – national accounts figures, such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) – ignore depletion of resources and damage to the environment. In the Conference Edition of Where is the Wealth of Nations?, the World Bank offers new estimates of total wealth, including produced capital, natural resources, and the value of human skills and capabilities, which show that many of the poorest countries in the world are not on a sustainable path. …
(13 September 2005)
Sandinistas in Venezuela oil deal
BBC
Nicaragua’s left-wing opposition party has announced an agreement to buy Venezuelan oil at preferential rates. Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega said councils governed by the party would be able to buy oil at a 40% discount.
The rise of global oil prices has caused an energy crisis in Nicaragua which has led to power rationing. But the government, which did not take part in the deal, is questioning the Sandinistas’ access to the proper infrastructure to carry it out.
Nicaragua’s main energy supplier, Fenosa, began rationing power for up to eight hours a day earlier in September. Fenosa said it was left with no choice after the Supreme Court barred it from raising tariffs to keep up with the price of fuel used to generate electricity in Nicaragua. President Enrique Bolanos – who is locked in a power struggle with the Sandinistas – said on Monday that he would ask congress to approve rate increases. He also wants congress to allow him to hand over $30m to private energy firms.
Under the deal announced by Mr Ortega, a Venezuelan-controlled company will be created in partnership with the municipalities. The company will transport, store and deliver fuel. More than half of Nicaragua’s councils are run by Sandinistas and could benefit from the cheaper oil.
(20 September 2005)
Poll: 8 in 10 want drivers to drop SUVs
Will Lester, AP via Seattle Post-Intelligencer
WASHINGTON — Eight in 10 people say it’s important for Americans now driving sport utility vehicles to switch to more fuel-efficient vehicles to reduce the nation’s dependence on oil, a poll found.
With gas prices hovering around $3 a gallon nationally and the price of natural gas rising sharply, six in 10 said they are not confident President Bush is taking the right approach to solving the nation’s energy problems, according to the survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.
(15 September 2005)
The original article has more results from the poll.
Chavez’ Surprise for Bush
Offering to Sell Cheap Oil to America’s Poor
Juan Gonzalez, NY Daily News via Znet
Worried about the skyrocketing cost of gasoline and heating oil this winter? Well, Hugo Chavez, the firebrand president of oil-rich Venezuela, wants to help.
Chavez, a former army officer twice elected president in huge landslides, has become a target of the Bush administration for his radical social policies. Last month, right-wing evangelist Pat Robertson openly urged his assassination. But now Chavez is firing back at Bush and Robertson with a surprise weapon – cheap oil for America’s poor.
In an exclusive interview yesterday, the Venezuelan leader said his country will soon start to ship heating oil and diesel fuel at below market prices to poor communities and schools in the United States. “We will begin with a pilot project in Chicago on Oct. 14, in a Mexican-American community,” said Chavez, who was in town for the United Nations sessions. “We will then expand the program to New York and Boston in November.”
…Cutting oil prices must seem like the worst sort of radicalism to the Big Oil companies and their buddies at the Bush-Cheney White House. But ordinary Americans fed up with price gouging by these energy companies could begin to look at Chavez in a different light if his oil-for-the-poor project works. Still, Chavez, warns, we must all think about the future. Americans are 5% of the world’s population, yet we consume 25% of the world’s oil. On his drive from Kennedy Airport to Manhattan this week, Chavez noted, “Out of every 100 cars I saw on the road, 99 had only one person in the car. “These people were using up fuel,” he said. “They were polluting the environment. This planet cannot sustain that mode of life.” That’s the kind of message that can get a man killed these days – or at least labeled a dangerous madman by folks in the White House.
(19 September 2005)
See also the transcript of Chavez’s speech to the UN, a transcript of a Chavez interview on Nightline. Fortune magazine has a brief Chavez interview and a solid profile of the Venezuelan Oil Co’s operations and CEO.
In oil boom, Mexico’s Pemex struggles
Elisabeth Malkin, New York Times
MEXICO CITY Pemex, Mexico’s state oil monopoly, is one of the world’s largest oil companies, pumping more than any company outside the Middle East. Prices are climbing and production is at a record.
So why is the company starved for cash? Its proven reserves are dwindling, and last year fell 7.7 percent. Its main oil field, Cantarell, is about to reach its peak production and will begin to decline next year. Without big investment and new oil discoveries soon, Pemex’s total production, now hovering above 3.3 million barrels a day, could begin to decline by the end of the decade, analysts say.
Despite lofty prices for oil, Pemex has seen little of the roughly $9 billion windfall above its expected revenue. It is heavily taxed – the government relies on it to finance about one-third of the national budget. …
The company is lagging its own production forecasts. Its Web site says it will pump four million barrels of oil a day next year, but the budget Fox sent to Congress earlier this month projects 3.48 million barrels.
The main oil field, Cantarell, which accounts for about 2.2. million barrels a day, 75 percent of Pemex’s output, will begin to decline next year by 2 percent, officials say. The question is whether new projects will come on line in time to make up for the shortfall.
Some experts believe that Cantarell will decline much faster than that. Guillermo Domínguez, an oil engineer who retired as vice president of technology at Pemex’s exploration and production subsidiary in 2003, said that Cantarell could begin to decline by as much as 15 to 20 percent by 2008.
(21 September 2005)
Nigerian militia threatens oil installations over militia leader’s arrest
Associated Press via CNN
LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — A militia with a history of violence in Nigeria’s oil-rich south threatened to blow up oil installations if the government did not release its leader, after he was reportedly arrested Tuesday.
Dozens of soldiers and police arrested Moujahid Dokubo-Asari, the main militia leader in Nigeria’s south, at his office in the oil city of Port Harcourt, said his lawyer Uche Okwukwu. Nigeria’s police spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.
Dokubo-Asari’s deputy in the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force, Alali Horsefall, said that if the government “doesn’t release my president within 24 hours, they will see danger.” He said he would “blow up oil installations” if Dokubo-Asari was not released by 2 p.m. local time (1300 GMT) and warned foreign oil workers to leave the area. …
Another prominent militant group has issued veiled threats against Britons after the governor of the Niger delta state of Bayelsa was arrested for questioning in Britain over suspicions of money laundering. …
(20 September 2005)
Greens: Ireland ‘must switch to renewable energy’
BreakingNews.ie
Ireland needs to switch over to 100% renewable energy within 50 years to avoid spiralling fuel costs and combat global climate change, the Green Party said today.
At the launch of ‘Let’s Make the Switch’, which comes at the beginning of Energy Awareness Week, Green Party TDs and councillors said people were now paying the price for the Government’s failure to invest in alternatives to fossil fuels. “We in the Green Party are the only party taking the whole issue of energy and the future in this country seriously,” Green Party leader Trevor Sargent said.
“Energy is going to be fundamental to our future economy as well as climate change.” Mr Sargent accused the Government of being illiterate when it came to energy and said it was acting as an agency for fossil fuel companies.
The party is demanding a change from the current situation where 90% of Ireland’s energy needs are met with largely imported fossil fuels to 100% provided by renewable energy sources.
Energy spokesman Eamon Ryan said a variety of renewable energy technologies were needed to ensure security of supply, combat rising oil prices and meet European Union obligations to cut use of fossil fuels by 60-80% by 2050. “You have to look at energy in a very long-term way,” he said.
(18 September 2005)
Fuel shortages reach unprecedented levels
Zimbabwe Chronicle
THE shortage of fuel has reached unprecedented levels in Bulawayo and has virtually paralysed essential services with the ambulance and criminal justice system grinding to a halt, Chronicle learnt yesterday.
Fuel shortages have seen the price of the commodity shooting to as much as $100 000 per litre of petrol on the black market while the situation has been compounded by an increase in duty charged on fuel imports.
Since the fuel crisis began, enterprising individuals have been importing the commodity from Botswana for personal use and this had eased the problem but as of Friday last week, private fuel importers have had to endure an increase in duty from $174 000 for 200 litres of fuel to $2 million.
(21 September 2005)
Cheap Gas Is a Bad Habit
Robert J. Samuelson, Washington Post
What this country needs is $4-a-gallon gasoline or, maybe, $5. We don’t need it today, but we do need it over the next seven to 10 years via a steadily rising oil tax. Coupled with stricter fuel economy standards, higher pump prices would push reluctant auto companies and American drivers away from today’s gas guzzlers. That should be our policy. The deafening silence you hear on this crucial subject from the White House, Congress and the media is a sorry indicator of national shortsightedness.
Hurricane Katrina’s message is clear: We are vulnerable to any major cutoff of oil. This cutoff came from a natural disaster, but the larger menace is a political cutoff. Two-thirds of the world’s proven oil reserves lie around the Persian Gulf; these countries, led by Saudi Arabia, now provide about a quarter of today’s oil supply. This flow could be interrupted at any time for many reasons — terrorism, war, domestic upheaval, deliberate cuts. Many other oil exporters are similarly unreliable: Russia (the No. 2 exporter), Venezuela (No. 5) and Nigeria (No. 8).
Until oil’s geography changes, a prudent society would respond to this unavoidable insecurity.
(14 September 2005)
Katrina to drive rig cover costs up by 50%
Christine Seib, The Times (UK)
PREMIUMS for offshore oil rigs and platforms will rocket 50 per cent, underwriters said yesterday as Lloyd’s of London revealed that Hurricane Katrina would cost the 317-year-old insurance market £1.4 billion. The cost of the storm that has devastated New Orleans will be at least £100 million higher than last year’s record-beating hurricane season, Lloyd’s said in a statement to the stock market.
Lloyd’s, along with nine other insurance groups, is teetering on the brink of a credit rating downgrade, as Standard & Poor’s, the ratings agency, assesses the impact of Katrina. Katrina is expected to be the world’s largest insured loss, with estimates of the cost soaring to $60 billion (£33 billion) this week as the floodwaters receded to reveal catastrophic damage. …
(15 September 2005)
