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South America energy summit a path to seeking alliances
Venezuela ' s President Hugo Chavez (L) chats with his Argentine counterpart Nestor Kirchner during a bilateral meeting at the Energy Summit in Margarita Island, Venezuela.By Elio Ohep
Petroleumworld
Porlamar, Margarita Island, Venezuela
Petroleumworld.com 04 17 07
South American presidents from Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, and Brazil will gathered Tuesday to start a summit under the hot sun of Margarita Island on Venezuela Caribbean sea, to seek opportunities to work on multilateral agreements on integration of its energy resources, reserves, refineries, pipelines,and new bio fuel sources.For the host Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is aiming to sign a South American Energy Agreement with all the region's heads of state as an instrument to open the gate to specifics venezuelan projects that can be worked as bilateral agreements with the interested countries.
"I spoke about the need for a South American energy agreement, which guarantees all the South American nations energy, oil, gas, alternative energy for 100 years. This is very important because the world energy crisis continues," Chavez said Monday at the Summit.
Chavez will be promoting its projected Union of the South American Nations or UNASUR, a working relationship for economic and political integration in South America.Other important projects on the agenda are the Oppegasur, a regional organization to coordinate policies of the region gas producers, the 8.000 km gas pipeline between Venezuela and Brazil and Argentina, the ethanol bio fuel question,to use or not to used more land resources to provide the U.S. with an alternative fuel, the creation of BancoSur, a proposed regional alternative bank to the International Monetary Fund.
Also Chavez is to highlight his country's Petro-America project, which sells crude at preferential prices to small countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.The summit started with a meeting of the energy ministers looking for hemispheric union labeled by Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa as "unavoidable."
Venezuelan Minister of Energy Rafael Ramírez said in advance that the items in the agenda include large projects "underway," like the Oppegasur and the Venezuelan -Colombian Transoceanic Gas Pipeline.
The energy ministers gather in the afternoon, to discuss the various issues looking for a way to pool their resources. However, the discussion was some what eclipsed by the diverse and issues that the ministers decided, no declaration was to be given until the presidents had a time to review the different proposals, according to Marco Aurelio Garcia, advisor to Brazil's president Lula Da Silva.
- Elio Ohep, editor@petroleumworld.com, 58 412 996 3730, Caracas.Petroleumworld News 16 04 07
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