|
Brazil's government owned oil company Petrobras announced plans to invest US$ 56.4 billion in the next five years, most of it in Argentina, Venezuela and in the US areas of the Gulf of Mexico.
Petrobras CEO José Sergio Gabrielli indicated that the original target had been established at US$ 34.5 billion for the 2006/2010 period, but it was increased 64% given the global energy situation "a significant increase was needed to cover the growing costs of the oil production chain because of the surge in international prices of crude".
"Our investments in South America are concentrated mainly in Argentina and Venezuela", said Mr. Gabrielli who considered "marginal" any further investments in Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia.
A recent bill approved by the Bolivian government more than doubling oil taxes has irritated oil and gas corporations with investments in the landlocked country that concentrates South America's main gas reserves behind Venezuela.
Petrobras in Argentina is involved in oil and gas exploration and production, refining, electricity, lubricants, fertilizers and gas and energy transport.
In Argentina, Petrobras US$ 3.9 billion investment plan has been increased to US$ 7.8 billion, mostly new projects not included in the original outlay.
According to an official Petrobras release, 87% of investments are concentrated in hydrocarbons exploration and production, of which 44% in Latinamerica, 19,6% in Africa and 20% in the Gulf of Mexico.
This article appeared originally in Mercopress - www.mercopress.com.
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.
An online broker, who goes by the screen name Rolala, was not a fan of online games until his 15-year-old son became interested in Final Fantasy XI(FFXI).He then noticed that a large number of gils(currencies used in FFXI) were for sale on eBay.
"I started hearing about players leaving the game who were selling their assets at cheap prices," he said, "so I figured, buy low, sell high."
But Rolala found his moneymaking options in FFXI "very limited". He switched to World of Warcraft,the world's largest MMORPG. There, he has leveraged his real-life experience into an online business. He converts his game profits into real money on sites likeebay, cheap wow gold ,world of warcraft gold,etc.Earnings can be considerable. He said he was on track to earn about $120,000 in real money in his first year in this business.
Rolala's business is just one example of how increasingly popular online role-playing games have created a shadow economy in which the lines between the real world and the virtual world are getting blurred.
Edward Castronova, an economics professor at Indiana University who has written a book on the subject, calculated that if you took the real dollars spent within "EverQuest "as an index, its game world, called Norrath, would be the 77th richest nation on the planet, while annual player earnings surpass those of citizens of Bulgaria, India or China.
Go to GameUSD, an exchange-rate calculator for the virtual worlds, and do a search for the latest rates of virtual currencies against the U.S. dollar, and let your jaw drop open. The rates of some virtual world currencies are even better than that of the Iraqi Dinar! For instance, here is the exchange rate of several popular virtual currencies: Final Fantacy XI Gil ($23.89/1M), Lineage 2 adena ($2.80/1M), Everquest Platinum ($0.24/1K), Everquest 2 Gold($0.017/gold), WOW Gold ( World of Warcraft Gold ) ($0.178/gold), Star Wars Galaxies Credit ($0.50/1M),
Guild Wars Gold ($0.07/1K), Second Life Linden ($3.14/1K), etc.
Right now, this business is one of the most hotly debated issues on the internet. Many game companies such as Blizzard who run World of Warcraft discourage profit from in-game properties, though none have found a way to stop it.
Sony Online Entertainment, on the other hand, encourages the practice (albeit within the confines of their own "Station Exchange", their own forum for the sale of in-game properties). It recently announced the first month's figures from "Station Exchange". According to SOE, over 45,000 characters from "EverQuest 2" have been active on the exchange and have spent over $180,000 USD in one month, half of which have been spent on in-game gold and platinum.
In terms of the law's concern, another issue is, who owns the virtual money? Many virtual world designers maintain that anything created in the world belong to the company. They refuse to recognise the rights of their players in the virtual property for fear of attracting liability for its maintenance or security.
But will this work in the long term? Players spend considerable time and/or money acquiring such assets. In many cases they are the creation of the player and even the intellectual property ownership is questionable. "As we spend more time in these worlds, it's not enough for companies to say that 'we own everything and we can turn it off at any time,'" said a gamer. "The question may soon be should we have recourse against a game company for obliterating virtual assets?"
With the rapid growth of virtual currency exchange market, should people accord virtual property the same protection as property in the real world?