|
Lula Signs Oil Partnership with Chavez and Says Time to Say Amen, Amen, Is Over |
|
|
|
|
Written by Érica Santana
|
|
Friday, 30 September 2005 |
|
 Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said that the political will of Brazilian and Venezuelan governments was essential to the decision to sign an agreement, Thursday, September 29, between the Brazilian oil company Petrobras and its Venezuelan counterpart PDVSA.
For Lula, this is an important step in direction to a South America integration, because "the giant Petrobras and the giant PDVSA, with lots of patience and lots of time" have an agreement to produce and to refine oil in partnership, besides trying "to build together ships that will make us able to move and to sell" the product.
The Bazilian President added that we are dealing with "a step that certainly, Bolivar and our Tiradentes, wherever they are, certainly will be thinking that it took 200 years, but it is happening now what should have happened a long time ago".
The agreement for the construction of a refinery in Porto de Suape, in Pernambuco, in northeastern Brazil, was signed by the presidents of Petrobras, José Sérgio Gabrielli, and of PDVSA, Rafael Ramirez.
The unit will get investments of US$ 2.5 billion (50% from each country) and will be able to produce about 200,000 barrels of oil a day. The plant's name, Abreu Lima, pays homage to the general from Pernambuco who fought for the Latin-American countries independence.
Lula also added that he believes that this accord restates the autonomy of the South-American vis-à-vis the developed countries.
"This is something that bothers some people, because people were used to make the decisions while we used to say amen. We don't want to take anything from anyone. The only thing we want to tell the world is that we love ourselves.
"That we do respect and that we want to be heard as sovereign countries, masters of the solutions of our own problems. And that we want to share these things, this accomplishment of ours, with our siblings," he declared.
The Petrobras' decision to build the new refinery in partnership with the Venezuelan PDVSA should increase from 1.9 million barrels to 2.1 million barrels a day the Brazilian capacity of refining oil. The forecast is that the unit will start operation in the beginning of 2011.
ABr
 |
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.