|
 Brazilian President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, talking this Saturday, November 11, during the Ibero-American summit in Santiago, Chile, said that thanks to the discovery of as much as 8 billion barrels of oil off the coast of Brazil, his country might soon join OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.
"This discovery of an exceptional reserve, with good quality oil and plenty of gas," he stated, "puts Brazil in a highly privileged situation. Very soon Brazil is going to join OPEC."
The new oil fields discovered by Brazilian state-controlled Petrobras puts Brazil among the ten top oil producers at 9th place, just after Venezuela.
Venezuelan President, Hugo Chávez, had proposed on Friday that Brazil join Venezuela in a joint venture called Petroamazonia, which would sell subsidized oil to South America's poorest countries.
Lula responded saying that in his view OPEC should reduce oil prices: "The countries that have oil need to be compensated with a just price for their oil. However, the countries that sell oil, cannot think that they can live at the poor countries cost and choke their economies."
"Obviously we intend to participate in such a forum where we can discuss politics for the whole world. When Brazil is part of OPEC, we are going to fight a little to get a lower oil price, because this is one of the contributions that the oil-rich countries can give the poorer countries," the president stated.
For Lula, Brazil's biodiesel policy is already an alternative for Latin American countries as well as for some African and Asian nations. The Brazilian president reassured the world that Brazil won't change its biofuel policy due to the just-discovered new oil and gas reserves.
"We want to present our plan soon, defining the areas in which we are going to plant. And it is important to make it clear that in this government no one will have a chance to planting anything related to biodiesel in the Amazon except for dendê (oil palm), which is originary from the region. There will not be sugar cane in the Amazon, there will not be soybean in the Amazon", he ascertained.
Lula stressed that Brazil won't join OPEC before it starts exporting oil, something that will not happen until he leaves office in January 1st, 2010. For now, all the oil Brazil produces is being consumed domestically.
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
( I am from Brazil by the way!)
Brazil received a huge boost in its international image with its selection as the host of the 2016 Olympics, but it was really just the cherry on top of the overall recognition of the country's ascension to the ranks of one of the world's most important countries. Now, as it finally takes its place on the world scene, there has been a great deal of concern about what kind of image Brazil hopes to project, now that the world is really paying attention. 
The only good thing to say about the visit to Brazil of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on Monday November 23, is that it was mercifully short and lasted less than 24 hours. Ahmadinejad had his picture taken being hugged by president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva who gave him a warm welcome and said Iran had every right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. 
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.