Brazil Invited to Join OPEC -- Please, Beware!
How gracious of OPEC to invite Brazil to join its ranks, as was reported earlier this month by Veja, Brazil's weekly news magazine. A cautionary note: Please, Brazil beware!
Probably no existing organization casting worldwide influence has achieved the level of opprobrium among real people as that of the OPEC cartel. And by "real people," what is meant are those not affiliated with the oil industry, those not professional speculators pushing for ever higher oil prices, and those who are not oil industry flacks and their peak oil echo chamber. In other words, those who pay and whose lives are constricted by the OPEC cartel's market manipulation and willful disinformation.
Remember when joining a club, even when one is invited to do so, it is worthwhile -- no, imperative -- to know who your fellow club members are and what they purport to be. After all, you will begin to be judged in measure by their actions and governance.
Certainly none of us are perfect, and defects in varying degree abound. But when public policy and avowed government tolerance of egregious behavior is so at variance to one's own standards, its best to think twice before jumping aboard.
Consider the following. Earlier this month Fox New and le Figaro reported about an incident in Saudi Arabia, unquestionably OPEC's leading producer and leading voice. In Saudi Arabia, the mingling of men and women who are not related is prohibited. Two men visited with a widow of Syrian nationality, one Khamisa Sawadi, in the town Khamisa just north of Saudi Arabia's capital Riyadh. According to their testimony they were there to deliver bread. They also claimed a relationship with the widow through tribal tradition and according to the testimony of one of the "perpetrators," as being a nephew of Mrs. Sawadi's late husband. Upon leaving the widow Sawadi's residence they were immediately arrested, as was Mrs. Sawadi. All were tried and sentenced to prison terms and worse.
The widow Sawadi was thereupon ordered to four months in prison and 40 lashes.The fact that she is 75 years of age, I repeat, 75 years, was dismissed as a mitigating circumstance in determining her punishment. And depressingly this was a punishment sanctioned by the Saudi government even though corporal punishment like flogging is inconsistent with Saudi Arabia's obligations under the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment to which Saudi Arabia is a state party.
Now, good people of Brazil. No need for you nor anyone to be reminded that one is often judged by the company one keeps. And especially in energy, where Brazil has been a shining light to the world, being a pioneer in converting their automobile industry and distribution network to ethanol based fuels, setting an example for all of us, and for which we are deeply beholden. Brazil has shown the world that turning one's back on fossil fuels can be done and can be done successfully. It takes fortitude and courage which the Brazilian people have shown in amplitude in this undertaking.
So before associating yourself with OPEC think again, and again. We, the rest of us, want to continue dancing the Samba with abandon and dream of being in Brazil.
Please don't spoil it!
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No, no....this can't be right. I remember all the talk about Brazil during the run up to the idiotic law making on ethanol a few years ago. They are nothing but good, just as the ethanol mandates were nothing but wise (not). Now we have a national embarassment of that W created, but with any number of Dem helpers.
Hey Raymond, just ask Halliburton
Brazil: Halliburton Boiled in Oil Over Shopped Laptops?
http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKN1438294220080414
Petrobras shares in Argentina soar on oil find
Two laptop computers and a hard disk with secret, strategic information belonging to Petrobras were stolen from a shipping container that was in the custody of Halliburton, an American firm that provides services to the state-controlled oil company, in the township of Macaé, 188 km from Rio de Janeiro. Brazilian federal police suspect the crime was part of an industrial espionage scheme.
The data that disappeared refers to oil reserves recently discovered by Petrobras. The data was stored on Halliburton equipment [?], which was transporting them from Santos to a Petrobras base in the oil-bearing basin of Campos, in Macaé.
Halliburton is one of Petrobras’ oldest outside service providers and operates in various areas, most notably in leak and pressure testing on storage tanks. It also built two drilling platforms, P-43 and P-48, that came in overbudget and behind schedule. The case wound up in arbitration.
Uhhhh... "secret strategic information"... yeah, that will change the cost of exploration and cut years off the drilling schedule. Wait, they are probably not even drilling because oil is too cheap to get deep offshore projects started!
In any case... you might be willing to pay the fee for the following artice, I couldn't care less.
http://www.oilandgasinsight.com/file/75155/repsol-ypf-puts-bm-s-9-reserves-at-up-to-6bn-boe.html
According to them the recoverable portion of this oil is between 2-6 billion barrels. So that's about 3 weeks to two and a half month's worth of supply. In comparison Ghawar has 70 billion barrels of recoverable oil... and it's in the easiest place to drill.
Yaaaaaaawwwwnnnnn....
:-)
Brazil was a net oil importer until this year and might just barely break even and become a net exporter in 2009:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/Brazil/images/br_production.gif
Brazil's proven reserves are on the order of $12 billion barrels or roughly 5 month's worth of world oil supply.
This is non-news.
Your info is old.
http://www.menafn.com/qn_news_story.asp?StoryId=%7BB2270599-E462-4A56-AAA5-107EBFC2C320%7D
The Great Find
Petrobras sent out shock waves in late 2007 when it announced what analysts quickly described as one of the most significant finds in the last 30 years- an ultra deepwater discovery in the Santos Basin that could hold anywhere from 5 to 8 billions of valuable light crude.
What's more, subsequent finds in nearby and adjacent fields suggest that the Tupi field is connected to a larger oil-rich geological formation that taken together could hold between 50 and 70 billion barrels of crude. Enough to vault the nation among the top 10 list of world petroleum reserves.
http://chinaconfidential.blogspot.com/2007/11/brazils-big-oil-find-challenges-peak.html
Brazil's Big Oil Find Challenges Peak Theory
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121254247005043555.html
José Sergio Gabrielli, head of Petroleo Brasileiro SA, or Petrobras, said changes in exploration rules are needed to protect huge new oil reservoirs discovered in deep-waters off the Brazilian coast.
Everyone can print everything in the newspaper. But only gullible people will believe it. Please read up on what the experts think about "the big find".
You are the guy who also believes in the hydrogen from radiowaves scam, are you not?
:-)
I hope Brazil does not join OPEC but not for the reasons mentioned here. Brazil is a leading force in alternative energies. Becoming a part of this oil mafia will not bring any incentives to conitnuing the development of better energy sources.
Don't forget Venezuela also belongs to OPEC. It would be very bad for Brazil to be associated with a criminal country like Venezuela where the wealthy are unjustly forced to pay brutal taxes to support the poor and downtrodden. Where innocent private entrepreneurs, just trying to exploit innocent food shortages, just trying to make an honest 1000%-profit of a buck, can have their businesses seized by the state (after an unjust compensation where they're only paid market value for their property) to help feed the so-called "hungry" or "starving".
(I don't support OPEC in any way--it's the worst kind of monopolistic cartel. They engage in blatant price fixing that would make the average private oil investor blush in shame. They don't even bother to hide it, cause where you gonna go! But the argument that they'll be associating with "evil" countries is hypocritical and totally hubristic.)
One listening to people coming from Venezuela, the rich surely have to pay plenty taxes and they should, same as here, but we know they have been getting a break for a very long time. Make more money pay more taxes. Chavez is on the right track and will find an acceptable standard.
In the meantime the poor love him. A country is only rich when all of its people are satisfied.
Wake Up Call folks .... Lets use our own technology , Drill Here, Drill Now ... Doal , Oil , Wind Nukes ,Hydro Solar... Lets use our own resources and become energy independent....Don't be a Fossilfuelaphobe...
Coal, not Doal,,,,, and we can do it cleanly in spite of the propaganda from the cult
Raymond, would you care to comment on the Brazilians achievement in drilling where no one else has and finding vast deep reserves under the salt cap completely destroying the whole notion of peak oil.
And when those are done with what will we do then. Nothing like pushing our problems forward to our descendents.
What problems? We do more damage to our ecosystem raising cattle. Are you jumping up and down because Brazil raises significant amounts of livestock. I would like to see the oil cartel broken and Saudi Arabia knee-capped financially so they can't spend their money on Wahabist schools across the globe that teach hatred for America. And the only way to do that is to end the Saudi's monopoly on oil production.
I am all for alternative energy, hell, a man in New Jersey last year figured out how to seperate Hydrogen from H20 with radio-waves but nobody talks about him, and there are several companies selling and manufacturing devices for cars that convert water into usable hydrogen for combustion. And where are those products today?
Raymond's motives are suspect in his ommissions concerning the topics I mention.
Raymond Puhleazzze !
So Brazil should not do business with KSA because they have a barbaric "justice" system that is from the 14th century?
What if it is in their best interests to do business with them?
You know, like us.
They whip 75 year old women...
And we're supposed to believe we are in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban for why?
We are fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan because we are helpless about their real base... Pakistan.
I thought that was pretty clear?
So, it's okay to be a customer and a military ally of a repressive state, but not a business parter? I don't think Brazil will be frightened by the possibility of being treated as "badly" as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
Raymond writes a lot about oil - his experise area. He is strangely silent on several oil outrages:
1. A secular US-educated and democratically elected Iranian president was overthrown by CIA coup for - ntionlized Iran's oil resources. Todays BP was at time called Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, an instrument of British colonialism
2, After the US oil mafia (Bush-Cheney) "liberated" Iraq, Iraqi oil industry has been "denationalized" and is now owned by the US and British oil companies
3. For his silence and cooperation Exxon CEO received a retirement package of more than $400M - far bigger amount than the entire AIG bonus hysteria...
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