A new US assessment of Venezuela's oil reserves could give the country double the supplies of Saudi Arabia. Scientists working for the US Geological Survey say Venezuela's Orinoco belt region holds twice as much as previously thought.
Venezuela will nationalize a fleet of oil rigs belonging to US Company Helmerich and Payne, the latest takeover in a push to XXI century Socialism announced President Hugo Chávez as he struggles with lower oil output and a recession.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced that the arrival of the rainy season will help eliminate power rationing on weekends and on weekdays at non-peak hours. Chavez made the announcement during a meeting of an electricity advisory group at the Miraflores presidential palace that was aired by state-run VTV television.
Aban Offshore (BOM:523204), India’s largest offshore drilling and oil field services provider, suffered a major setback on Thursday, when its gas platform Pearl sunk off the coast of Venezuela. This was one of Aban’s biggest money spinning rig earning 358,000 US dollars a day.
Chilean Foreign Affairs Minister Alfredo Moreno Charme said he does not see an “arms race” in the continent and suggested following the Argentine–Chilean experience of “homologating military expenditure”.
A former Venezuelan defence minister who has become a staunch critic of President Hugo Chávez was sentenced to almost eight years in prison for alleged misappropriation of funds in connection with the purchase of military equipment.
Leading Brazilian presidential candidate José Serra said it was “very good” for his campaign that Venezuela’s leader Hugo Chávez should openly support his main competitor incumbent hopeful Dilma Rousseff and again warned about the shortcomings of Mercosur.
Paraguayan opposition and media strongly criticized Brazilian president Lula da Silva’s for not keeping his Itaipú dam-controversy promises and allegedly for conditioning further assistance to the approval by the Paraguayan congress of Venezuela’s incorporation to Mercosur.
The Argentine political establishment is agitated after the heavy remarks made before a federal judge by former Argentine ambassador to Venezuela Eduardo Sadous, who said local businessmen had to pay kickbacks to former president Néstor Kirchner administration officials to be able to export their goods to Venezuela.
Colombian president Alvaro Uribe questioned Latin American countries that are moving along the path of nationalization of corporations and warned that erasing private sector investments only anticipates “major social defeats”.