The Falkland Islands said that the reason why some Non Self Governing Territories were unresponsive to the Special Committee on Decolonization, or C24, was that the issues proposed were not attractive, and to be effective it must engage with these territories in a more effective manner, and with a much less colonialist attitude.
A UN watchdog group criticized Ban Ki-moon for his blessings to the UN committee charged with “decolonizing” among others, the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar, at the same time as the 24-nation group elected mass murdering Syria and human rights abusing Venezuela to leadership posts.
According to reports in the Argentine media, the nationalized Argentine oil company YPF, formerly owned by Spain's Repsol, will be teaming up with Venezuelan oil giant PDVSA to explore the continental shelf around the Falkland/Malvinas Islands for oil.
Venezuela holds 297 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, most of it in tar sands but sufficient to be ahead of Saudi Arabia considered by world experts the number one country in reserves.
Leading OPEC producer Saudi Arabia said it still favoured a 70-80 US dollars price range for oil, a restatement of a two-year-old policy that will be welcomed by consumer nations worried that rising oil prices may get out of control and hamper global economic recovery.
State-owned Petroleos de Venezuela SA earnings reached 4.49 billion US dollars in 2009, down from 9.41 billion in 2008, Energy and Petroleum Minister Rafael Ramirez revealed this week. Speaking at PDVSA headquarters in Caracas, he cited the “global capitalist crisis” as a major factor in the sharp fall in net income.
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.