IN BRIEF
CONTINUING HIS COURTSHIP OF LATIN America, President Hugo Chávez has introduced a bevy of energy proposals over the past months aimed at uniting a region where historical rivalries and economic...
...Barbados also balked, citing procedural obstacles but more likely concerned about souring its relationship with Trinidad and Tobago, the exclusive refiner of Barbados’ crude oil production...
...Like oil, natural gas has proven to be a resource exerting both centripetal and centrifugal forces upon Latin America...
...As with his PetroAmérica and related oil proposals, a percentage of profits from Gas del Sur would be channeled toward regional development...
...This will not cease with the peace process...
...Department of Justice issued an indictment in 2002 calling upon certain AUC commanders to surrender to the U.S...
...President Álvaro Uribe touts the law as “an important step” in the peace process, and William Wood, the U.S...
...aid and often at odds with Venezuela—could back out of PetroAndina before final ratification...
...The Senate Appropriations Committee threatened to hold back $100 million in aid to Colombia in protest...
...aid to Colombia...
...A “double jeopardy” provision also makes extradition to the United States unlikely...
...Steve Liebowitz AS SOON AS THE COLOMBIAN Congress passed the “Justice and Peace Law” last June, it ran into difficulties...
...Chillingly for Colombia, a long-standing, even irreversible, result of the law may be that the AUC will use its vast networks of corruption and extortion to expand its rightwing influence in the country’s politics...
...Following the announcement, Chile’s economy minister Jorge Rodríguez told the Miami Herald, “It doesn't make sense for our neighbors to sell gas to customers far away because of the transportation costs...
...Critics contend that known drug traffickers and violent criminals like Diego Fernando Murillo—who is accused of ordering the assassination of a Congressman—will be shielded from stiff sentences and extradition, because they conveniently joined the paramilitaries when a lenient peace deal seemed likely...
...Under the program, non-oil producing Caribbean countries would improve their preferential access to Venezuelan crude originally established by the San José accord of 1980 and the Caracas Agreement of 2001...
...The pipeline will, eventually and ideally, unite all of South America in an “energy ring...
...The rising Asian power has recently begun importing Venezuelan oil, operates several oil drilling operations in Venezuela (with eyes on expansion) and is set to begin oil exploration off the coast of Cuba...
...If successful, the project would foment increased strategic and economic unity in a region historically divided by its dependence on foreign private investment...
...At a June summit of Caribbean leaders in Puerto la Cruz, Venezuela, Chávez proposed the formation of PetroCaribe, “a body aimed at facilitating the development of energy policies and plans for the integration of the nations of the Caribbean,” according to the text of the initiative...
...PetroSur conspicuously lacks Chile’s signature, due to that country’s trade agreement with the U.S., and Colombia—heavily dependent upon U.S...
...Whether Chávez’s Alternativa Bolivariana para las Americas (ALBA) indeed offers a sound alternative to the U.S.- backed FTAA remains to be seen, but the Venezuelan President has successfully made his case throughout the region by introducing initiatives tailored for each audience...
...Approximately 49% of Chinese overseas investment went to Latin America and the Caribbean last year, and Venezuela expects trade between the two countries to reach $3 billion this year, more than doubling figures from 2004...
...Both PetroSur and PetroAndina offer incentives similar to PetroCaribe...
...Once implemented, PetroCaribe would subsidize oil purchases relative to the market price: the higher the price, the larger the discount...
...According to Amnesty International, more than 2,200 killings and disappearances of civilians have been attributed to the paramilitaries since they declared a cease-fire in December 2002...
...As Colombian Congresswoman Gina Parody, normally a strong supporter of Uribe, told the New York Times: “This [law] gives benefits to people who have committed the worst crimes, and we get nothing in return...
...anti-drug officials and lawmakers from both parties have also condemned the Justice and Peace Law...
...Trinidad and Tobago, the United States’ largest supplier of liquefied natural gas demurred on PetroCaribe...
...The law seeks the demobilization of up to 20,000 members of the rightwing paramilitary group the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), while granting its leaders broad concessions...
...In the Southern Cone, Chávez and President Néstor Kirchner signed an agreement in September 2004 giving birth to PetroSur...
...Although the reality of economies of scale may weaken Rodríguez’s assertion, Venezuela’s Chávez has introduced yet another proposal aimed at bucking international pressure: Gas del Sur...
...justice system, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft called the AUC leaders “violent drug traffickers who poison our citizens and threaten our national security,” and praised the commitment of the Uribe Administration “to proceed vigorously against drug traffickers and terrorists wherever they are found...
...Bolivia’s instability, as well as its contentious history with neighbors, continues to frustrate the region’s energy needs...
...But Chile has its sights set on Peru’s promising Camisea natural gas fields and pipeline...
...Ambassador to Colombia, argues that the law represents progress, however imperfect...
...Under the legislation, AUC commanders will receive sentences as short as 22 months and at most eight years, with the possibility of serving the time on private farms instead of in state-run prisons...
...Not all countries are convinced...
...That same foreign investment, touted as the key to development by institutions such as the IMF and World Bank, continues to cause rifts...
...Sam Goffman...
...The Bush Administration’s tacit support of Uribe’s soft compromise contrasts sharply with its previous condemnations of the AUC, which is on the State Department’s list of international terrorist organizations...
...But the law’s lenient provisions have drawn multiple condemnations from a broad array of critics, especially angering Colombians who have lost family members at the hands of the AUC, which human rights groups accuse of being responsible for the majority of rights violations in the country...
...The government of Peru agreed in July to award Spanish oil and gas giant Repsol-YPF exclusive rights to export gas from the Camisea fields, with the vast majority of exports going to Mexico and, potentially, California...
...Camisea's owners [privately-held Peru LNG] will receive a better price by selling the gas to customers who are nearby...
...Ernesto Báez, the AUC’s “political director,” told reporters: “We have permanently penetrated the political process, building power structures at local and regional levels...
...Some members of Congress—notably, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont—have brought up the lack of human rights provisions in the law as well...
...CONTINUING HIS COURTSHIP OF LATIN America, President Hugo Chávez has introduced a bevy of energy proposals over the past months aimed at uniting a region where historical rivalries and economic necessity often trump sound longterm foreign policy...
...They don’t point to its weakness in securing peace or justice in Colombia, but rather its failure to stop the drug trade to the United States—ostensibly, the primary purpose of U.S...
...When the U.S...
...Leaders of the five Andean countries took steps toward enacting PetroAndina in July 2005, with Chávez hoping for final ratification this December...
...Together, the three regional programs would fall under the umbrella of PetroAmérica, a consortium of all state-owned energy enterprises in Latin America...
...government, and may force him to find a large part of the $160 million needed for the law’s implementation elsewhere...
...This ultimatum complicates Uribe’s relationship with the U.S...
...Chinese investment in the region has raised eyebrows in Washington, but criticisms have been subdued, perhaps because Latin America and China are playing, more or less, by Washington’s own rules: invest, develop and expand...
...Prominent U.S...
...Costs related to oil exploration, extracton and distribution would also be subsidized by Caracas...
...With such ambitious plans, Chávez is undoubtedly comforted by China’s marked interest in Latin America and Venezuela in particular...
...Presented at June’s Mercosur summit in Asunción, Paraguay, Gas del Sur would function as a regional gas conglomerate distributing gas to Latin America and beyond by pipeline and boat...
...In addition, the legislation does not require AUC commanders to dismantle the group’s organizational infrastructure, nor to give up any profits they have made from drug trafficking, kidnappings or other criminal activities...
...Boasting almost 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, second in the region to Venezuela’s 149 trillion, Bolivia hesitatingly agreed to increase exports to Argentina during that country’s 2004 gas crisis, with the stipulation that “not even a molecule” of Bolivian gas would be resold to historical rival Chile, according to an Oxford Institute for Energy Studies report...
Vol. 39 • September 2005 • No. 2
