Deepwater Troubles AS/COA Online 02/21/08

The Calderón administration hopes to reform laws guiding investments in Pemex.

Last week, Pemex declined an invitation to join Petrobras as a minority partner in a deepwater exploration in the U.S. side of the Gulf of Mexico. This despite Pemex’s twin problems of declining production and limited exploration capacity to tap large oil reserves in deeper waters. The conundrum rests now in how to get to those reserves without the technical ability and with constitutional hurdles barring privatization of the government’s energy monopoly.

Pemex’s production woes are not new and, according to the Energy Information Administration, Mexico’s proven oil reserves continue to fall. Cantarell, once the world’s biggest offshore oil field, reached its peak production capacity in 2004, but has seen production rates shrink by 500,000 barrels of oil a day.

In early February, Mexican Energy Secretary Georgina Kessel predicted that Mexican oil production would drop by another 200,000 barrels in 2008. She also stressed that Mexico holds roughly 100 billion barrels of equivalent crude oil, saying the country has “plenty of oil, but we need to find ways of turning these reserves into production and into resources for the Mexican people.” In a report setting out a five-year strategy, the energy ministry reports that total oil production could declice by 2.5 million barrels a day.

Mexico’s President Felipe Calderón—who served as energy minister in the Fox administration—echoes Kessel’s concerns. During his recent tour of the United States, he said, “The problem is that this treasure is buried beneath the ocean. To reach that oil we need to strengthen Pemex.” To meet that goal, Calderón has worked to push through reforms of constitutional law (PDF), which keeps Mexico’s hydrocarbons in the hands of the state. Mexico was the first developing country to nationalize its oil industry, expropriating U.S. and British holdings in 1938. As the Economist notes, Pemex’s failings are related to “two wasted decades in which governments have milked Pemex of cash which it might otherwise have invested.”

But Calderón’s efforts to open up Pemex to private investment have hit a roadblock in Mexico’s opposition-controlled Congress. As a Houston Chronicle analysis reports, opponents to the reform say the Calderón administration paints a dark future for Pemex to rally support for privatization. Among the critics stands Calderón’s political adversary Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who lost the presidential election by a hair in 2006. The former Mexico City mayor argues that rooting out corruption would serve to fix Pemex’s troubles. López Obrador may be able to strike a chord among Mexicans who remember a former privatization by President Salinas de Gortari’s, which gave Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim a monopoly over the telecommunications industry. As Newsweek’s “Why It Matters” blog reports, Calderón must ensure that reforms occur “under circumstances that primarily benefit the Mexican people.”

Enter energy giant Petrobras, which could serve as a role model—and potential partner—for Pemex. The Brazilian firm’s aggressive energy exploration policy led to two major offshore oil discoveries in 2007 plus more ventures in the U.S. Gulf Coast, West Africa, Turkey, Colombia, and, recently, Cuba. While Mexico began deepwater exploration in 2006, Petrobras drilled its first deepwater well in 1992, at a depth of more than 3,250 feet deep. The company has hit some hurdles along the way, such as a failed $135 million exploration venture with ExxonMobil and Colombian state-owned Ecopetrol in the Caribbean coast. Still, Petrobras, which the government maintains a 55 percent stake in and which began accepting private investment in the early 1970s, has been recognized as a model for other national oil companies to follow. For now, Pemex has turned down Petrobras’ partnership offer; energy reform could open the door to similar agreements in the future.

View a report by COA’s Energy Action Group on building lasting energy partnerships to improve security and prosperity in the Americas.

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PorColombia Protests Terrorism The Ticker 02/11/08

Millions of Colombians marched worldwide on Thursday, Feb. 4 showing their disapproval against the guerrilla group FARC and their terrorist tactics. The group is known for kidnapping, extortion, drug trafficking and coercion used to finance arms and their four decades of conflict with the government and paramilitary groups.

Among those millions, Baruch College’s club PorColombia joined in on the march in New York City. The organization, whose acronym translates to Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, is a Marxist-Leninist group, although it is considered a terrorist group by more than 30 countries. The demonstration is considered the largest civil display against FARC in Colombia’s history.

Messages of support were heard from five continents and cities like New York, London, Madrid and Tokyo held marches. Thanks to social networking, Colombians also demonstrated in places as remote as the Kurdistan region in Iraq, the Red Sea in Egypt and the Chilean Patagonia region.

In New York City, the march was held in front of the United Nations building at 42nd Street and First Ave. Early Monday morning, PorColombia members Angie Van Den Berghe, John Moreno and Jeffrey Navarro joined 5,000 others to march for the cause. According to the Baruch website, PorColombia is an organization whose goal is to “provide students with the means and the support to act on personal initiatives and accomplish specific goals focused on Colombia.”

Marchers wore white t-shirts with the slogan “I am Colombia” and “No More Kidnapping! No More Lies! No More Murder! No More FARC!”

“We protested in an orderly fashion, Colombians from the tri-state area attended the rally to send a loud message to the FARC that we’re not going to tolerate their terrorist activities anymore,” added Dr. Claudia Cujar, medical researcher at Columbia University and director of the march.

Organizers used vacation time, sick days, weekends and long nights preparing the demonstration. Supporters even came from Connecticut and Pennsylvania, taking a day off from work. “Colombians showed that we can organize and work together towards a peaceful country,” added Navarro.

Social networking played a vital role; organizers used Facebook to communicate logistics and maintained forums about marketing and promotion ideas. “Un millon de voces contra las FARC” (A million voices against FARC) grew to 277,000 members in less than two months.

“Facebook was an invaluable tool for us to coordinate all aspects of the march, but none of these [would] be possible without the tenacity and compromise from Angie, John and Jeffrey from Baruch College,” says Cujar. “They worked with fortitude and charisma, they care about hostages and their long captivity, their families and the future of Colombia,” he says.

Besides Facebook, the group printed 25,000 posters and 50,000 postcards that were distributed in restaurants, parks and in front of churches. A party bus was also rented to go around nightclubs and spread the word, according to Luz Carreño, the logistics coordinator of the march.

But criticism was drawn from some victim’s families who disapproved of the march because of fear of retaliation from their captors. Some opposition members and scholars argued that the message of the protest was too narrow. In an article published by opendemocracy.org, journalist Catalina Holguín argues that the simplicity of the march’s message presents a distorted view of the complexity of the Colombian armed conflict.

The FARC, government, drug traffickers and right-wing paramilitary group AUC (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia) have been key players in the Colombian conflict for the last four decades. It has spilled over its borders, provoking tensions with Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru and Brazil. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has improved the internal security situation that keeps his approval ratings above 80 percent, according to independent polls. But he has failed so far to disarm the FARC or to reach a peace accord that guarantees the safe release of all the hostages.

Here in NYC, the march’s organizers are evaluating their experience using feedback coming in via Facebook. ” We didn’t feel comfortable to sit there and do nothing when hostages have nothing but hope,” said Navarro.

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Democracy’s New Tool AS/COA Online 02/07/08

Colombians protesting against the FARC used Facebook as an organizing tool. (AP images)

On February 4, Colombians in five continents demonstrated against the FARC (Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia) using Facebook to spread the word. While marches drew as many as two million protesters in Colombia alone, rallies took place in New York, Tokyo, Sydney, and Paris, as well as remote locations like Egypt’s Red Sea area and Chile’s Patagonia region.

Organizers, mostly college students and grassroots activists, recognized a worldwide trend of using cyberspace for political engagement. In less than two months before the protest, over 277,000 members joined the Facebook group called “A Million Voices Against the FARC.” The group’s forums were used by organizers to discuss logistics and keep its members updated about last minute details, including location changes.

The protests were the largest civil demonstrations in Colombia’s history. Marchers demanded the release of all hostages and an end to terrorist activities by the guerrilla group. Some criticism was drawn from victims’ families, who were nervous about the FARC’s reactions and the already delicate health situation of hostages long in captivity. Others argued that the message was too limited because the government and paramilitary groups also played a role in the four-decade old conflict. However, activists are using Facebook once again to mobilize protesters against the paramilitary group United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). A Facebook group dedicated to the march, planned for March 6, already has 5,300 members.

Cybersapce is also being used to engage young Hispanic voters and activists in the United States. Last year, pro-immigrant groups organized a national demonstration to support immigration reform while the matter was debated in U.S. Congress. Organizers used social networking site MySpace to reach and engage students on the topic, who shared information about their immigrant parents’ experiences.

More recently, media attention has focused on social networking as a tool to attract young voters during the 2008 U.S. election cycle. Generation 2.0 participated in the Democrat and Republican debates on via YouTube. Facebook has a permanent desk in some news outlets like ABC, and online blogs are mobilizing young voters to go to the polls. Latinos make up 68 percent of new young voters. Voto Latino, an organization dedicated to drawing Hispanic youth into the political arena, uses social networking and text message campaigns to mobilize Latin youth to vote. As Deputy Director of the Pew Hispanic Center Susan Minushkin told AS/COA Online in an interview, the Hispanic youth vote will play an increasingly important role because, while Hispanics account for 15 percent of the population, “they only make up 9 percent of eligible voters because so many Hispanic citizens are under 18.”

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