Brazil’s Ascendency as an Oil Power
Over the next decade Brazil may become one of the largest oil producing nations in the world. In late 2007 a new and sizable oil field, dubbed the “Tupi” field, was discovered in the Santos Basin in deep water off the Brazilian coast, and it holds the promise of energy self-sufficiency for Brazil. As Dilma Rousseff, a current presidential candidate and Chief of Staff to Brazil’s President Lula, put it, “This has changed [Brazil’s] reality.”
This news can only bolster Brazil’s rising reputation as an energy giant. The country is already a powerhouse of alternative fuels, owing to its status as the world’s second largest producer of ethanol fuel.
Brazilian officials with the state-owned oil company Petrobras have said that they expect to be able to develop the field with little outside help, and Brazil certainly has an interest in keeping profits from the field at home; early estimates are that the field will increase Brazil’s proven reserves to 17.2 billion barrels of oil. While that figure pales in comparison to the reserves of some traditional oil producers like Saudi Arabia (267 billion barrels) and Canada (179 billion barrels), it would put Brazil in front of countries like Mexico, Qatar, and Algeria, and place Brazilians firmly on the list of the largest oil producing nations. Furthermore, there is still potential for the oil field’s reserves to be even larger. Haroldo Lima, the head of the National Petroleum Agency in Brazil, estimated the size at 33 billion barrels, which would put Brazil’s reserves at a whopping 42 billion barrels and push it ahead of countries like Nigeria, Libya, and the United States.
Still, getting to the oil won’t be easy. Since it is a deepwater field, specialized equipment will be necessary. One estimate puts the cost of accessing the oil at $200 billion, which is no small investment, but it’s one that Brazilian officials are taking very seriously. Part of the high cost will be acquiring or building the deepwater rigs that can reach the oil. The rigs are rare and expensive to manufacture, and Petrobras officials have discussed the possibility of building the rigs themselves if necessary, but it is more likely that they would turn to their traditional suppliers in the United States. Similarly, Brazil will need to develop infrastructure to refine the oil. Since the country already does over $2 billion a year in trade of refined oil with India, it is possible that Petrobras might turn to India for expertise in building a refinery in Brazil.
Curiously, there has even been some talk that Brazil might build a nuclear-powered submarine to guard the oil field when extraction begins. This possibility was suggested by Brazilian Defense Minister Nelson Jobim, who said that Brazil needs “to choose the padlock that befits the riches in the safe.”
It will be interesting to see how this all plays out, but for now it suffices to say that Brazil is already in a great position to assert itself as an energy producing power, and its status is continuing to rise.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Fair and Peely
This is an obvious cultural similarity across India (with ubiquitous Fair and Lovely ads for women and men)and Latin America – use of skin whitening creams. You think in their competitive quest for more face whitening, marketers will soon talk people of color into splashing diluted Clorox on their faces.
via NYTimes.com
For years, Allison Ross rubbed in skin-lightening creams with names like Hyprogel and Fair & White. She said she wanted to even out and brighten the tone of her face, neck and hands. Mrs. Ross, 45, who lives in Brooklyn, also said that she used the lightening creams “to be more accepted in society.”“I never read the labels,” Mrs. Ross said. Instead, she took her cues from friends, many of them, like her, from the West Indies. “Once somebody told me Fair & White was the one they were using, I’d go to the Korean store and ask for it,” she said.
Dermatologists nationwide are seeing women of Hispanic and African descent, among others, with severe side effects like Mrs. Ross’s from the misuse of skin-lightening creams, many with prescription-strength ingredients, which are sold in beauty shops and bodegas and online.
Users are not necessarily immigrants, said Dr. Eliot F. Battle Jr., who has a dermatology practice in Washington, where he treats side effects from lightening creams “not only containing corticosteroids, but mercury,” a poison that can damage the nervous system. The patients are “Ph.D.’s to women from corporate America, teachers to engineers — the entire broad spectrum of women of color,” Dr. Battle said.
But many others seek to lighten their entire face or large swatches of their body, a practice common in developing countries as disparate as Senegal, India and the Philippines, where it is promoted as a way to elevate one’s social standing. A small percentage of men in such countries also use the creams.
Evelyn Nakano Glenn, a professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of California, Berkeley, said it was wrong to assume that skin-lightening was a cultural anachronism or an effort to negate one’s racial heritage. “In fact, it’s a growing practice and one that has been stimulated by the companies that produce these products,” she said. “Their advertisements connect happiness and success and romance with being lighter skinned.”Moreover, it is not as if dark-skinned women are imagining a bias, said Dr. Glenn, who is president of the American Sociological Association. “Sociological studies have shown among African-Americans and also Latinos, there’s a clear connection between skin color and socioeconomic status.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Finding the Shipping Center of the World, in Graphical Form
India-LatAm direct shipping links are abysmally low. Panama Canal and Santos in Brazil are the LatAm ports in the top 20 central ports.
via Infectious Greed
Transportation networks play a crucial role in human mobility, the exchange of goods, and the spread of invasive species. With 90% of world trade carried by sea, the global network of merchant ships provides one of the most important modes of transportation. Here we use information about the itineraries of 16,363 cargo ships during the year 2007 to construct a network of links between ports.
Technorati Tags: global shipping, trade, South-South
Popularity: 1% [?]
Developing Cities from India to Colombia Leapfrog Ahead With Clean, Green Bus Rapid Transit Systems
Latin America cities are pioneers in deploying BRT and it is good to see Indian cities like Ahmedabad learn from this approach. This needs to be combined with road pricing, like in Singapore, to alleviate traffic delays and facilitate mobility.
The former mayor of Curitiba-Brazil, Jaime Lerner who was the pioneer in this approach details his philosophy for urban space and transit in this entertaining and informative talk below. Money quote from the talk – “The car is like your mother-in-law. You have to have good relationship with her but she shouldn’t command your life. If the only woman in your life is your mother-in-law you have a problem.” Also, “Otto, the car is the kind of guy who is invited for a party and never wants to leave. And he drinks a lot. And he’s a very demanding person.” “Creativity starts when you cut a zero from your budget, if you cut two zeroes even better.”
Ahmedabad, India, leads the pack as cities in developing nations race ahead of their richer counterparts in adopting eco-friendly transit solutions, according to the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), which last week gave the western Indian city its 2010 Sustainable Transport Award.The award has been given out since 2005 to a city that best “uses transport innovations to increase mobility for all residents, while reducing transportation greenhouse [gas] and air pollution emissions and increasing cyclist and pedestrian safety and access.” This year, for the first time, all five nominees — Cali, Colombia; Curitiba, Brazil; Guadalajara, Mexico; and Johannesburg, South Africa, in addition to Ahmedabad — were cities in developing countries.
Technorati Tags: urban transit, BRT, Curitiba, Jaime Lerner
Popularity: 2% [?]
Why is Haiti so poor?
Some context on the current disaster’s aftermath in Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas. Jared Diamond, of Guns, Germs and Steel fame, in his later book Collapse compares Haiti with Dominican Republic – located on the same island of Hispaniola – where incidentally Columbus landed in the Americas. He too attributed Haiti’s lower economic growth trajectory to ecological damage continuedover a hundred years. Haiti’s forest cover is almost entired destroyed (1% of trees in Haiti compared to 28% in Dominican Republic) with its attendant problems of soil erosion, decrease in fertility, population pressure on shrinking amounts of fertile land etc. Of course you have colonial shenanigans by France, the UK in the 19th century, US interventionism in the 20th making things worse. A great inspiring book to read, which also is mostly set in Haiti, Mountains beyond Mountains, Dr. Paul Farmer’s work to cure disease there. In this video, he speaks of the political crisis there, in addition to ecological crisis.
Among the answers were that “Haiti cut its colonial ties too early, rebelling against the French in the early 19th century and achieving complete independence”; and that “Haiti has higher than average levels of polygamy.”It’s pretty stunning that this almost entirely ignores the role of outside powers. Is Haiti poor simply because foreigners exploited it? Of course not, but one can’t understand why the country is in such terrible shape if you ignore the French and American roles in beggaring the country.
So here are a couple of suggested reading items: First, this post by Barbara Miller, a specialist in the anthropology of international development, who asks the exact same question posed by Marginal Revolution, and comes up with quite a different set of answers:
Colonial plantation owners grew fabulously rich from this island. It produced more wealth for France than all of France’s other colonies combined and more than the 13 colonies in North America produced for Britain. Why is Haiti so poor now?
Colonialism launched environmental degradation by clearing forests. After the revolution, the new citizens carried with them the traumatic history of slavery. Now, neocolonialism and globalization are leaving new scars. For decades, the United States has played, and still plays, a powerful role in supporting conservative political regimes.
Technorati Tags: Caribbean, Haiti, poverty
Popularity: 2% [?]
Financial crisis eliminated 2.2 mn jobs in Latin America
The economic crisis eliminated 2.2 million jobs last year in Latin America and the Caribbean, a figure that boosted the rate of unemployment from 7.5 percent to 8.4 percent, according to a report released by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).The ILO forecasts that this percentage, which reflects the 18.1 million of those currently jobless, could drop slightly to 8.2 percent in 2010. The international financial crisis did not strike Latin America and the Caribbean as hard as expected at the outset, but even so unemployment last year saw a reversal from the 2002-08 period, when the jobless rate declined from 11.4 percent to 7.5 percent.
The UN body said Monday that the unemployment rate increased in 2009 in 12 of the 14 countries studied. Only Peru and Uruguay escaped.The biggest increases were in Barbados, which jumped from 8.3 percent in 2008 to 10 percent in 2009; Costa Rica, from 4.9 percent to 7.8 percent; Chile, from 7.9 percent to 10 percent; and Ecuador, from 6.85 percent to 8.7 percent. The rate of unemployment in Colombia grew between 2008-09 from 11.5 percent to 12.3 percent.
Technorati Tags: Latin America, unemployment rate
Popularity: 3% [?]
Two BRICs – India vs. Brazil
Emerginvest Featured Analysis: Rebacca Wilder
In fact, the BRIC data, side-by-side, paints a darker picture for Brazil’s growth trajectory than that for India. Let’s see why.India, China, and Russia increased their respective investment shares of GDP over the latest decade- Brazil, too, but at a much slower rate. India (as I discussed in a previous post) has done this mostly through reducing barriers to inward foreign-direct investment.
However, more domestic saving is likely needed in India despite the falling of its consumption share (right graph) over the same 10-year period. India gets a bigger bang for each investment buck spent, so save more and supplement the inward FDI.
In stark contrast is Brazil, an economy that is clearly saving at a much lower rate than its peers. The consumption is a large 63.1% of GDP, essentially unchanged over the latest decade. And for a developing economy, the investment share is remarkably low in levels, 16.4% of GDP in 2008 (compared to India’s 32.2% share).
In all, the saving and investment story adds up to a level of productive capital stock. Without investment, there is no capital stock growth. And without capital stock growth, there is little productive GDP growth.
Currently India’s average income is low compared to its peers, based on years of questionable policy. Among the BRIC countries, India’s welfare measure (per-capita income) is the lowest, and that ranking is not expected to change by 2014 (see chart from a previous post, using data from the IMF World Economic Outlook in October 2009).Brazil, on the other hand, is not setting itself up for sustained growth. The country is now enjoying the economic benefits of policy reform and open capital markets, an economic adolescent if you will. The next step in Brazil’s development is clearly to adopt policies that grow saving and investment.
Technorati Tags: India, Brazil, BRIC comparison, economic fundamentals
Popularity: 5% [?]
Comparative Indo-LatAm Geography (mountains + rivers)
Length Comparison in an old Victorian map between the rivers in South America – the Amazon, River Plate (La Plata), and Orinoco (made famous in song by Enya) with the rivers Ganges and Indus.
Popularity: 5% [?]
India on verge of farm disaster: M.S. Swaminathan
- Image by leetucker via Flickr
India was the leading economy of the world for much of the last 2000 years from wealth generated from agricultural surplus. As Jim Rogers says, India should be the greatest agricultural country in the world, not America, with great weather, soils, climate. But, government policies militate against farming as a lucrative profession with antiquated laws on farm holding limits and buying policies for output.
Indian farmers are political cannon fodder; once they are economically empowered politicians are redundant. So, farmers will continue to be kept in economic intensive care by the political class. It can be a long wait for any meaningful changes in farm policies.
Traveling through the farm areas of Latin America in Uruguay, Brazil and Argentina with great soils and weather help me imagine what a paradise, agricultural and otherwise, historic India with 50 million people over its current land area must have been. And farming in these Latin American regions is entirely in private sector hands and they are all export powerhouses. It is in these regions that Indian entrepreneurs should deploy capital for augmenting existing local agribusiness ventures or starting new ones. Priority areas include production of pulses and edible oils.
via The Economic Times.
MS Swaminathan, top farm scientist and one of the architects of India’s green revolution, has warned that the country would face a food crisis if agriculture and farmers were ignored.
“We are on the verge of a disaster. We will be in serious difficulty if food productivity is not increased and farming is neglected,” Mr Swaminathan said on the sidelines of the 97th Indian Science Congress being held here. “The future belongs to nations with grains and not guns. The current food inflation is frightening. If pulses, potatoes and onions are beyond the purchasing capacity of the majority, malnourishment will be a painful result,” he said.
“I want the government to act upon three major recommendations,” the Rajya Sabha member said. “It should change compensation laws as farmers do not have pay commissions like the sixth pay panel; attract youth to farming; and amend the Women Farmers’ Entitlement Act to allow women avail bank loans without their land as a collateral security .”
Popularity: 6% [?]
Toyota reveals its emerging markets car
Source: just-auto.com editorial team
Toyota has named and unveiled its new Etios emerging markets car at the 10th Auto Expo automobile show in New Delhi. It will build the Etios at a new plant in India and later, from around 2011, in Brazil.In India it will target family users with a ‘one class above’ theme. It will be pricier than other local competition but local parts will be used as much as possible to keep costs low.
Etios chief engineer, Yoshinori Noritake, said at the show: “I visited many Indian cities and homes to learn the market and to hear from the consumer directly. Over four years, more than 2,000 engineers have been involved in the development.” Indian production begins late this year and the annual sales target is 70,000 units.
Toyota Motor vice chairman Kazuo Okamoto said: “Our tagline of ‘World First, India First’ represents our choice of India for the global premiere of the Etios concept, following which exports to other countries will be evaluated.
Technorati Tags: auto, india, brazil, toyota world car, etios
Popularity: 7% [?]
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