[NYTr] Chavez Presents Petrocaribe’s New Objectives
 
Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2007 20:40:03 -0600 (CST)

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
Granma Daily - Dec 22, 2007
http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/english/news/art28.html

Chavez Presents Petrocaribebs New Objectives

CIENFUEGOS, Cuba (PL).b Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez confirmed this
Friday that a dynamic is moving within the PETROCARIBE pact and
presented for discussion new objectives of this mechanism for regional
energy cooperation at the opening of its 4th Summit.

In the first place he noted that the reopening of the oil refinery in
this city, 250km southeast of Havana, is the first complex under this
mechanism for processing and storing crude outside of Venezuela.

Fuel is to be processed in Cienfuegos for distribution throughout the
Caribbean, he stated, after announcing that close to half a million
barrels of Venezuelan oil has already been decanted here.

In that context he acknowledged the work of Cubans and Venezuelans who
managed to upgrade the plant, built in 1990 with technology from the
former Soviet Union, in less than 12 months.

Another objective is a fund to finance solar, geothermic and eolian
energy sources in regional countries via loans for joint ventures
constituted to that end.

Petrocaribe is to include a "basket" of goods and services from the
member nations as a compensation mechanism for oil payments, which is
to be implemented by countries with a grace period to end in 2008,
Chavez explained.

In that undertaking, he continued, Venezuelabs accumulated experience
in recent years of handling oil payments with Cuba, Argentina and
Uruguay will be taken into account. The South American president
advocated that debt, instead of being a burden, should be converted
into another mechanism for liberation, to fight against asymmetries and
promote a development model for the Petrocaribe signatory countries.

He stated that a new Caribbean economic space could emerge from that
policy of fair trade in the region, "which we could see as an example
for the world."

Chavez announced that the accumulated debt of Petrocaribe member states
for purchases of Venezuelan crude amounted to $1.166 billion this year
and would go up to $4.566 billion by 2010.

"I am only saying that to demonstrate the potential that exists to
generate development with those fair trade agreements," he noted. In
order to meet that financial commitment a projection of payments in
goods and services of $100 million in 2010, $222 million in 2013 and
$500 million in 2018 is anticipated, he stated.

Other objectives inherent to the dynamic of the energy cooperation pact
include the creation of a trusteeship mechanism, two committees to deal
with project applications, and the consolidation of a Petrocaribe
Secretariat, he added.

The Venezuelan president welcomed the presence at the Summit of Defense
Minister ArC-stides MejC-a of Honduras, whose president, Manuel Zelaya,
is asking to join Petrocaribe.

[Translated by Granma Internacional]

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