Venezuela has big plans for transcontinental pipelines.

Venezuela’s government led by President Hugo Chavez is benefiting from what can only be described as an oil bonanza.
A barrel of Venezuelan crude oil is currently worth more than $50 and the country’s proven petroleum reserves of around 78bn barrels are in pretty good shape too.
So at the current official rate production of 3.3 million barrels a day, Venezuela has a guaranteed supply of 78 years of crude oil.
For the past year or so the government has started spending much of the wealth generated from oil sales on projects abroad.
Experts believe that President Chavez has spent some $5bn on energy ventures outside Venezuela - including new or jointly operated oil refineries in Cuba, Uruguay and Brazil.
The driving force behind Venezuela’s spending spree is the desire to integrate South America’s energy sector, to become more self-sufficient and less dependent on the United States as a trading partner. The Venezuelan government says the overriding goal is economic integration for Latin America, bbc.co.uk reported.

Hand-Outs
“It was an absurd situation where for the past 100 years of oil production here in Venezuela, we didn’t ship a single barrel of petroleum to the Caribbean, Brazil, Argentina or Uruguay,“ Venezuela’s Oil Minister, Rafael Ramirez, told BBC News in an exclusive interview.
“But now with the government of President Chavez, we have set up a system of shipping cheap oil to other Latin American countries, in return for agricultural and industrial products or even medical services.“
Venezuela is indeed providing subsidized oil to several countries, including Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Cuba and Uruguay.
Local media say Cuba receives around 100,000 barrels of cheap Venezuelan oil a day and in return is loaning some 20,000 Cuban medics who provide free health care to Venezuela’s shanty towns.
Other handouts from Venezuela’s oil riches include a brand new hospital in Uruguay and the country made offers of millions of dollars of aid for the victims of Hurricane Katrina in the US, as well as cheap heating oil for poor families in Boston and New York.

’Sphere of Influence’
Some political analysts warn that Venezuela’s generosity comes with strings attached.
Jose Toro-Hardy, a former director at the state-owned oil company PDVSA and an outspoken critic of President Chavez said: “Mr. Chavez hands out oil and cash like there’s no tomorrow - but in return he expects loyalty and solidarity from the presidents of some those countries he is supplying.“
“Oil is being used to create or even buy a Venezuelan sphere of influence in Latin America and the Caribbean,“ Mr. Toro-Hardy told BBC News.
However, Mr. Chavez and his ministers are increasingly putting natural gas at the forefront of their long term strategy for the next 20 years.
The oil minister--who is also the chief of PDVSA--predicts that gas may eventually supplant oil as his country’s main export.
Venezuela, with its 148 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, has the largest proven gas reserves in Latin America.
“Oil will gradually run out around the world and more and more countries will turn to gas. Latin America will also have to switch to gas. In fact it’s much more efficient to generate energy using gas than with oil,“ Mr. Ramirez said.

Long Way to Go
Venezuela is addressing that issue by spearheading a mammoth $20bn project to build a gas pipeline.
The seven-year construction program--which is also being supported by Brazil and Argentina--would see the pipeline run all the way from Venezuela in the north to Patagonia at the southern tip of South America.
The pipeline program is still in the planning phase, but the 8,000km gas connection would help cover most if not all of South America’s gas demands, if it ever became a reality.
“Argentina is a net importer of gas and much of its industry is based on gas. Argentina will need a lot more of it in the future. Brazil also has very small gas reserves. Chile is so desperate for gas it’s considering importing it from Australia,“ Mr. Ramirez said.
Against that background, the only logical thing for the Venezuelan government is to start building the pipeline as soon as all the engineering surveys have been completed.
However, some energy analysts believe that the project will become too expensive, as the pipeline would have to go underneath several big rivers and cut a swathe through the Amazon rainforest which also worries several environmental groups.

Sandia National Laboratories is trying to build a better battery for the hybrid vehicles of today and the fuel-cell vehicles of the future.
Researchers are working on a lithium-ion battery, which holds the promise to cost less and perform better than the nickel-metal hydrides batteries hybrids now use, said Dan Doughty, manager of Sandia’s advanced power sources research and development department.
Lithium-ion batteries aren’t new technology. In the past few years, they’ve become the power source for many laptop computers because they perform better than previous computer batteries.
But automotive technology is more complex, fuelcellsworks.com said.
Lithium-ion batteries would have to be cheaper than nickel-metal hydride, last as long and weigh less, “which is a very hard problem,“ said Doughty, who has worked in the power sources group for 13 years. A battery also must be abuse-tolerant--meaning if it fails, it won’t cause other problems.
If those issues can be solved, “the manufacturing base would grab this and run,“ Doughty said.
Sandia receives $1.5 million a year from the Department of Energy’s FreedomCAR program for the lithium-ion research.
FreedomCAR is aimed at developing electric-powered vehicles to help free the United States from dependence on foreign oil. Sandia and four other national labs--Argonne, Lawrence Berkeley, Idaho and Brookhaven--are working on different aspects of developing hybrid technology.
The demand for more fuel-efficient vehicles has risen with gasoline prices, adding to the pressure for more hybrid and fuel-cell electric vehicles.
In that respect, “high gas prices are a good thing because it helps people think about their use of the natural resources, and they see the cost more clearly,“ Doughty said.
Hybrids aren’t as clean as fuel-cell vehicles, but they deliver better mileage than comparable gas engines by switching between an electric motor and gasoline engine. The US hybrid market increased by more than 140 percent in the past year--but hybrids also cost about $3,500 more on average.
The lithium-ion battery is widely considered to be the next generation of battery technology, said Jason Mark of Berkeley, vehicles director with the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Researchers have been improving the lithium-ion battery for a decade. What’s needed now is testing and analysis to validate the battery’s life and performance in hybrids, as well as its real cost, said Ted J. Miller, who works on advanced battery technology for the Ford Motor Co.
Miller, speaking on behalf of the U.S. Advanced Battery Consortium, which has worked closely with Sandia on a lithium-ion battery, said he expects the technology to be introduced in hybrids before the end of the decade.
Lithium-ion batteries are able to deliver more energy, “but my sense is that one of the real challenges of lithium-ion batteries has been cost,“ Mark said.
The other is durability.
“The battery has to last 150,000 miles, which is the life of a car. That is no small feat,“ Mark said. “Durability becomes a cost issue if you have to change your several-thousand-dollar battery twice in the life of the car. That significantly changes the economics of a hybrid vehicle.“
Doughty agrees battery life and cost are linked. If a battery is cheap enough, it could be replaced more frequently; if it lasts a long time, a customer might be willing to spend more money for it, he said.
The Advanced Battery Consortium, in published requirements for hybrid batteries, wants them to last a challenging 15 years, Doughty said. Current nickel-metal hydride batteries in a Toyota Prius, by comparison, are warranted for eight years or 100,000 miles.
One problem with lithium-ion batteries has been durability. Sandia’s abuse tolerance testing is aimed at seeing how they function outside a normal operating range. And if something fails, researchers want it to fail gracefully --without damaging other systems.
“We haven’t solved the problems yet,“ Doughty said.

So who were the biggest savers of 2005? The thrifty Chinese? The spending averse Japanese? Or the low-growth Germans? In fact, none of the above. The world’s biggest saver was the Oil States of the Middle East.
One curious fact to emerge from the presentation by Standard Chartered Bank’s Chief Economist Dr. Gerard Lyons to a power breakfast at Dubai’s Burj Al Arab was his revelation that last year’s $218 billion surplus made this region the world’s biggest saver.
Indeed, a prime reason for the strength of the US dollar in 2005--rather contrary to market expectations--was the flow of petro-dollars back into the US to buy treasury bonds. Yes, Chinese flows of dollars are still important, but they are not as significant, ameinfo.com said.

Too Much Money
Incredibly then, for all the construction development that is visible in places like Dubai and Qatar, a lot of money is still flowing out of the region for investment overseas. For the truth is that local economies just can not absorb this kind of capital surplus.
Take the UAE as an example. Standard Chartered estimates that oil revenues were up by 37% last year to $35 billion, and will hit a new high this year. It is hardly surprising therefore that the UAE has witnessed a stock market and real estate boom, but no economy could take this kind of a capital injection in one year.
In fact the recent fall in the UAE stock market suggests that investors might have got a bit carried away in 2005, pushing valuations beyond sustainable levels. But with this depth of liquidity sloshing around anything more than a correction is surely unthinkable unless oil prices plummet.

Market Dynamics
As the great English writer E.M. Foster noted: ’Money pads the edge of things’. And economies floating on a sea of liquidity are underpinned by huge equity, which changes market dynamics considerably.
Thus Standard Chartered Bank correctly argues that a real estate oversupply in Dubai can be handled without a collapse; for the main developers are state-owned and can hold property empty rather than slash prices; and mortgage debt levels are 3.1% of GDP which is tiny by any global standard.
On the other hand, business is not always easy in such booming market conditions. Competition can be fierce as new entrants join the market; operating costs can quickly surge out of control; and recruiting and retaining staff is a nightmare. But then, at least these are the problems of success.

Thailand will sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Laos to purchase almost double the current level of electricity from Laos to meet the kingdom’s increasing domestic demand for energy, according to Energy Ministry Deputy Permanent Secretary Pornchai Rujiprapa.
The Thai authorities and their Lao counterparts are scheduled to discuss terms of the new agreement in their meeting in Bangkok February 15-16 as the current pact signed by the two governments in 1997 on purchasing 3,000 MW of power by Thailand from 1996 to 2006 will end this year, etna.mcot.net said.
Thailand plans to increase its purchase of electricity from the current 3,000 MW to some 5,000-6,000 MW from neighboring Laos, which produces large-scale electricity generation from hydroelectric dams.
Electricity power production in Laos at present has the capacity to generate up to 10,000 MW, Mr. Pornchai said.
The additional electricity to be purchased by Thailand is produced at six Lao hydroelectric projects--the Namngum 2 and 3, the Namngiep 1, the Namtheun 1, Namtheun Hinboun, the Xepien-Xenamnoi and a lignite-fueled electricity-generating facility at Hongsat.
The agreed decision will be based on the capacity of each project and the contracted demand for energy in Thailand, he said.
Mr. Pornchai expected Thailand’s demand for power in the next 15 years would rise to 60,000 MW, doubled from the 30,000 MW now consumed.
In addition to agreements with the Lao PDR, Mr. Pornchai said, the Thai government is negotiating with the China, Myanmar, and Cambodia to purchase additional electricity, he said.
Thailand currently uses nearly 30,000 MW of imported electrical power. Otherwise it is 90 percent dependent on gas and charcoal and seeks more electricity generated by hydroelectric dams in neighboring countries.

Canada now ranks as the 14th largest producer of wind energy in the world.

Reflecting the brisk wind power business of its neighbor to the south, Canada’s wind energy industry installed 239 MW of new wind energy capacity in 2005, shattering the previous annual installation record of 122 MW established in 2004, according to its main industry association, Canadian Wind Energy Association (CanWEA).
As a result, Canada’s total installed wind energy capacity grew by 54% in 2005 to 683 MW. This means that wind energy now produces enough electricity in Canada to power more than 240,000 homes. 2006 promises even more growth, with a minimum of 500 MW of new energy capacity slated to be installed across the country this year.
“While wind energy’s environmental benefits are well known, its economic benefits are becoming more apparent with the rapid growth of the industry in Canada,“ said Robert Hornung, President of CanWEA, solaraccess.com reported.
“Projects installed in 2005 represented more than $400 million worth of investment and we also saw investment in five new Canadian manufacturing facilities to produce wind turbine towers, blades and nacelles.“
Wind energy projects installed in 2005 in Canada included the Pubnico Point Windfarm in Nova Scotia, the Mont Copper and Mont Miller Windfarms in Quebec, the St. Leon Windfarm in Manitoba and the Centennial Windfarm in Saskatchewan. The year 2006 will see wind energy projects being constructed in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. “With the vast majority of wind energy development taking place in rural areas, wind energy projects are also providing real and ongoing economic benefits to both rural landowners through lease payments and rural municipalities through increased tax revenues,“ said Hornung.
“2005 will be remembered as the start of Canada’s wind energy boom as more than 3,000 MW of wind energy projects are now contracted and slated for construction in Canada over the next few years“, says Hornung. “In fact, federal and provincial governments both put in place policies in 2005 that could facilitate the installation of a minimum of 8,000 MW of wind energy in Canada by 2015. This would make wind energy responsible for 16% of all electricity to be produced by new generating facilities to be constructed in Canada over the next decade.“
Canada now ranks as the 14th largest producer of wind energy in the world, but it remains far behind global leaders such as Germany (18,100 MW), Spain (9,825 MW), the United States (8,957 MW), and India (4,225 MW), as well as smaller countries such as Denmark (3,129 MW), the Netherlands (1,219 MW), Portugal (1,000 MW), and Austria (716 MW).
“While the growth we are seeing in Canada is both rapid and significant, we cannot lose sight of the fact that wind energy continues to develop much more quickly in other countries,“ says Hornung. “With Canada’s unparalleled wind resource, we can still do more to maximize the environmental, economic and industrial development benefits associated with wind energy for Canada.“