Recently in Latin America Category

As Tokyo prepares for Christmas, a very big holiday here, Jose Sergio Gabrielli de Azevedo showed up in Japan's capital with what he wanted Santa to bring him. It was a lot more than 12 drummers drumming and five gold rings.

The Petrobras CEO has been making a grand tour of Asia the past two weeks, speaking and holding media briefings in Singapore (at Singapore International Energy Week), South Korea and Tokyo.

There have been reviews published recently of Daniel Yergin's new book, The Quest: Energy, Security and the Remaking of the Modern World. Only a professional reviewer, given an advance copy, could have finished this massive tome by now; it was released less than two weeks ago.

The little meter on my Kindle tells me I've read 12% of the book. And already, I've encountered a terrific tale of one of the oil industry's more significant developments in recent history: la apertura.

The dysunfctional operations of Pemex, Mexico's state oil company have long been known, and long been the source of exasperation almost worldwide. Mexico analyst George Baker touched on some of those issues several months ago in this entry. Now, in this week's Platts Oilgram News column, Platts correspondent Ron Buchanan discusses the latest attempt to change Pemex' trajectory.

Petrobras is getting ready to embrace floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) technology in the coming months. But as Gary Taylor notes in this week's PetroDollars column from Platts Oilgram News, other companies are not all following suit.

Like Mark Twain, reports of Hugo Chavez's death have been greatly exaggerated during his 12-year presidency. A quick search churns up speculative postings by Chavez supporters and foes of a dead Chavez in 2005. In April 2008, groundless rumors again hit the ether, then kicked up again two years later.

Death may yet be far off for the strongman, who has survived prison, a brief political coup in 2002, other efforts at sabotage, and now, possibly, cancer.

In this week's Platts Oilgram News "New Frontiers" column, Leslie Moore Mira discusses the distintegration of Venezuela's once-proud state oil company, but how Colombia has been able to benefit from the exodus of its skilled employees.

For more than 50 years, Cuba and the US have been at loggerheads over just about everything. But now, as Platts' Leslie Moore Mira spells out in this week's Platts Oilgram News column "New Frontiers," it is the threat of an oil spill from drilling in Cuban waters that may lead the two sides to begin talking about at least one area of common interest.

Hey, that's me! I'm on DVD, playing "gringa reporter in red shirt" in the scene of a 2006 press conference in Quito, Ecuador, about the landmark pollution lawsuit in that country against Chevron. I was finally, finally watching Joe Berlinger's documentary of the case, Crude, that came out in 2009, and saw my surprise two-second appearance. (The film won Berlinger a slew of doumentary awards and a successful subpoena from Chevron seeking raw footage.)

I delayed watching the documentary for a long time. First, I'd usually rather play with my preschooler after work. Second, covering the case for five years as a freelance journalist in Ecuador had left me with an oily aftertaste.

With limited options for wheels pidiendo la botella, or hitch-hiking in Cuban parlance, is the mode for many Cubans as they try to get from Point A to Point B on the island.

Hitch-hiking is not just a survival tactic for the rural or stranded. Even in the nation's capital, plucky Habaneros stand in the middle of a busy boulevard beside the city's malecon, or waterfront esplanade, where they will negotiate for a ride as idling cars wait for the traffic light to change from red to green. Further up the road one morning earlier this month, I saw a well-dressed professional standing on a grassy median in the Miramar suburb waiting for a ride. She eventually arrived at Cuba's Geology Society biennial conference, looking none the worse for wear.