Monthly Archives: September 2010

Looking at a map, Santiago de Chile looks vaguely like Sacramento, California — a big city in a long north-south agricultural valley, with a low mountain range separating it from the Pacific and a high, steep cordillera to the east. … Continue reading →

I’m back in the land of speedy internet so I’m catching up on a few old items. Like this, for the annals of “I told you so.”

Gold Reserve, one of the mining companies that have taken Venezuela to international arbitration after losing access to the Las Cristinas/Brisas gold deposit, said it’s asking for $1.928 billion in compensation. This is a bit lower than the $5 billion … Continue reading →

Interesting.

I know you’ve been wondering: what is going on with oil drilling across Latin America? Is it really going great guns, or is that just Brazil? Here are a couple pictures based on the monthly rig counts from Schlumberger, the … Continue reading →

GTZ, the German foreign aid organization known for its international survey of fuel prices, has put out a new international survey of residential electricity prices. The report is pretty inconclusive — I don’t see any obvious trends, and residential electricity … Continue reading →

Just go read it, interesting stuff. Lower down in the story read about how fuel oil stored at the Paraguana Refining Complex in Venezuela has been contaminated with rainwater. Bummer dude.

PDVSA cut its output goal by 9%, pushed back its target for that goal by 2 years, and expanded the amount of money it expects to ante up in order to fulfill the plan, according to a comparison of the … Continue reading →

Is Mariscal Sucre the Bermuda Triangle of oil exploration? Is there some demon gas down there, from which the winds of fate try in vain to protect us? I told you a new drill ship was on the way… There … Continue reading →

I recently joked about the outbreak of normalcy from the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez and Petroleos de Venezuela SA, in which they are acting all responsible and paying off debts for nationalized companies. The wave of payments … Continue reading →