Business

Last updated: 6 october, 2009 - 10:18 GMT

Oil in the Works

About this programme by Peter Day

As energy experts worry about running out of oil (and how to find substitutes for it) two South American countries are finding more and more.

Brazil has been announcing huge new oil finds offshore in the Atlantic, and its neighbour Venezuela has apparently vast reserves of sticky oil in the vast basic of the river Orinoco.

There the difficulties begin. The new Brazilian finds are deep and probably difficult to extract. The Orinoco oil needs great technical expertise to refine.

Both countries need the help of the world’s multinational oil companies to finance the development of the oil. Both would prefer the vast oil revenues to go mainly to the state, in order to continue what Venezuela’s idiosyncratic President Hugo Chavez calls the Bolivarian Revolution, after the 19th century fighter for South American independence, Simon Bolivar.

Big tensions, huge wrangles. Yet more examples of the resources curse: the way oil leaves dirty marks on everything it touches.

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Global Business

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