01 January 2012

BRASIL: Analysis: Explaining Brasilia's Seeming Overreaction To Small Chevron Oil Spill.

                                       LATIMES/ V.BEVINS
                                             Overview and Analysis

      In case you missed it...on 7 November a Chevron exploratory well...far off the coast of Rio state... spilled about 3,000 bbls of crude.
     The government jumped on Chevron...hard.
     With big fines...suspending all its activity...and threats to seek billions more.
     The oil industry called it an overreaction.
     Why the big club against Chevron?
     Brasil is placing a $1 trillion wager on its difficult but potentially lucrative pre-salt oil fields.
      "We may be a tropical country, but we're not a banana republic," Carlos Minc, Brazil's environment minister, told the Financial Times. "Everyone wants to come to Brasil, and if we're not strict with [Chevron], this place is going to turn into a pool of oil."
     PREVIOUS POST/Link: http://thehypervigilantobserver.blogspot.com/2011/12/brasil-chevron-calls-rios-oil-spill.html