Carbon Capture and Storage Worlwide Map: in Brazil, nada!

One of the poor conclusion you can make when you look at CCS WW map: In South America, Russia and greatest part of Africa, no CCS. The latter is understandable since they have the lowest energy consumption. Now Russia? Brazil? India? South Africa? Where are the BRICS?
See the link here to a google map.

First duty of intelligence: the obvious

An article from MIT's Kevin Bullis has been quite reposted and mashed, I end up doing the same  ^_^.
The statement is the follow:

Siemens says it would make sense to build solar power plants in sunny countries in Europe rather than in cloudy ones. And wind turbines should be built in windy places.

These blindingly obvious suggestions run contrary to what’s actually happening. For example, a solar panel in Spain generates about twice as much electricity as the same-size solar panel in Germany

The following graph is a good representation of what happens and (by way of consequence) what could be done to optimize the use of current resources in Europe:

Spot on!

War on (water) terror

Two disturbing news that confirms a trend that water will overwhelm energy as the next tension maker of the international politic landscape. A conflict threat over water in the Asia-Pacific region and more regional is a tension threat over a river running between the two main economical states of Brazil, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo for water supply. Regionally and internationally we can see growing tensions over water resources for irrigation, fishery or simple fresh water resource for local population. Climate change is not helping re-drawing the water distribution and industries are entering the game of water utilization exploring the law gaps for their own interest. Ever since China took over Tibet 50 years ago and decided not to release control over it for no other motives that Tibet is the water font of most of the Chinese provinces.

"Inside Job" with an economist driving me through

I did wait a long time I confess to watch that movie (you can check their facebook page too), problem is, I could probably not understand it as best as I did a couple of days ago if I did not watch it with my wife. Inside Job is "how we fucked up for the 6th time but this time it really hurt people" and "by the way we didn't get hurt so we might do it again". The way the famous top 1% is so far away from reality that they feel they are above the law, and it would not be normal otherwise. It's game of throne all over, except you reign over people's wallet (so you reign over them too) but nobody knows you're the King until you hit the news for fraud (or major economic breakdown). Inside job is a good documentary that tells you you should not entrust anyone with your money if you cannot see physically where you apply it. I found the movie to be a sequel of "Bowling for Columbine" in the way events where depicted and how they interviewed their guests. Don't be fooled though, it is a documentary, with a message in mind. They did the movie edition to keep their message all through the documentary so it's as powerful as you want it to be. What I gained from this documentary is that I need to know more of economics and finances in general so that I don't get hurt and that I need to document myself more about this crisis to understand what really happened. There is the romanticised version of the crisis HBO film "Too Big To Fail" where you can see more of it and temper the documentary. One big missing element on "inside job": the absence of Paul Krugman and his position on the crisis. Or (and I need to thank my wife for driving me through) on the contrary the documentary was completely following Krugman's line of thoughts.

A new use for tabacco leaves

How to quit smoking without posing a threat to the tobacco industry (already in the decline!!):

Brazil immigration booming

According to a source there are more foreigners in Brazil than brazilian abroad for the first time ever!!
The source says the number of people moving to Brazil has significantly risen over the last decade. Data within the latest Registro Nacional de Estrangeiros (RNE), a document issued by the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Justice, showed that the number of legal foreign residents has increased from 22,418 in 2002, to 1,466,584 in 2012. Analysts are attributing the figures to Brazil's increasing level of economic stability and government legislation. One possible explanation is the multiple pre-sal discoveries off the south-coast, which have stimulated the Brazilian oil industry and attracted companies from all over the world. “Brazil is the new hub of global petroleum. Anyone who works in the field has to be here now,” Joe Lochridge, a commercial director of an American company that drills and exports Brazilian oil, told O Globo. Yeah, I'm in the right place I believe!!!

Energy factbook

Currently, 52 per cent of Planet Earth's daily energy consumption is expended on transportation:

• cars make up 25%
• planes, trains, trucks and ships 27%. 

That other 27% is globally embracing and incentivising liquefied natural gas (LNG) to the extent that a thousand ship LNG fleet is possible by 2020 and the first LNG-powered commercial flight took place this year. 

Heat and power generation, which in many countries is already fulfilled by natural gas, makes up a further 16% of barril per day consumption.
Up to 68% of global oil needs could be supplanted by natural gas, supply dependent, of course.
Even as oil becomes "too difficult", advances in nanomaterials may soon allow greatly enhanced oil recovery by reducing the adhesion of hydrocarbon molecules to rock, and nanoscale sensors are allowing us to interpret wells in a more acute way then ever before. Still there is around 60% of oil that is till date unextractable though the advances in technology makes it drop every year a little bit more (see figure on the left...

US paws over Mongolian mining development

Hello my dear followers. I am trying to find some strength to work this morning and saw this news. While reading it something eluded me: why do US gov bother about the environmental and SOCIAL impact on a mining project in a distant country they have few bonds with (in 2006, it's the 175th largest U.S. export market (at $23 million) and its US 123rd largest source of imports (at $114 million)*), and a company they are not evidently related to (Rio Tinto)? Maybe a 5.5 BUSD/year benefit and an almost ready project... only waiting for a World Bank funding (if they dont get the funding they might as well drop the whole thing). It really looks like some international level heist case. Now reading further about Rio Tinto's activity doesn't help to think the company is a trouble maker on its own. So heist or no heist? See for yourself

* Wikileak

Anniversary Suez crisis, Mali conflict and oil price

56 years ago today (8th March) Gamal Adbel Nasser reopened the Suez Canal. Just to crunch some numbers: In 1957, the population of the world stood at 2.87 billion and a barrel of oil topped out at $1.90 per barrel. In 2013, the world’s population was 7.13 billion and this morning Brent Crude was worth $111.15 per barrel.
Talking about conflict, here is a littl map that can tell you a lot of why Europe is (questionably) risking it's soldiers in saharian Africa. As I do not know how long this link will remain, I will paste the article below, but I am not the author:

The untold story of Mali and Oil By TOBIAS VANDERBRUCK for OIL-PRICE.NET, 2013/02/11

Mali and oil are as complex as it can get. Though mineral rich, the landlocked country has no- established- oil or gas reserves worth commercial exploitation. Still, the 'unexplored' aspect of the country lends it gravitas as the potential for oil and gas is very promising and could well be a game changer.
Of course, now, the fire is still on and the atmosphere has a definite air of harried complexity. Before looking into the present conflict, an overview of the oil and gas industry in Mali:

Brief History
The quest for oil in Mali, if you may, began in the early sixties with airborne surveys as the first step in oil exploration. Moderate oil exploration took place in Mali until 1983 when the Taoudeni Basin was declared "burnt out" by the exploration company Esso.
During the seventies and early eighties, more than 9,000 kilometers of exploration through 2D-seismic studies was undertaken in the country. Apart from renewed surveys in Taoudeni basin, there were extensive surveys in Gao Graben basin too. The results were far from satisfactory and when coupled with wide security threats, lack of infrastructure and adverse desert and semi-desert climatic conditions (with temperatures reaching easy levels of 40 to 48 degree celsius or 118 F -ouch), the interest declined. That, however, changed in 2004 with the advent of Baraka Petroleum. Thus, in spite of the ground reality of just five exploratory wells so far, the re-awakened interest in Mali is, in a big way, due to the entry of Baraka Petroleum. With high oil prices and new technical means the bluey oil companies are confident in making a profit when they find oil and gas. Also, an oil pipeline from Chad through Cameroon has increased expectations for a similar pipeline from Mali through Algeria to the market of Europe.
So, there's the promise of potential hydrocarbons in the four sedimentary basins in the country. Though the then Prime Minister of Mali, Cisse Mariam Sidibe, said in 2011 that four countries were 'well advanced' in oil exploration in Mali, it still remains a risk prone venture with only minor oil shows. Basically, it's still pretty much in the realm of assumptions that the country would be able to produce oil and gas for commercial exploitation. On the other hand, the recent studies show geological formations very similar to those oil-producing formations in countries like Algeria, Chad and Sudan.

The four important basins in Mali

Taoudeni Basin
If experts are to be believed, you may hear of this basin very soon. Taoudeni Basin is a major geological formation in West Africa spanning Mauritania, Algeria and Mali. Considered as a high potential basin, it is the largest sedimentary basin in NW Africa. In the eighties, a drilling done here managed to penetrate the sedimentary formations to reach potential petroleum systems. In 1982, a well in the basin, Yarba-1, reportedly showed gas, though the subsequent explorations disputed the oil claims. An evaluation in just five blocks of the basin in 2006 held that the blocks could have about 6 MMboe and over 9 Tcf of oil. The seismic data obtained too showed promise for future explorations. Moreover, the infracambrain black shales along the northern margins, and Proterozoic stromatolite beds are expected to hold large amounts of Hyrdocabons. Geologists have noted similarities between the petroleum rich provinces in Algeria, Niger, Sudan and Libya and the Taoudeni basin. The basin has 14 blocks. Since the basin is relatively unexplored, it has added spice to interest of oil companies.

Nara Trough
Nara Trough is the most western of the four basins and is supposed to be a sedimentary basin of Mesozoic origin (The Mesozoic age has been proved by wood fossils). Still unexplored, the region has been mapped using gravity and aeromagnetic data suggesting sediments as thick as 14km, similar to the Precaspian basin in Kazakhstan. Also, the cetaceous reservoir found here is similar to the one in Chad and the Paleozoic seems more related to Algeria. Nara Trough includes 7 blocks and all of them have been granted to oil companies. The promising signs: competent TOC of three percent in shale, intracratonic rift/sag basin of 14000m magnetic depth and deep structures still to be measured.

Tamesna Basin
Found in the east of Mali, extending into Niger and Algeria. Here, the Creataceous is Niger like, while the Paleozoic is like those in Libya. Though drilled in 1983, there remain dire needs for further studies in the region. Yet, the presence of oil-prone source rocks promises more investigations in the basin.

Gao Graben
Gao Graben, a part of the Central African Rift system extends from Nigeria and Mali in the West to Sudan and Kenya in the East, and while extending into Chad has oil fit for commercial use. One of the wells drilled in this basin turned to be a dry one. Still, 'minor shows' of oil and gas has been found in the basin, and thus, almost 37,500 km2 have come under exploration. (If you are asking, the Creataceous are analogues to those in Chad). Gao Graben has four blocks- 10, 11, 21 and 28. There were minor oil and gas show in the wells. The source rock here is lacustrine Cretaceous shales, while the reservoir rocks are deltaic syn and post. The basin also shows depositional rift sands and fault block traps, all promising signs from an exploratory point of view.

Current Oil Exploration in Mali
If anything Malians have been clever not only in luring the oil companies but also getting guarantees of minimum investment- the present situation, notwithstanding. There is hunger for oil and Mali offered glimpses of it. As a result, there are big and small companies in Mali with the baggage of huge investment in their search for oil and gas.

•     Baraka: An Australian company which changed its name to Baraka Energy and Resources Limited in 2011. Indeed, this Perth based company is almost solely responsible for putting Mali in the oil map of the world. In 2005, the company signed agreements for five permits for an area totalling 193,200 sq km, stretching from the Algerian border in the East to Mauritania in the west. Progressing fast, in 2008, the company had exploration rights in eight blocks of Taoudeni basin covering an area of more than 272,000 sq km.
•     Sonatrach- Algeria's national oil company has interest in the Taoudeni basin and explorations in the North of Mali. Sonatarch has promised investment worth US$ 11.5 million in the next four years.
•     Selier Energy: The Canadian Company has interest in block 18, an area of 19,259 square kilometre in Macina Graben in the Taoudeni basin. Selier Energy has pledged US$ 11.2 million for explorations.
•     Another Australian company Sphere Investments Ltd., operates in Block 8 in the Taoudeni basin and Block 10 in Gao Graben.

In the past, Malaysian company Markmore Group had also applied for blocks 5 and 6 in the Taoudeni. The other companies with interest in Mali include London based Centric Energy (block 7 and 11), Italian company Eni, Canadian oil and gas company, Africa oil corporation as well as Jersey based Heritage Oil. Canadian company Simba Energy has secured oil exploration leases in block 3. The state owned Norwegian company, Statoil has important stakes in the region, also.

War in Mali
Jihadists who overthrew Gaddhafi raided his weapons depots and joined with Al Qaeda. They are now spreading the Islamic revolution in neighboring countries and the relatively peaceful oil-rich north of Mali was a low hanging fruit for them. Indeed, France's intervention to expel Islamists motivated by security as well as Mali's potential resources.
The present conflict began in the summer of last year with the Tuaregs fighting for an independent country in Northern Mali. It gained traction later on with many Islamic militants joining forces to establish a country governed by sharia laws. In fact, the militants do not want to stop with Mali, but are ambitious for a sprawling Islamic Caliphate. Imposing severe Islamic standards the militants severed communication lines and imposed severe punishments for disobedience, interpreting Islamic laws suiting their needs. Should the world have remained mute to the human rights violations in Northern Mali? Don't forget, there were enriched Uranium nearby. France depends on oil and uranium from neighbouring Nigeria and couldn't possibly tolerate Mali to become another Afghanistan. Moreover France and Mali have had a defence agreement in place for years.
Also, after have its military deployed in Afghanistan for over a decade France understandably will do whatever it takes to prevent another Afghanistan to be created within a 2 hour flight. When Malian president requested help from its former colonial master, France obliged, stressing it would be under the UN mandate. And so the French intervened. (And, thanks to the presence of Canadian oil companies in Mali, Canada was one of the first countries to lend a helping hand France.) Further, on January 16, a gas facility in Algeria was attacked by militants. After four days, more than forty oil workers, mainly foreigners, were killed. Allegedly, the militants were the ones fighting previously in Northern Mali.
And guess what: the oil-rich Taoudeni Basin is located at the north, the area seized by islamists. Neo-colonial agenda or not, the fact is that Timbuktu has been wrestled back. Yes, the Islamists could use the time to regroup in the mountains. After all, Islamist fighters are extremely well equipped and funded. In fact they they are known to offer cash for Malian child-soldiers to join them. According to French Intelligence sources they are funded by the oil-rich nation of Qatar which also funds fundamentalists in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. Moreover, the Qatari influence of Tuareg separatist and other Islamic groups were speculated as early as in June last year. Qatar has vested interest in spreading extreme Islamic Ideology in Africa, not to mention the potential oil and gas resources.

Tomorrow's oil wars started today
As pointed out in previous articles the Arab spring is nothing more than fundamental Islam's hostile takeover of oil resources, with financial support from theocratic oil-rich nations such as Qatar and Iran. (Many analysts, even those based in Mali, haven't taken the oil potential of Mali under consideration (think Canada, France) and so their analysis have remained over Islam and insurgency, only-you need to know.)
Predictably a confrontation with the West over said resources and fundamental cultural differences was bound to happen. This is likely the start of something bigger, a new world paradigm where former colonial powers return not as oppressors but as liberators and protectors of freedom and liberty.


This article was written by Oil-Price.net which provides free information on crude oil.

Brazil's economic policies seen from abroad

Quite an interesting Monday! A very interesting article from Reuters that, for once, seems to understand the complexity of the economical of a recently industrialized country. See for yourself Reuter's paper or the copy-pasted text from their page below (your choice):

There is talk of investments, and the need for shared prosperity - a favorite topic of Rousseff's. But in these meetings, the conversation inevitably comes back to the severe bottlenecks that have brought the economy back to earth after a historic boom last decade.
"Brazil needs to focus now on issues like productivity and reducing costs, because that's the only way we can grow in a sustainable fashion," said Marcelo Odebrecht, who runs a global conglomerate that bears his family's name.
"I think we've realized that, and the president is moving in that direction," he said in an interview. "That's her focus - looking at these obstacles, and getting Brazil growing again."
The meetings, which have intensified in recent weeks, are a critical part of Rousseff's efforts to convince Brazilian executives to start investing again and help lift the economy following two straight years of disappointing growth.
The chats with well-known figures such as Odebrecht and mining and energy tycoon Eike Batista come as Rousseff, a Marxist guerrilla in the 1970s who evolved into a pragmatic leftist, struggles with a perception that she is unfriendly or even hostile toward the private sector.
Just past the halfway point of her four-year term, the 65-year-old daughter of a Bulgarian aristocrat has indisputably made many enemies in the business world. She has condemned banks for charging high interest rates, intervened heavily in Brazil's exchange rate, and undertaken contentious reforms such as a cut in electricity rates that wiped billions of dollars from the market value of foreign and locally owned companies.
Rousseff has said all her decisions respected existing contracts and laws, and were necessary to try to return Brazil's economy to its glory days of fast growth in the late 2000s.
Her ability to convince business leaders that's true will be key to the rest of her presidency.
Without a rebound in investment, which has steadily fallen since Rousseff has been in office, Brazil will not have the resources to address supply-side bottlenecks in infrastructure and labor that caused the economy to grow just 0.9 percent in 2012.
A persistent economic slump could, in turn, endanger Rousseff's expected bid for re-election next year.
Reuters spoke with several ministers, presidential aides and business leaders who have participated in the meetings, trying to determine why executives have generally not yet heeded Rousseff's call to take risks and let their "animal spirits" flourish - a reference to a term used by the British economist John Maynard Keynes, one of her favorite historical figures.
Business leaders say that Rousseff seems receptive to their feedback and focused on the right problems. But she is also not shy about defending her strong belief that the state must try to shape the economy so that all Brazilians can prosper.
That philosophy has guided Brazil for the past 10 years under Workers' Party rule, and helped make it one of the few countries where inequality fell as the economy grew. Yet it may also explain why some of her decisions have backfired, some say.
"She always challenges these guys - You have to think as a business, but you have to think about Brazil too," said Trade and Industry Minister Fernando Pimentel, one of Rousseff's closest aides, who sits in on some of the meetings.
"You want to earn money, that's natural. But how is everybody going to earn money? How will everybody get better? It can't get better just for one group, only for you," Pimentel said in an interview.
A VERY POPULAR LEADER
Since taking office on New Year's Day in 2011, Brazil's first woman president has earned mostly high marks from voters. Her personal approval rating has hovered in the high-70s, thanks largely to record-low unemployment levels that have been sustained despite the lackluster economic growth.
By cracking down on corruption and embracing some free-market policies such as the privatization of airports and highways, Rousseff has moved beyond the shadow of her popular predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who plucked the career civil servant from relative obscurity and helped her win her first-ever campaign - for the presidency - in 2010.
In a region characterized by charismatic leaders such as Lula and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Rousseff stands out for being gray - or intimidating, depending on the beholder.
Aides say she detests ceremonial aspects of the presidency, eschewing dinners and the schmoozing with congressmen and foreign visitors that Lula excelled at.
She rarely gives news conferences, and she abandoned Twitter almost immediately after she won the election. "Let's chat more often in 2011," her most recent tweet says.
Yet, for the most part, Brazilians see these as the signs of a serious, hard-working leader. Especially among the poor, whose lives have improved dramatically in the past decade, Rousseff is seen as a kind of stern benefactor - the "mother of Brazil," as Lula baptized her in 2010.
In the corporate suites of Sao Paulo, the country's business and financial capital, executives tend to take a dimmer view.
While virtually no one accuses Rousseff of being a hard leftist in the vein of Chavez or Bolivia's Evo Morales, many say she has taken too heavy-handed a role in managing Brazil's $2.2 trillion economy - and scared off some investors who never quite know what she'll do next.
"I think most investors understand she's not reintroducing old-style socialist ideas. That's not what this is about," said Paulo Vieira da Cunha, a former deputy governor at Brazil's central bank who is now a partner at Tandem Global Partners, a hedge fund in New York.
"What it is about is her belief in central planning, in an active industrial policy, where the government makes critical decisions," he said. "That's not unique to Brazil, by the way ... But it has bothered some people."
A HEAVY HAND
Indeed, there is no big economic sector that Rousseff hasn't touched in a meaningful way in the past two years.
Brazil's banking industry was turned upside down by the central bank's surprise decision, starting in Rousseff's eighth month in office, to slash its benchmark interest rate, which has since fallen from 12.5 percent to an all-time low of 7.25 percent.
Rousseff publicly shamed private-sector banks for not cutting their lending rates fast enough to match the benchmark's declines, calling their actions "inadmissible." Meanwhile, monthly inflation hit its highest level in almost eight years in January, leading some investors to say the cuts went too far.
Rousseff has also been personally involved in the management of the exchange rate, which has oscillated between 1.52 and 2.13 per dollar during her term. The government has tried to alternately strengthen or weaken the currency in unpredictable ways, playing havoc with companies' business plans.
Even the business world's favorite policy tactic - cutting taxes - has generated uncertainty under Rousseff.
Instead of announcing an across-the-board cut, Rousseff has moved sector-by-sector, implementing targeted tax reductions of sometimes uncertain duration for industries like autos or home appliances. Her government has made more than two dozen separate announcements of stimulus packages.
Finally, Rousseff has made some decisions that openly work against the interests of private capital. They include forcing state-run oil giant Petrobras to import gasoline and sell it at a loss, a policy that has jeopardized the company's investment plans and contributed to a 30 percent decline in its publicly traded shares since she took office.
All told, Brazil's main stock index has tumbled 20 percent during Rousseff's presidency - compared to an 18 percent gain in Mexican shares and a 20 percent rise in the Dow Jones Industrial Average in the United States during the same period.
The Eurasia Group, a think-tank, said in a note in February that the government's policies and poor communication have led to "a credibility problem with the private sector."
The result: Investment fell 4 percent in 2012, and now stands at just 18.1 percent of gross domestic product.
That gives Brazil the lowest such ratio among big Latin American economies, well behind the rates of 28 percent or so in Peru, Colombia and Chile. As a result, some among Rousseff's economic team fear Brazil's potential economic growth rate may be capped at a mediocre 3 percent or so for years to come.
TRYING HER BEST?
Inside the Palacio do Planalto, Rousseff's modernist palace on the high plains of central Brazil, one word best describes the reaction to the way some investors are behaving: bewilderment.
To hear her ministers and aides tell it, Rousseff has spent much of her presidency explicitly catering to Brazil's business community. In fact, many of the policies for which she has been most criticized were the results of feedback she received from executives, they say.
There is truth to that. In a keynote speech in 2010 prior to the presidential campaign, Armando Monteiro Neto, then the head of Brazil's main industrial lobby group CNI, cited taxes, interest rates, an overvalued real, and high input costs such as electricity as the economy's main problems.
Rousseff has made faster progress on all those issues than any economist or political analyst predicted, although some initiatives - including her recent plan to force electricity costs down - have caused heavy losses for certain companies.
"I think she's done what business people have asked for, and with a certain speed," said Luiza Helena Trajano Rodrigues, the chief executive of retailer Magazine Luiza and another executive who has met frequently with Rousseff.
"Some of the criticism seems a little strange," Rodrigues said in an interview. "She's done a lot of difficult things."
Despite being elected primarily as a figure of continuity, Rousseff has made some pro-business moves that were unthinkable under Lula, who rose in politics as a labor union leader.
She stood up to criticism from the left wing of her Workers' Party to privatize airports in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and elsewhere. She also moved to cut pension benefits for incoming government workers - a decision that will help shore up Brazil's finances, which she has maintained in orderly shape.
One interpretation of Brazil's struggles is that after the last decade's boom lifted some 30 million people from poverty, the policies that worked under Lula had run their course.
Namely, there was no more room to grow the economy by expanding consumer credit - the main engine of growth from 2007 to 2010. So it has fallen to Rousseff to make tough structural reforms that could eventually open up a new era of economic growth - but have generated uncertainty in the short term.
The minister, Pimentel, who has known Rousseff for four decades, said the dire global economy also caused her to become more reformist around the one-year mark of her presidency.
"She clearly saw the bottlenecks that the Brazilian economy had, and has," he said. "She knew we couldn't put off facing these bottlenecks because in a world totally convulsed by the European crisis, we could risk totally losing our competitiveness."
SHARING THE WEALTH
Racing to prevent such a scenario, Rousseff has thrown open her doors to a variety of business leaders from finance, steel, aviation and elsewhere - and has won over some executives who were skeptical of her.
She is mostly listening for new policy ideas and trying to gauge the economy's health. But she is also not shy about asking her guests to part with their money.
For example, in a January 10 meeting with Odebrecht, she asked him to consider investing in upcoming airport concessions, an aide said. In a January 16 sit-down with Batista, whose holdings include oil company OGX, Rousseff urged him to participate in a major round of oil auctions later this year.
Rousseff has also gathered two dozen or so top executives at a time for regular "CEO forums" inside the palace, with the next pow-wow scheduled for March 19.
Still, giving executives face time has been no guarantee of convincing them to invest.
Rousseff's closest contact in the business world is arguably Jorge Gerdau Johannpeter, a 76-year-old steel magnate whom she appointed to lead the Chamber of Management and Competitiveness, another nexus between government and the private sector. Gerdau is often in Brasilia, and sat down with Rousseff for four hours in one meeting in January.
Yet on February 21, the company which he chairs - Gerdau SA, the world's No. 2 maker of steel for builders - said it was cutting its five-year investment plan by 17 percent.
It said it slashed capital spending by 24 percent in the fourth quarter alone, and attributed its decisions to "uncertainties hurting the global economy." A spokeswoman for Gerdau did not respond to multiple requests for an interview.
The malaise in Brazil's private sector explains why Rousseff may be vulnerable to a more market-friendly candidate, such as PSDB party Senator Aecio Neves or Pernambuco state Governor Eduardo Campos, in next year's election.
Yet polls indicate that, for now, Rousseff is popular enough to win easily. Meanwhile, an unexpected 0.5 percent rise in Brazil's overall investment in the fourth quarter of 2012 suggests that some business leaders, too, may be coming around.
Odebrecht, who after meeting Rousseff said his company would invest $8.5 billion this year, up a third from 2012, said executives may learn to live over time with some discomfort.
"People may argue - 'Oh, I would have done this a different way,'" he said. "But the concepts and intentions, I think it's tough to criticize her. What she's doing is right for Brazil."

(Additional reporting by Ana Flor; Editing by Todd Benson, Kieran Murray and Tim Dobbyn)

Reuter's original paper

Noticia brasileira sobre gestão de CO2

O Conselho Empresarial Brasileiro para o Desenvolvimento Sustentável (CEBDS) lançou em dezembro a publicação Programa de Gestão de Carbono na Cadeia de Valor, em side event na COP-18 (Convenção do Clima), no Qatar. O projeto promoveu, ao longo de 2012, a capacitação de 32 fornecedores da Vale, Votorantim, Banco do Brasil e Itaú para elaboração de inventários de emissão de Gases de Efeito Estufa (GEE).
De acordo com o Registro Público de Emissões do Brasil, as emissões provenientes de fontes que não são controladas pela empresa (em geral, a cadeia de fornecedores) corresponderam, em 2011, a 88% do total das emissões de Gases de Efeito Estufa (GEE) das empresas que relatam seus inventários – um crescimento de 12% em relação a 2010.
Dos 32 fornecedores capacitados, 22 apresentaram inventários de emissão de GEE total ou parcialmente às empresas participantes. “O número aponta que o projeto teve um aproveitamento de aproximadamente 70% de fornecedores capacitados e se mostra uma importante ferramenta para as empresas que já perceberam que a maior fonte de emissão de GEE de sua produção está na sua
cadeia de fornecedores”, considera Malta.
A partir da experiência na primeira edição, o programa será replicado em 2013 com, no mínimo, o dobro de empresas participantes. Petrobras, Coca-Cola, Cemig, Votorantim, Vale, Itaú, Ipiranga e TKCSA já confirmaram participação na edição do ano que vem. A expectativa é capacitar cerca de 100 fornecedores dessas companhias na segunda edição do programa.

Confira o documento.

2013 Energy outlooks

Hey there,
First a little consideration: China fêted its New Year recently, with reasons to celebrate: for the first time it has overtaken the USA in import and export activity, becoming the world’s principal trading nation. Year-on-year growth of 9.3 per cent and trade covenants with a constellation of up-and-coming African and Asian nations have assured that China’s star will continue to wax while others wane, yet this expansion is not assuredly infinite. China is already the world’s largest energy producer, consumer and the third largest importer of oil.
I did like the above quote very much, but it is not from me. Lately I've been too busy to really find time to mash things and offer my points of view (probably a lack of wit didn't help neither :-P). For that reason I'll just make another copy-paste (like the oilfield supervisors love to say whenever they can spot a copy-paste practice on a field job instruction report: "fucking engineer!!"), I'm piled between lab work for one project and preparation to sign the other one... busy busy bee!
Nevertheless, I have some outlooks here, one from BP, along with some nice infografics. Another outlook from the ECEEE, do not ask me why such an acronym but nevertheless it seems interesting enough.

Lastly, I fetched some nice page from the US government, a daily updated US energy prices.

Enjoy!

What's cooking in Sustainable Brazil

Brazil is one big supporter of wind energy with Bahia state leading the effort (e.g. Salvador's football stadium is self sustainable), watch this nice video:

CO2 NEWS

Between Christmas, New Years Eve and the hot Brazil summer (plus a damn iTunes re-install meaning I had to re-organize all my library O_o) I have not had much chance to post anything new but the news were not very much around neither, seems that everybody was on days off, not just Brazil!! I'm using a rather lazy morning to do my CO2 "fun" fact hunting. Just like Batman if you're the Joker, you never know it's hitting you until (batman) actually does! I do not know if these facts are that fun, or what it really means in 20 years time. But yesterday I came across that sad article about disappearing island due to rising sea level. Seeing your whole World disappearing is surely not what nobody wants to see. Especially since we know that no countries really want to your face poping up the immigration list. This time they cannot send you back home because there is no taxi way for the plane to land on!! These people must feel like that guy landing in a country and showing his passport to hear from the immigration guy that his country disappeared over night, hence his passport is no longer valid. You just loose your citizen origins which is quite a complication if your not physically is the given country. And when you look at some quick slides what do you see? That the major CO2 emission countries are the least impacted!

But it's not all that bad now see what is been done lately to help slow down the process:
 canadians are developping a process to pull CO2 out of thin air. Norway's TCM are launching a CCS test centre network in Mongstad.I can't help noticing and won't stop repeating that the oil companies brought us fossil fuel and "burry us" with it, they will also be the major responsible for redirecting our energy focus towards renewable. Probably through government incentive (it goes without saying). Big Oil, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly all at once!
Started in 2011 and quite popular last quarter of 2012 (maybe thanks to the end of the World) there was a lot of discussions about risks in CCS business resulting in this risk management guidelines from DNV.
Last but not least, norwegian are re-iterating that the reservoirs burried beneath the North are able to hold a lot of CO2, like hundreds of year of an entire country emission. Unfortunately they only said Norway, I wish they'd say China or USA... or even Europe. It's not so bad anyway for a start, hopefully more country will evaluate their own ground capacities.

Ta-da!

Drugs, education, acceptation

Hey my dear readers,
I was fooling around the net when I saw that amazing documentary on the way past government dealt with drugs (see War on Drug) and the fact it did not work.

The film is very well directed with a lot of power messages from past presidents, authors and other World personalities I would recommend that movie.
Now the message sent was half clear on the solution they would propose. They talked about hard drugs like heroin and cocaine, to end up saying they should legalize and regulate marijuana... a little bit of a dimension problem. Hence not a bold move; a move that looks more like (scary) baby step. While some personalities really said it clear that you need to understand the drug addict (I do believe that too), for me you can win a war if you look at your own people, meaning Americans should educate and care about their backyard. The reality that the US is the first consumer far ahead of all the others means that they have a wrong angle of attack towards their social system. You don't do drugs if your happy unless you're an idiot that like to shoot himself in the foot or you suffer from complexes that are reflecting your society (examples are pouring like Congolese prostitutes in Pointe Noire's night clubs).

"If I was President" (W.J.)
I believe you cannot fight this war unless you act on both end of the rope: production and consumption. They spend millions in destroying the crops, why not spending these millions in subventions for crops that could make farmers quit the drug business? If cocaine pays that much, lets the country create a new economy based on subventions to farmers: 1kg of corn the price of 1kg of cocaine! that makes the poor farmer a man sustaining his family AND abandoning the cocaine business. Let them do that for 5 years and you'll see the drug harvesting dropping 90%. Now I only mentioned the subvention, but it can be that they would get hospitals and schools or free electricity/water and lesser direct subvention. The message that Colombian farmers send to their government is "you don't help us, so we're going somewhere else to find help". Now that can be reversed, not without some corruption and abuses of course but no great system goes without abuses and corruption.
At the same time you regulate and control the cocaine production to a certain volume of total mass a year. All farmers must be registered, all produced crop weighted and registered. Heavy fines to whoever is caught producing more, the most important is IGNORING THE DRUG LORDS.
That would basically be a development plan to fight the drug system in Colombia, by redirecting their workforce towards a legal trade, looking beyond drug production and letting drug Lords like sitting ducks. Trade would probably react by increasing the price but that's just like the Oil price, it follows the international geopolitic tensions. The result would be price increase on the other end (consumption end), so the market would shift to another country till it has nowhere else to run.
If it is not the best of options, prone to create lots of abuses, better these abuses than lack of sovereign control and uncontrollable violence.

Now a bit of Maths

• Cocaine farming monthly wedge = 1000 USD per household (67000 households, several sources like this one).

• Development of a new farming economy, based on subvention (wood or whatever sort of crop that would fit the local ecosystem) = overall (direct and indirect subventions) 1500 USD per household (counting conservatively 15% being coca farmers we talk about 450000 households, 18% of colombian population)

• Total development plan = 675 MUSD/year that we can top up to 1 BUSD/year (GDP for agriculture being 26.3 BUSD in 2010, 9% of Colombia's GDP the same year)

I don't plan to come and speak directly to Mr President, nor do I think I hold the truth of it, but if a PhD in chemistry can figure this out imagine what an expert in economy can implement then!!! To finish with my little prose of the day, the one thing that I really liked in this documentary was that the countries that implemented different approach to this social issue did not try to hit the consumer any-more. They tried to understand the sociological illness behind the drug consumption. Some European countries are a long way to understand that (e.g. I know the social issues in France and the refusal to accept some truths) and the message the populations send to their governments should be more acknowledged. Eventually there is a parallel to be drown with human traffic (e.g. prostitution) and arm smuggling, also increasing dramatically, especially in Europe.

The end of the World (and the Carbon news) in Brazil

Tomorrow is doomsday, and I already heard of the "doomsday program" so I'm hoping someone will read that before power shuts down :-).

Programation of the last day:

06:30 - Beginning of the End of the World
07:00 - Meteor shower
08:30 - First Tsunamis arrival
10:00 - OVNIs welcoming
10:30 - Gangnam Style flashmob of the OVNIs
11:36 -Initiation of general destruction
12:00 - Alignement of all planets of the Solar System, followed by a huge Eclipse
12:00 a 14:00 - lunch break
14:15 - Earth magnetic pole inversion
15:00 - Super Global Warming
16:30 - Initiation of the Earthlings annihilation
17:00 - Nilwayne Nilrex show
18:00 - Alien Earthling revelation
19:00 - Prisoner rescue from area 51 and Varginha (Brazil equivalent of Area 51)
20:00 - Re-opening of tunnel São Tomé Das Letras/Machu Picchu (they call this city in Brazil city of the stars...)
21:00 - Approximation of planet Nibiru
22:00 - Revelation of UFO's secret friends
23:00 - Bowser's arrival to finish up the job
23:30 - End of the World

So before all of that happens I made a selection of carbon news for you to read before it's too late:
Rio de Janeiro wants to monitor real time its carbon emission (in Portuguese). Already Pdt Obama is making Climate Change one of his top priorities for his second term when in Europe (UK to be precise) the carbon emission reductions are being delayed to the next term, meaning they don't want to wear and bear the responsibility of such a controversial task in the current economic environment. Now I am a big fan of CCS so I was quite please to see this article claiming CCS would be key to reduction of carbon emission and commitment to global targets.To close the loop on Brazil, there is a quick post from the CCS Institute explaining how to manage CCS projects in developing countries (that is considering Brazil as a developing country, which is an entire debate by itself).
Hopefully I see you all sometimes in the future!!

World Energy Outlook(s)

hey,
November has been intense in high profile publications. IEA has recently made the presentation of its new book publicly available and BP released his yearly World Energy review that you can found here.What we can take out from these publications is the increase in energy consumption and oil demand despite the increase of the oil price, Renewable energies seem to be stable in growth which is not the best of  news, especially with the global economical environment and the huff-n-puff attitude of the (mostly European) governments. Their lack of commitment towards private companies effort makes nonviable large projects (like in Florange, France, with ArcelorMittal's questionable willing that would have been troubleshooted if European governments really made an effort). Global CCS Institute made an urging publication to call for European CCS funding before other countries take the lead and gets all the technological advance. Combining this with IEA's overview on European gas dependance, it is time to "take our fingers out of our arses" (old rig joke). I kind of grow tired of saying that (well, not really tired ha!) but I know that the effort towards renewable energies will be made by the private sector. One example is that bloomberg article recently talking about solar energy to involve EOR technologies (in a nutshell, these techs helps you to take more oil out of a reservoir). The private sector might become the best (and only?) player in renewable energies.
One "good news" about the reports (BP's) is that the proven oil reserves tend to grow over the years with the ever evolving characterization and exploration technologies. One example is Brazil, which doubled it's proven reserves in 10 years through Pre-Salt discoveries and subsequently Angola if you consider the geological history that the 2 countries share. For a proof look at this gif picture developped by the Nova Scotia museum (image found here):

This gif is very northern hemisphere centric but look at the division between South America and Africa! Right were the Pre-Salt discoveries were made in Brazil used to be Angola, and recent findings proved that theory to be right. Russia has also seen greatly increased it's own reserves over the past decade. Nevertheless IEA projects that increase in consumption will boost the diversification of the energy sources from now to 2035 (guys, less than 25 years now, that only from 1987 to date and if you look back, not much has been created, only improved). While IEA looks at how much we can save by optimizing our production and consumption lines, BP has been looking at 2011's production and consumption. An interesting set of slides is IEA's slide 7 on 2035's projected gas trade flow (gloomy future for Europe) and 2011 gas trade movements (page 29).
To finish in a bright note, BP says the renewable sources are increasing year on year, though IEA says not fast enough and that is echoed by the CCS institute.
The IEA's World Energy Outlook is available on sale for a couple of hundreds of dollars  \o/
The BP statistical review is for free (at least) and you can even do a year on year to try to do some predictions yourself!!

a good read to you then!

Brésil: 10 ans d'émission réduite de CO2

Bonjour,
je suis tombé sur cet article ce matin  qui concerne une  étude faite au Brésil montrant que l'essort du biodiesel grace à la production d'éthanol (le Brésil est un des pionniers) a évité la production de 177 millions de tonnes de CO2, soit 7 jours de production mondiale (données 2009). Donc j'ai continué mes petites recherches sur le CO2 et je suis tombé sur quelques sites intéressants comme CO2 now, qui fournissent des données mensuelles sur l'émission de CO2, utilisant le fameux observatoir de Hawaï:

 

J'ai aussi trouvé le site de l'ONU sur la météorologie (OMM) qui fait des études annuelles sur l'émission de gaz à effet de serre (Novembre 2012 en français).
Maintenant le même Brésil (à travers Petrobras) vient de mettre en place un système de surveillance des gaz à effet de serre à Natal dans le nordeste, grâce au système suédois DOAS (Differential Optical Absorption Spectroscopy) développé conjointement avec Petrobras.Sont fous ces brésiliens!!!

The scary 4 degrees

I like infographics, they're simple, to the fact and kind of easy to understand... incredibly inaccurate also (because of it's simplicity). Anyway here is why we should really put our hands into a more sustainable energy production and consumption (credits to the World Bank):

Today's new on Carbon dioxide

CCS funding process may be flawed

Hi you all,
I had a quick go on some interesting news concerning CO2 and the capture process, CCS.
First is a new way of reducing GHG trough a chain of carbonate reaction involving pulverised rock.
We saw this week the huff-n-puff reactions of the industrial putting in jeopardy a couple of projects: Florange in France,  NER300 funding program are making the cover.
But there are good news, such as this company, Ryncosmos promoting portable CO2 emission reduction for houses and cars. Alstom is working with Dow for the past 4 years now to develop some amine system to catch CO2 more efficiently. Talking about amines, some nice research made in Laval University to increase the efficiency of regeneration of the amine beds (if you don't have access to the article, there is a good review for CCJournal here).
Eventually you can have a look on the same journal the featured articles on CO2  compression ( that's for the radicals!!!)