biz.yahoo.com Tuesday March 4, 2:20 pm ET By Dan Molinski, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

BOGOTA (Dow Jones)--One day after Colombia's state oil company Ecopetrol said it found an estimated 200 million barrels of "high quality" crude on what is ancestral land of the U'wa Indians, tribal officials said they plan to oppose further drilling on the site.

But, unlike in the past, the U'wa aren't talking about group suicide.

"We are going to ask to meet directly with the national government on this issue because we do not accept drilling here," tribal spokesman Trinidad Cobaria said Tuesday in a telephone interview with Dow Jones Newswires.

He added: "But as far as threatening to join hands and run and jump off a cliff, no, we won't be doing that."

The U'wa gained notoriety in 1999 when they threatened exactly that - mass suicide - if the original contract holder for the Gibraltar I well, Occidental Petroleum Corp. (NYSE:OXY - News) , began drilling.

A legal dispute with the U'wa ended with Occidental receiving the green light to explore, as the well, located near the border with Venezuela in the state of Boyaca, is outside the official boundaries of the U'wa reserves.

The Los Angeles-based firm began drilling in 2000 and the U'wa never followed through with its suicide threat.

Occidental originally said the well may hold up to 1.2 billion barrels of reserves, which would put it on par with the nation's top two fields, BP PLC's ( BP) Cusiana-Cupiagua and Occidental's Cano Limon, which when discovered had reserves of more than 1 billion barrels each.

But the drilling failed to produce results and Occidental stopped looking in July 2001.

After Occidental handed the contract back over to Ecopetrol, the state-run firm decided to try its hand at the well. It began looking for oil at Gibraltar last November.

The U'wa, meanwhile, said Ecopetrol would never find a drop of oil, claiming its ancestral gods would hide what it calls "the blood of the earth."

After Ecopetrol's President, Isaac Yanovich, announced Monday that oil has, in fact, been found at Gibraltar, U'wa spokesman Cobaria said with a slight chuckle that the gods simply didn't hide all of it.

"Yes, Ecopetrol found some oil, but from what I've just seen on the television news, it's a tiny amount compared to what (U.S. firm) Occidental had originally expected to find there," he said.

Occidental Didn't Dig Quite Far Enough

The discovery at Gibraltar, if confirmed by upcoming final tests, would be the largest ever for Ecopetrol, albeit much less than earlier estimates of the well's potential.

The find was made at a depth of 12,050 feet, after an investment of about $9.5 million, Yanovich said Monday.

An Occidental official told Dow Jones Newswires in 2001 that the company gave up looking for oil on the same well at a depth of 12,000 feet, after spending $ 60 million and only finding traces of gas and water.

Yanovich noted that Occidental has no rights to the find, since it abandoned the project.

The possible discovery of 200 million barrels of crude at Gibraltar is by no means the answer to the country's oil or economic problems, however.

The administration of Uribe says it needs to find a total of 1 billion in reserves by the end of his four-year term, which began in August, in order to avoid becoming a net importer.

Oil and its derivatives are Colombia's main export, accounting for more than 25% of total foreign revenues.

As Latin America's fourth-largest producer, the country produced about 580,000 barrels a day of crude in 2002 - about half for export - but total production will fall to about 535,000 barrels per day this year.

The country produced a total of 210 million barrels last year, while adding only 114 million barrels to its proven reserves. The country's estimated total reserves were 1.8 billion barrels at the end of 2001.

The search for oil in Colombia has been hurt by a long-running rebel conflict that has scared off many would-be investors.

Marxist rebels blew a hole in the No. 2 Cano Limon oil pipeline 40 times last year.

-By Dan Molinski, Dow Jones Newswires; 571-600-1980; colombia@dowjones.com

www.sfgate.com Tuesday, March 4, 2003
(03-04) 16:08 PST (AP) -- Dow Jones News Service

NEW YORK (Dow Jones/AP) -- Crude oil futures rallied Tuesday, staging a sharp recovery after three straight sessions of declines on hopes that a war with Iraq could be averted.

Between Thursday and Monday, prices fell sharply as Iraq's increased cooperation with U.N. weapons inspectors and Turkey's rejection of access to U.S. troops sparked speculation that a U.S.-led attack on Iraq could be avoided, or at least delayed by several weeks.

But prices turned around Tuesday as the U.S. stepped up military preparations for a possible war and indicated it would seek U.N. Security Council approval of a resolution on military action next week, analysts said.

At the New York Mercantile Exchange, April crude oil futures rose $1.01 to end at $36.89 a barrel after rising as high as $37.18 intraday.

April heating oil futures ended up 1.26 cent at $1.0486 a gallon, while April gasoline futures climbed 1.74 cent to settle at $1.1122 a gallon.

At London's International Petroleum Exchange, April Brent futures rose 61 cents to close at $33.09 a barrel.

Natural gas for April delivery retreated 12.1 cents to settle at $7.041 per 1,000 cubic feet.

American officials, dismissing Iraq's destruction of its short-range Al Samoud 2 missiles as inadequate and insincere, pressed ahead for a final confrontation.

Military forces continued to mass in the Persian Gulf, with the United States deploying an additional 60,000 troops to the region atop the 230,000 troops already there. Turkey is also debating whether to resubmit a parliamentary motion to allow more than 60,000 U.S. troops to use the country as a northern front against Iraq.

At the same time, officials said they plan to bring to a vote next week a Security Council resolution authorizing military action against Iraq.

The measure, backed by Great Britain and Spain, faces stiff opposition from Security Council members, with Russia's foreign minister Igor Ivanov issuing a veiled threat to veto it.

But a White House spokesman said the United States believes it has the nine votes necessary to pass the resolution, though he left open the possibility that the United States might withdraw the resolution if it concludes it would not pass.

Regardless of the outcome of a vote, the United States says it's prepared to press ahead with an attack, barring an 11th-hour decision by Iraq to give up its weapons of mass destruction.

U.S. officials say there is virtually nothing Iraq could do to convince them that it is serious about disarming. In a speech Tuesday, President Bush reiterated his determination to see Iraq stripped of its weapons of mass destruction.

Energy traders worry that an attack on Iraq could disrupt the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf.

Meanwhile, OPEC and non-OPEC oil ministers will meet next week to discuss what they could do in the event of a war in Iraq, an official from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries said.

OPEC countries have increased production in recent months in response to a strike in Venezuela and soaring oil prices. According to a Dow Jones Newswires survey, OPEC crude oil output jumped by 1.43 million barrels a day to 27.091 million barrels a day in February from January.

triad.bizjournals.com From the February 28, 2003 print edition Boris Hartl   The Business Journal

Crowds are thin these days at Liberty Oak, a restaurant that opened in downtown Greensboro a few years ago when interest and activity in a revitalized center city began to gain ground.

Nowadays, Liberty Oak co-owner John Fancourt can finger everything from wintery weather to the slow economy as being at least partly to blame for the slowdown. But another emerging factor, Fancourt says, is the possibility of war with Iraq.

Half a world away from potential battlefields, Triad merchants like Fancourt are among the business owners already feeling tremors from the possibility of conflict in the Persian Gulf.

"War is on everybody's mind, and people are uncertain what effect it will have," Fancourt said.

Economists say the timing of a possible war, coming in the midst of an anemic recovery from a national recession and after three years of bear equity markets, makes the current uncertainties all the more difficult for Triad businesses to absorb.

While some economists, including Don Jud, an economics professor at UNC-Greensboro, portend a quick war could actually help the economy by returning a sense of normalcy and stability, a prolonged conflict will likely push the nation back into recession.

Gas and diesel prices affected

One place the potential war's effect is already being felt is at Triad gas pumps.

The average price for a gallon of gasoline in North Carolina is $1.591, the highest state average in the last 20 years, AAA Carolina officials said. Since the middle of January, the national average of self-service gasoline has jumped from $1.47 to $1.61 a gallon.

Local freight haulers, distributors and logistics companies have been particularly hard hit.

Steve Immel, terminal manager for AAA Cooper Transportation in Greensboro, has seen the national price of diesel fuel, which now averages $1.76 a gallon, force changes in some operating procedures.

"If we have additional fuel costs, we'll pass them onto customers," Immel said. "They will then pass these costs on. It's definitely a chain-link effect."

Chris Caffey, president of a beer distributing company in Greensboro, has 70 vehicles that burn about 20,000 gallons of fuel a month. As the head of I.H. Caffey Distributing Co. Inc., he has seen his company's monthly fuel costs rise 33 percent to $40,000.

The increased fuel costs won't necessitate any work force cutbacks, but the company may delay building expansion plans.

'Dealing with lower margins'

"We cope by dealing with lower margins, and we hope things get better for us," Caffey said.

A portion of the high prices can be attributed to the strike in Venezuela, which is hampering crude-oil distribution to the United States and forcing the use of more crude oil to produce heating oil, said Gary Harris, executive vice president of the North Carolina Petroleum Marketers Association in Raleigh.

A prolonged military campaign or damage to Iraqi oil fields could push oil prices to $35 a barrel or higher, analysts said, thus further increasing production costs.

"The fuel industry is simply unsure of what is going to happen in the future," said David Parsons, the president and CEO of AAA Carolinas. "Are we really going to war with Iraq? What will the parameters of that war be? Will oil supplies be threatened?"

Until those questions are answered, businesses such as AAA Cooper Transportation and I.H. Caffey Distributing Co. will wait to see what develops next.

"With the economy softening, hopefully it will be clear, one way or another, whether we go in or pull back," said Bart Lassiter, head of City Transfer and Storage Co. Inc. in High Point.

Jud, the UNC-Greensboro economics professor, calls the increased gas prices a "big tax" on everyone that is curbing consumer spending. And Fancourt's restaurant is only one example.

A war-time benefit

"Consumers are more hesitant and cautious with their money, and that's true with any (expendable) activity," said Paul Stone, president of the North Carolina Restaurant Association in Raleigh.

People often eat out when they are in a celebratory mood, and these are not good times to do so, he said.

In Winston-Salem, Dino Cortesis is dealing with a 15 percent drop in business at Cloverdale Kitchen. He said war talk and the soft economy have affected his largest customer base — retirees on fixed incomes.

"They've seen their retirement portfolios drop 25 (percent) to 30 percent, and that's affected their spending habits," he said.

The news isn't all bad in the Triad. Textile companies such as Glen Raven Inc., which are supplying the fabric needed to make parachutes, are actually expanding working hours to meet demands.

David Noer, a business professor at Elon University, said textiles, which have been much maligned in the last few years, should see an immediate boost as they supply the military with war-time materiel.

Glen Raven has increased production to seven days a week, four shifts per day at its Burnsville plant, said Gary Zumstein, vice president of sales for the Glen Raven-based company. Glen Raven is producing the yarn for an Asheville-based company to produce the actual cargo parachutes used to drop equipment.

"From a military standpoint, yes, this is good," Zumstein said. "The government has found some money for purchasing that has been tight."

Textile companies are not the only ones supplying the military.

Antenna Mast Solutions Inc., which has an office in Eden, is enjoying a 300 percent increase in business due to war- related efforts.

The company creates portable masts designed to hold a combination of devices, including weather sensors and cameras. The masts are built with carbon alloy designed to allow military personnel to dissemble the masts quickly.

Business is also booming at the Winston-Salem Industries for the Blind. The nonprofit organization has completed an order of about 2,000 mattresses for an aircraft carrier, said Larry Colbourne, director of development.

Industries of the Blind has also completed a Department of Defense order for about 22,000 plastic pouches to hold gas masks. Those work orders should help Industries for the Blind reach about $40 million in sales for 2003, which will then be reinvested into the organization.

Reach Boris Hartl at (336) 370-2917 or bhartl@bizjournals.com.

news.bbc.co.uk Last Updated:  Tuesday, 4 March, 2003, 23:24 GMT

A prospective new oil find in Colombia could reignite a battle over land that indigenous campaigners thought they had won.

The president of Colombia's state-owned oil company, Ecopetrol, announced that exploratory drilling close to the country's north-eastern border with Venezuela has located reserves of approximately 200 million barrels of light crude oil.

The well was abandoned in May 2002 by a US oil company Occidental Petroleum, after almost a decade of legal wrangling and international campaigning to halt the drilling.

The area is the ancestral territory of 5,000 U'wa Indians. They believe oil is the blood of the earth and have previously threatened mass suicide if drilling went ahead.

After Occidental left, Ecopetrol took over exploration.

'High quality'

Colombia produces about 590,000 barrels of oil a day.

But last year Isaac Yanovich, Ecopetrol's president, warned last year that reserves would begin to run out within five years.

But on Monday he said he was hopeful.

US special force have been deployed in the oil rich area

"There's a good chance that this is of very high quality," he told reporters, according to news agency Associated Press.

And while Colombia stood to take 85% of any profits realised through Occidental exploration, "Gibraltar I is a 100% Ecopetrol project, which means the reserves and the production belong exclusively to the nation," he said.

But there remain manifold problems in extracting oil from the region.

In addition to the U'wa Indians' objections to drilling, left-wing guerrillas often bomb oil pipelines and installations as part of their 38-year war against the state.

The US Government recently agreed to provide $98m - including US special forces - to help protect a lucrative oil pipeline in Colombia which has been attacked 200 times in the last two years alone.

www.abs-cbnnews.com By HERBERT V. DOCENA

Docena is a Research Associate of Focus on the Global South, a policy research center dealing with economic and security issues confronting developing countries.

PORTO ALEGRE, BRAZIL - Off we dash to catch a glimpse of the man everybody here calls Lula. Along the way, we run into a throng of people milling around a TV set: Lula’s already at the park addressing thousands and thousands of Brazilians. We’re late. Off we race toward a taxicab and slam the doors shut. “To the park, por favor,” we tell the driver in broken Portuguese.

It’s Lula’s voice booming on the cab’s AM stereo. “Is that Lula?” my companion asks. The driver nods and flashes the thumbs-up.

“Bom?” Is he good?

“Muito bom!” Very good!

The driver pushes hard on the pedal. He swerves maniacally. It’s as though he sensed how much we -- a group of delegates attending the World Social Forum -- want to see Lula in the flesh. “The driver wants to see Lula as badly as we want to,” another companion corrects me. He overtakes furiously.

Lula, of course, is Luis Ignacio “Lula” da Silva, the new President of Brazil, who won a landslide 62 percent of the votes in Brazil’s election last October -- the biggest ever garnered by any presidential candidate in Brazilian political history. His name is on T-shirts that are still selling like pancakes here, months after the election campaign. His face has even replaced that of Che Guevara’s in some of those most sought-after red pins.

We stop beside another taxicab at the intersection. The driver gestures toward his colleague at the other car to ask whether he’s also tuned in. He gives the thumbs-up. He’s listening to Lula too. Then another cab. Another thumbs-up.

“Did you know that one of the first things Lula did when he became President was to tour his ministers in the favelas (slum communities) to tell them, ‘This is how Brazilians really live. Keep that in mind when you fulfill your duties,’” my Indian companion begins sharing our Lula stories.

“Did you know that one of the first things he did when he assumed power was to cancel a contract for jet fighters in order to use the money for schools?”

We listen intently to the live broadcast. Lula’s speech was in Portuguese and we could barely pick out the words. Pais. Problemas. Esperenca. Ah, he was talking about his country. He was discussing problems. And he was talking about hope.

All the other words in between I couldn’t decipher. But the things that couldn’t be translated I could discern: There was a raw sincerity to his words. His voice rang with a promise that even I -- a foreigner, a non-Brazilian -- also wanted to believe in.

“Ole-ole-ole Lula, Lula!” chanted the thousands, punctuating the President’s speech, as though he had just scored the winning goal in the championships of the World Cup.

I thought I had seen this before.

Back home, hundreds of thousands of unwashed and unpowdered Filipinos also gave former President Joseph “Erap” Estrada the kind of devotion that the unwashed and unpowdered of the Brazilians are now giving Lula. Like Lula, Erap’s popularity among the masses was historically unprecedented. And for the true believer, Erap represented what Lula now symbolizes for many Brazilians: the rise of the dispossessed against a long period of oppression.

Lula, however, in hindsight and in comparison, seems to be the real thing. He’s really one of them. As a boy, he almost died from starvation and had to escape a drought in his province via a long and torturous journey to the city. Erap, in contrast, having come from the old rich, has probably never experienced hunger.

Lula has really fought for the masses. A former metal worker, Lula spent most of his adult life as a trade union leader fighting against the Brazilian dictatorship. Erap also devoted most of his life fighting on the side of the poor -- but only in the movies. And in real life, he was very cozy with Ferdinand Marcos the dictator.

The otherwise empty road was suddenly jammed. All routes seemed to lead to the park. In front of us, a man proudly waves Lula’s red party flag from inside his car. Stalled, we decided to join the crowds of people still sauntering toward the park in hordes to catch a glimpse of their President -- even if his speech has already ended. They have not been packed up from their communities and sent there in a bus by their local political operators. There were no goodie bags. They went there on their own, expecting nothing in return.

I have not really seen this before. This was all amusingly new to me.

Where I come from, people have grown to see most politicians with nothing but disdain and contempt. In just 20 years, we have twice become so disgusted with our presidents, Marcos and Estrada, that we kicked them out of office. But here in Brazil, in some of the conferences, just the mere mention of Lula’s name by a speaker was enough to provoke the crowd into a sudden convulsion and a rapturous cheering of “Ole ole Lula!”

In the Philippines, political leaders inspire nothing but suspicion and cynicism; here, Lula seems to inspire real trust and hope. Back home, elections are often a choice among the least devious devil. Here, it appears like there could have been no better choice.

I come from a country where the youth have grown so wary of politics that most of them wouldn’t want to have anything to do with it. But here, Lula’s most ardent followers are the young: they were at Lula’s rally in massive numbers -- shirtless, holding their girlfriend’s or their boyfriend’s hands while listening raptly to Lula’s every word, kissing and embracing each other after applauding him feverishly.

I come from a country where the leader of the most organized segment of the Left is daring enough to call for an overthrow of the State, but not bold enough to come home from a comfortable exile.

Here in Brazil, Lula’s vision is not just bold; he is here, and he has won. The Brazilian Left has achieved what the most organized segment of the Left back home had deemed unimaginable: It had wrested ultimate leadership of the State without having had to kill anyone -- not the reactionary elements, not even former comrades in arms.

It remains to be seen, of course, whether Lula can really steer this State toward its revolutionary aims. But he has already shown that the first and most important step -- to take control of it and to mobilize the masses behind it -- can be done.

And here, perhaps, lies the reason why Lula arouses so much excitement even from the cynical and the hardened. He is an aberration. In today’s order of things, his victory seems so much like just a happy freakish accident, unbelievable but true.

In a world dominated by politicians out to serve the interests of the few and the powerful, in a world marked with political systems that inherently give undue advantage to these kinds of politicians, we have not expected any Lula to prevail. In a continent where the United States has routinely done everything to prevent leaders like Lula from coming to power and from doing anything but its wishes, we have not expected Lula to overcome. In a period when the Establishment has in so many places successfully suppressed the opposition and elites just scramble for power among themselves, when the Left has in so many cases fragmented itself, we have not expected Lula and his party to show the way.

I stood there, along with the Brazilians lining the road, waiting for Lula’s car to pass, hoping that in chanting “Ole ole Lula!” there would be more aberrations, more freaks, to come.

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