www.nationalpost.com Claudia Cattaneo Financial Post Friday, March 14, 2003

Canada and the United States have had lots to fight about recently. But there's one area where our relationship with the United States has never been stronger: energy.

Over the coming months, both countries will have the opportunity to build on it -- or watch it flounder.

George W. Bush cares deeply about energy and his country is again pushing forward legislation to boost continental energy sources so it can reduce its dependence on the Middle East.

Canada has a lot to gain if the United States successfully designs a continental energy strategy. Despite tensions on other fronts, such as the war with Iraq and softwood lumber, Canada must re-enforce it wants to be a secure and growing supplier of energy for the United States.

Said Robert Ebel, director of the energy program at the Centre for Strategic & International Studies in Washington, "Canada has to stress to the United States and the consumers in the U.S. that Canada is our largest supplier of oil, and that virtually all of our imported natural gas, and Canada has proven to be a reliable source of supply that we really don't have to worry about. It also needs to stress that Canada understands the need for more natural gas in the United States and will do what it can to meet that growing demand, which is going to be met largely through imports, since we are not going to be able to develop our own gas supplies."

The United States, too, can do its part by refusing to take steps that would hurt Canada's energy industry -- such as rejecting calls for tax credits to facilitate construction of a natural gas pipeline from Alaska. The controversial proposals died in Congress last year, but ConocoPhillips, which has large reserves in Alaska, is again asking Washington to help make an Alaska Highway pipeline viable by minimizing commodity price risks through tax credits.

The unfortunate part is that detrimental initiatives like government incentives could end up being supported by some U.S. legislators because of a lack of awareness of the role Canada can play in meeting U.S. energy security needs.

"It's disappointing that there is not more appreciation," said one Washington insider. "I think Canada is taken for granted."

Energy ties between Canada and the United States have been strong for a simple reason: we want their markets as badly as they want our resources.

Already, this strong relationship has led to a fully integrated natural gas market. The financial community, in fact, increasingly looks at the industry as borderless.

And, thanks in part to strong energy prices, both countries are blessed with strong and growing players. Canadian companies like EnCana Corp. have a big presence in the United States, while large U.S. companies have become large entities in Canada.

The large U.S. presence in the Canadian oilpatch has recently helped strengthen ties, along with defusing flashpoints such as the Alaska subsidy issue. U.S. companies with large interests in Canada's Mackenzie Delta such as ExxonMobil Corp. and Devon Energy Corp., for example, aligned themselves with Canada last year, pressing their case in Washington, where they have more clout than Canadian companies.

It's also an area where Canadian politicians have fared particularly well. Even the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers has been happy with the efforts of Jean Chrétien, federal Cabinet ministers such as Herb Dhaliwal, and provincial premierssuch as Ralph Klein in fostering a healthy energy relationship.

Canada has benefited by becoming the largest supplier of energy to the United States.

Canada rose to No. 1 supplier of oil and refined products to the United States in 1999, shipping 1.9 million barrels a day, moving ahead of Saudi Arabia, Mexico, and Venezuela.

Canada also accounts 94% of U.S. imports of natural gas, shipping 10.4 billion cubic feet a day, or about two thirds of its production.

North American energy markets are working so well, in fact, all Canada may need to do is public relations -- ensure the United States understands that when it comes to energy, Canada is on side, capable and willing.

ccattaneo@nationalpost.com

www.uruklink.net Baghdad, March 14, INA

Minister of Culture Hamid Yousif Hammadi has received Venezuelan solidarity delegation headed by Chief Venezuelan National Cultural Commission Ada Bostino.

Mrs. Bostino expressed Venezuelan artists and educators pro-Iraq attitude in struggling to foil US imperialist schemes . Showing admiration of Iraqi people steadfastness.

She pointed out that Venezuelan people’s different sectors have vehemently slamming US hegemonic policy on the world , saying that US evil administration is the cause of all problems and obstacles facing developing countries in their progress procession . Mr. Hammadi , for his side, welcomed the guest delegation , referring to the ministry’s endeavor to strengthen cultural ties with Venezuela .

www.jihadunspun.com Mar 15, 2003 Source: Bell Globemedia Interactive Inc

The Bush administration's drive to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is so aggressive that even before a war has started its repercussions are being felt in every corner of the world, says Nobel Peace Prize laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel.

The Argentine, who won the 1980 Peace Prize, views President George W. Bush's plans for attacking Iraq with great alarm. "Bush is setting the world on fire," he said.

Mr. Perez Esquivel, a native of Buenos Aires, is an architect, sculptor and teacher. He won the 1980 prize for his resistance to Argentina's Dirty War against leftist rebels. Imprisoned and tortured, he was freed with help from Amnesty International and the Pope.

At 71, he leads the Latin American human-rights group Servicio, Paz y Justicia, and travels widely on behalf of the antiwar movement. He has been in Toronto and Ottawa under the auspices of the church group KAIROS: Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives.

After visiting Iraq last year for a firsthand look at what 12 years of sanctions and U.S. bombing attacks have done to its battered infrastructure, Mr. Perez Esquivel scoffed at the notion that Iraq poses any significant threat.

A U.S. attack, on the other hand, would open "a Pandora's box, threatening to set free the demons of death and destruction," he wrote recently.

"The chief danger in the world today is not Saddam Hussein," Mr. Perez Esquivel said. "It is the United States."

Like other critics of U.S. policy, he perceives in the United States an angry, isolated country inflicting lasting damage on itself. Mr. Perez Esquivel reaches for some words by Abraham Lincoln, quoted by President John F. Kennedy at the United Nations in 1962.

"What Lincoln said more than a century ago is that if the United States doesn't defend life, then it faces the prospect of self-destruction."

Yet unstable as the planet is, Mr. Perez Esquivel fears surging anti-Americanism will make it far more so. Across Latin America, he says, the antiwar sentiment, which has prompted big demonstrations in half a dozen countries, is vigorously feeding long-term resentment over U.S. policies on trade, tariffs, militarization and debt.

"What's happening with Iraq is not isolated, it's part of a global phenomenon. When we see the installation of U.S. military bases throughout Latin America, when we look at [American interference] in countries such as Venezuela and Colombia and Panama, we have to ask ourselves what's going on.

"Lots of people think it and won't say it, but I will say it: The United States is seeking to control the world. That's why we are seeing the reaction in so many countries."

www.miami.com Posted on Sat, Mar. 15, 2003 BY MARIKA LYNCH mlynch@herald.com

UNDER HOUSE ARREST: Carlos Fernandez is guarded by six police officers.

VALENCIA, Venezuela - Not long ago, business leader Carlos Fernández and union leader Carlos Ortega appeared together nightly on television to offer boisterous and confident reports on the progress of a general strike designed to bring down President Hugo Chávez's government. Back then, the president's days in office seemed numbered, and these men were the stars of a rising movement.

But Chávez, the leftist firebrand first elected in 1998, is still sitting comfortably at Venezuela's White House, Miraflores Palace. Fernández is under house arrest for rebellion -- guarded 24 hours a day by six gun-toting police officers in fatigues. And Costa Rica granted Ortega asylum on Friday.

Fernandez's arrest and Ortega's asylum request have dealt a blow to an already staggering opposition movement, which led a failed two-month strike, and now has lost its most visible leaders. Their rise and fall illustrates Chavez's ability to outlast his opponents and remain in power despite the masses against him.

Facing charges similar to those Fernández faces, Ortega was the third of Chávez's opponents to be granted asylum. After entering the Costa Rican Embassy in Caracas, he told officials there that he feared for his safety. Arrest warrants have been issued for seven former striking oil executives, who are in hiding.

For his part in the protest, Fernández, the president of the country's largest business federation, could face up to 24 years in prison. His own business empire is near collapse, and the commotion has aggravated his hypertension. Pale and weakened, he walked gingerly over his tile floors, past the candle-lit virgin statuette, for an interview in his living room this week.

''I am a political prisoner,'' Fernández said from a comfortable, peach stucco house. ``There isn't a crime here. To ask for freedom, to ask that there are opportunities for all Venezuelans, that there are elections as a way out of this crisis -- that can't be a crime.''

Since he was taken into custody outside a Caracas restaurant Feb. 20 -- ''kidnapped,'' he calls it -- Fernández spends his days resting, mostly.

On his 53rd birthday this week, hundreds waved balloons and flags outside his home, and a TV reporter broadcast a misty tribute that branded him a national patriot. But Fernández stayed behind the guarded door.

Still, Fernández says he has no regrets. The strike crushed the economy, hobbled the country's important oil sector and emboldened Chávez even more -- but it also brought nternational pressure on the government.

''The strike unmasked the government's ideological orientation. I think at this height of the game nobody can disagree that the model is totalitarian, autocratic and based on regimes that now have disappeared from the earth,'' said Fernández, who likened Chávez's economic program's to Cuba's.

By business leaders' estimates, about 25,000 businesses were forced to close in December. Thousands of people lost jobs, and the country's oil industry was crippled.

`TERRIBLE THING'

''It broke the economy; it made people poorer. Whether you agree the strike is a success or a failure, it was a terrible thing for the well being of people,'' said Janet Kelly, a political science professor and analyst.

But the effort was worth it, Fernández said, because it moved the country toward a solution by attracting former President Jimmy Carter to Caracas as a mediator and sparked the creation of a ''Group of Friends'' -- representatives from the U.S., Brazilian and other governments who vowed to help resolve the crisis.

Fernández, who immigrated to Venezuela from Spain at age 7 and with his siblings owns a half dozen companies from cement distribution to a construction material factory, was taken by surprise at night last month by armed men who didn't identify themselves. He was held by police who didn't produce a warrant until daybreak. The arrest alarmed human rights advocates, who saw it as a counter-attack by Chávez.

In the government's eyes, the men who led the strike need to pay for the strike's damage to Venezuela's economy. Congressman Rafael Simón Jiménez said he disagrees with the manner in which Fernández was arrested -- his human rights weren't respected, he said. But he says someone should take responsibility for the strike.

''The strike caused irreparable damage to the people of Venezuela, not just the government, but the citizens,'' the former vice president of the National Assembly said. ``We all have to respond for our actions before the constitution and the laws.''

WORSE TROUBLE

Chávez, a former Army paratrooper who led an unsuccessful coup in 1992, was elected with am ambitious promise to alleviate poverty in this South American nation. But the country's economic troubles have only worsened during his tenure, and many in Chávez's power base -- mainly, the large impoverished sector -- have grown disillusioned.

Venezuela's businessmen, never comfortable with Chávez, feel that his populist policies are leading the country to ruin. A coalition of business and union leaders called a strike Dec. 2, asking Chávez to resign or end his term early with new elections. Malls and restaurants closed, the oil industry was crippled and Venezuelans waited hours in line to fill their cars with gas.

But the strike ended, Chávez survived and was even able to get rid of his detractors at the national oil company.

With Fernández detained and other strike leaders in hiding, other vocal opponents have emerged, including Henrique Salas Romer, a former governor who challenged Chávez for the presidency in 1998.

Meanwhile the opposition has collected signatures for an August recall referendum, but its strategy is in a bit of disarray.

Fernández says some kind of political accord should be reached, but remains shy on specifics.

He doesn't foresee more strikes.

www.miami.com Posted on Sat, Mar. 15, 2003 BY DALE K. DuPONT ddupont@herald.com

Gas in South Florida has crashed through the $2-a-gallon barrier.

Prices for higher-grade fuel are inching up over the magic mark, much to the dismay of drivers and dealers.

At a Shell station in downtown Fort Lauderdale, premium was going for $2.08 Friday. A Mobil station across the street was holding the line at $1.99. At a Shell on South Dixie Highway in South Miami, it was about $2.02.

If it's any comfort, the average price for regular in California is already $2.10 a gallon, said Geoff Sundstrom, spokesman for the automotive club AAA in Orlando.

''It's outrageous,'' said John Gauthier, who was filling up with $1.84 regular at a Fort Lauderdale Shell and did a double take upon seeing the premium price.

High-octane prices go with such high-performance cars as Corvettes and Porsches, but 80 percent of all cars run on regular, AAA says.

Station employees say they merely raise their prices when the oil companies charge more.

And when drivers complain?

Leslie Calli, a station manager on North Federal Highway, gives them Shell's customer-service number.

''We aim to offer a competitive wholesale price to our dealers,'' said Shawn Frederick, spokesman for Motiva Enterprises, a Shell affiliate. ``From there, it is up to the independent dealer to set his own street price.''

The American Petroleum Institute cites several reasons for the price hike: the recent strike in Venezuela, which reduced exports to the United States; tight worldwide crude-oil supplies; and nervousness about a possible U.S.-Iraqi war, which has traders bidding up prices.

Oil prices topped $35 a barrel Friday. That's down slightly from several weeks earlier, when they reached $37, their highest level since the last half of 2000.

Before that, oil prices had not hit such levels since late 1990, when the United States was last close to war with Iraq.

''I don't know of any other industry that raises their prices on anticipation,'' said Pat Moricca, president of the Gasoline Retailers Association of Florida, which represents independent dealers.

Through 2002, gas prices were closely tracking the rate of inflation. In March 1993, the national average for regular was $1.11. That translates to $1.39 in 2002 dollars (the latest adjustment figures available).

The actual average last March was $1.239. On Friday, according to AAA, it was $1.715 -- a 38 percent increase. The Consumer Price Index rose just 2.6 percent from last year's.

Yet the current price is not a first for the state, AAA's Sundstrom said. The auto club got reports of $2 in Gainesville and Tampa in early February. (AAA does not track prices by brand.)

Still, $2.08 may be a Florida high, Moricca said.

Wholesale distributors sometimes allow stations to buy only a certain amount when supplies are getting low, Sundstrom said.

In some cases, industry-owned stations can get more fuel than the independents.

''We are on tight inventories of gasoline across the country,'' said Sundstrom, adding that he had not heard of South Florida's being one of those areas.

Moricca sees independent stations as being squeezed because of contract restrictions that prohibit brand-name retailers from buying on the open market the way some big discounters can.

Profit margins should be 15 to 20 cents, he said.

''These dealers,'' he said, ``are working on a penny to five cents.''

And if you're tooling around downtown Fort Lauderdale in a Corvette, here's the price of filling your tank with $2.08-a-gallon gas: $41.60.