www.dailytimes.com.pk

SINGAPORE: Oil prices held strong on Thursday after the US government reported a decline in fuel stocks, leaving only a thin supply cushion to cover US needs if war should break out in Iraq. US light crude dipped five cents to $37.78 a barrel, just $3.37 below a record high of $41.15 set during the 1990-91 Gulf crisis. London’s Brent crude lost six cents to $33.85 a barrel. Latest data from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) underpinned concerns over a possible supply crunch in the world’s biggest oil consumer, as Washington remains poised to launch an invasion of Iraq, the eighth-largest crude exporter. The EIA reported US crude inventories falling almost four million barrels to 269.8 million, below the government’s suggested level for smooth operations and matching a 27-year record low hit in early February. “Given the reported ramping of OPEC production and the continued recovery of Venezuelan production, the shortfall is shocking,” SG Securities said in a note. The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has stepped up output this year to cover an outage of crude from Venezuela, where an anti-government strike brought production to little more than a trickle at one point. Venezuela, normally the fifth-biggest exporter providing about 13 percent of US oil imports, has increased shipments of crude and oil products as the two-month strike to topple President Hugo Chavez has crumbled. Rebel oil workers pegged oil exports at 1.14 million barrels per day (bpd) in early March, still well below the 2.7 million bpd it shipped before the strike began in early December. Crude has risen 20 percent this year on concerns that a war in Iraq could upset oil supplies from the Middle East. With about 300,000 U.S. and British troops in the Gulf region, US officials said Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had “days, not weeks” to prove he had complied with UN demands for Baghdad to give up all weapons of mass destruction. OPEC, which controls 60 percent of world crude exports, pledged earlier this week to ensure adequate supplies should war break out. But the International Energy Agency, adviser on energy to 26 industrialised nations, said in its monthly oil market report on Wednesday that OPEC’s spare production capacity had been squeezed to 900,000 bpd following the recent output increases. “This is less than the potential loss of supply in the event of war in Iraq,” said the Paris-based IEA. Iraqi output, running at 1.7 million bpd over the past month, would be expected to be halted in the event of war. In addition, Kuwait has said it might need to suspend as much as 700,000 bpd as a precaution. “The market is heading into a period of heightened uncertainty with low stocks and limited spare production and shipping capacity. A further supply disruption would tax a system operating at close to capacity,” the IEA said. —Reuters

www.11alive.com • www.atlantagasprices.com • www.aaa.com

ATLANTA (AP) -- Pat Williams had to reach deep into her pockets when gassing up her champagne-colored Lexus SUV at the BP station in Atlanta. The bill for her biweekly fill-up rang up to $38, as Georgia's gas prices hit a record high Thursday, according to the AAA Auto Club. "I think it's very disppointing. Unfortunately, it's even higher in Florida, where we are a lot," Williams said. "Now, with the economy, it's not the time for me to buy a new car... but it just takes a lot of gas to run an SUV." The state known for posting the lowest gas prices in the nation recorded an average of almost $1.56 per gallon for regular unleaded gas, sailing past its previous record of $1.47 per gallon set in May of 2001. Drivers in Savannah suffered the biggest strain on their wallets, paying an average of nearly $1.60 per gallon Thursday. Georgia was just one of 17 states to break gas price records over the past week. Other states posting record highs include:    • Alaska    • Alabama    • Arizona    • California    • Florida    • Louisiana    • Maine    • Mississippi    • North Carolina    • Nevada    • Oregon    • South Carolina    • Tennessee    • Utah    • Vermont    • Washington San Francisco came in with the highest price in the country at $2.25 cents per gallon. AAA, which surveys more than 60,000 gas stations daily, has been tracking prices since the mid-1970s.

"We really saw a lot of speculative pricing in the fourth quarter of 2002 because the talk of war with Iraq has been going on for a while," said Gregg Laskoski, spokesman for the AAA Auto Club South, which serves Georgia, Florida and parts of Tennessee.

Experts have also attributed increases to lowered supplies from the harsh winter and West Coast refineries switching over to corn-based additives from MTBE, an additive that is blamed for polluting drinking water after it leaked from storage tanks, which temporarily cut gas supplies. Geoff Sundstrom, spokesman for AAA's national office, said the biggest price jumps have come in the West Coast and Southeast. West Coast increases came largely from the annual changeover from winter to summer gasoline formulas, which temporarily restricts supply. California, Washington and Nevada are among those states with the earliest changeover deadlines.

Price increases in the Southeast have been exacerbated by the oil strike in Venezuela, which supplies as much as 13 percent of U.S. fuel -- particularly to that region.

"When that oil strike came about, those fuel sources almost diminished to nothing," Laskoski said, adding that the effects of that strike are expected to be felt though the latter part of this year.

Sundstrom said drivers can expect prices to continue rising, as the rest of the country also gradually converts to cleaner burning fuel.

"We'll get a better feel this summer once everybody implements their warm weather fuel blends," he said.

www.canada.com Canadian Press Thursday, March 13, 2003

PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad (CP) - Australian energy and mining giant BHP Billiton plans to spend $327 million US in developing its first oil and natural gas field in Trinidad, a project partly owned by Canada's Talisman Energy Inc.

BHP estimates the field off the northeast coast of Trinidad - not far from the prolific oilfields off the coast of Venezuela - contains 160 million barrels of oil and 1.75 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Talisman, the Calgary-based company that is one of Canada's most international oil producers, has a 25 per cent stake in the Trinidad project. French oil giant TotalFinalElf, owns 30 per cent.

The Trinidad oilfield is one of several new projects Talisman believes will help the company replace lost oil production from its controversial Sudanese joint venture, which Talisman sold for $1.1 billion in a deal that closed this week.

Talisman was unable to comment about the BHP announcement Thursday, but energy analyst Brian Prokop of Calgary-based Peters & Co. said the Trinidad play is "a field of size."

"And it will also identify Trinidad as a new area for Talisman," he said, noting the company is currently doing exploratory onshore work in the Caribbean island as well.

"Obviously they think there's some potential there, otherwise they wouldn't have purchased assets on the eastern side of the island."

Talisman is also expected to profit from the working relationships with TotalFinaElf, one of the world's largest energy companies.

Talisman is also expecting production from new projects offshore Malaysia and Vietnam as well as Algeria to regain its reputation as a developer of significant oil properties throughout the world.

On the Toronto stock market Thursday, Talisman shares (TSX:TLM) fell 53 cents to close at $58.87 Cdn.

When operating, the new field will boost Trinidad and Tobago's output of crude oil by nearly 70 per cent. Government officials have said such an investment will bring new wealth to the Caribbean country.

The first oil from what is being called the Angostura Oil and Gas field is scheduled to be pumped by the end of next year. The field has an estimated production life of 19 to 24 years, the company said in a statement.

"With our sanction of the Angostura project, Trinidad and Tobago will become a core development area for BHP Billiton," chief executive Philip Aiken said. He said once "production begins, Angostura will be one of the company's largest operated assets."

The company, based in Melbourne, Australia, is a diversified resources company with interests in oil, natural gas, aluminum, coal, iron ore, titanium minerals, nickel, diamonds and silver.

In Canada, BHP owns and operates the Ekati diamond mine in the Northwest Territories, Canada's first diamond mine, which began production in the late 1990s.

Trinidad and Tobago's economy, already based largely on oil and natural gas, currently produces 150,000 barrels of oil a day. BHP expects the Angostura field will produce 100,000 barrels a day.

www.alternet.org By Deborah Knight, Grist March 13, 2003

Joy Grant was born in a house with no indoor plumbing in the tiny Central American country of Belize. That was 52 years ago. Last year, she accepted one of the top positions at the U.S.-based Nature Conservancy. For both parties, the marriage is a calculated gamble.

I spent a morning with Grant recently in Belize City. Her voice has a throaty roughness to it, softened by the Belizean Creole lilt. She founded Programme for Belize, a private nonprofit conservation organization that during her 12-year tenure acquired 300,000 acres of forest land – 4 percent of the country.

Impressive as that was, the organization operated in a country the size of Massachusetts with an annual budget of just $2.5 million. The Nature Conservancy, by contrast, is a $250 million-a-year organization, and Grant was brought on as program director for one-third of its global operations: the U.S. mid-Atlantic and southern states, the Carribean, and Central America. "I had to think about that," she said, "moving onto the world stage."

To show me her roots, Grant drove me around Belize City. She steered with unflappable precision through its crammed streets: cars parked along either side, narrow or nonexistent sidewalks, bicycles, pushcarts, pedestrians, vendors selling bananas on the sidewalk. We passed the unpaved alley where the house in which she was born once stood (it burned down a few years ago) and the drugstore around the corner where her father worked 60 to 70 hours per week as a pharmacist.

As a child, Grant conducted much of the family's banking and shopping, because she always negotiated the best deals. We passed her old high school, where in her senior year she was selected as "head girl" based on her grades and leadership. Her parents had the highest expectations for their three daughters, within the constraints of the world as they knew it: "Since we had only girls, my father would say, 'I want you to be the best secretary Belize has ever seen,'" Grant told me.

After high school, Grant worked for a year for Barclay's Bank, then went to Alberta, Canada – "a cold shock" – where she earned a bachelor's degree in commerce and a master's in business administration. From there, she went to Barbados for eight years, where she worked for the Caribbean Development Bank. She approved loans for development projects in 13 Caribbean countries, but back then, she says, no one ever considered the environmental impact of a project. "For an Antigua fisheries project, we considered how many people can you employ, will they be able to pay the loan back. Whether the amount of fish you were taking was sustainable never entered into the equation."

Grant next went to work for the Belize Embassy in Washington, D.C., where one day some people from the Massachusetts Audubon Society made a presentation to the prime minister of Belize about a proposal to buy 110,000 acres of land in Belize and turn it over to a local entity for conservation. It was Grant who kept asking questions, and the next day, she recalls, Massachusetts Audubon called her and said, "'You caught onto this concept. We have money for a salary for three months. Would you like to start an organization to protect this land in perpetuity?'"

At the time, Grant knew nothing about environmental issues. She was intrigued, however, by the idea of creating something from scratch, something that would last, as she put it, "beyond me." She returned to Belize in 1989, assembled a board for her new organization, and got herself out into the "bush," where she learned about birds, snakes, and red-eyed tree frogs. With help from a number of U.S. scientists and funders, including the Nature Conservancy, she aggressively acquired additional land and embarked on projects that she hoped would use a portion of the land to produce local income and jobs in an environmentally friendly manner.

Back then, the idea of sustainable development was not yet well-known, let alone well accepted, Grant says. One of her projects involved logging mahogany by cutting a limited number of trees and removing them carefully from the forest to limit damage to the surrounding ecosystem. She won two different sustainability certifications for the operation, but in the end, could barely sell the logs at all, and certainly not for any premium. She also pursued ecotourism, building cabanas and dormitories that now house visitors and school groups.

You Gotta Belize

At the Nature Conservancy, Grant is the only member of the seven-person top management team who was born outside the U.S. She sees part of her role as getting her fellow managers out "in the mud." She took the organization's information systems manager into the jungle in Guatemala, by helicopter, foot, boat, and car, then by boat to Belize. Now, she says, he understands why people in the field can't be online monitoring their email all day. She took the human resources manager to Costa Rica, where they released turtle hatchlings and went into the forest to learn about the local trees. "It's crucial," she said, "if we are to be a global organization that the leadership understand what global means."

"Certain things I would take for granted that everybody knows, they don't know," she said. For example, in the U.S., the Nature Conservancy has long followed the model of owning land to protect it – but in developing countries, this model often doesn't work. "I know that if you try to set large tracts of land aside in the developing world, you have to get buy-in of the local people. You cannot police it," Grant said. Rather than recreate its original model everywhere, Grant says, the Nature Conservancy must work with local partners to develop conservation methods that involve the community. "People," she said, "are the key to everything we do."

Dan Campbell, the director of the Nature Conservancy's program in Belize, worked with Grant for years when she ran Programme for Belize. He sees her entry into the Nature Conservancy's top management as a reflection of a larger change in the organization, from simply buying land and setting it aside to a more varied approach that encourages greater involvement of local community members such as fishers, ranchers, and indigenous people. This change, he says, is occurring in the U.S. as well, although it has been driven by the organization's international work. In this sense, he says, the tail is wagging the dog, because just 20 percent of the Nature Conservancy's work is international. "We have an organization that sometimes tries to reduce things to models that don't fit the culture of the nations where we work," Campbell says. "Joy can hold up a mirror and say, 'This doesn't work.'"

Grant is leading the charge on a new project: development of a greater Caribbean basin marine program that would stretch from Cuba to Venezuela. The program will require the cooperation of at least 20 countries; in many of those, the Nature Conservancy doesn't yet have a presence. "I am taking a huge risk," Grant told me. When I asked her if she'd consulted with groups in all these countries first, she seemed surprised. No, she had simply seen the need and launched herself into the project. Now, though, she is spending a lot of time involving local people in planning the program. That, Dan Campbell told me, is vintage Joy Grant: someone willing to launch into something new, but rooted in cautious, methodical implementation.

On the wall in Grant's part-time office in Belize hangs a line drawing of a tropical tree draped with vines. Young sprouts erupt from its trunk, but a thick buttress holds it solidly in place. "I think I know that tree," Grant told me. "It's a mahogany." I couldn't help but see a resemblance.

Deborah Knight is a freelance writer living in San Diego. She writes primarily about environmental topics.

www.scoop.co.nz Friday, 14 March 2003, 11:01 am Press Release: US State Department

Remarks to the U.S. Senate Youth Program

Richard L. Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State Benjamin Franklin Room Washington, DC March 4, 2003

Well thank you, Mr. Rordam and Mr. Willis [Albert Rordam and Larry Willis, participants in the Senate Youth Program] and thank you all. That s as nice an introduction as I ve ever had, and I m very grateful.

Now let me welcome all of you to this beautiful Ben Franklin room at the Department of State. Let me give you the advertisement first. The advertisement is it s paid for entirely by private funds, no public money We have to tell our Members of Congress that when they come here and see such a splendid place, because they immediately think about cutting our budget. [laughter] These are all your fellow citizens donations. And they make us quite proud, and it very much represents the history of our country.

This is quite fitting, I think, that a room such as this should be known as the Ben or Benjamin Franklin room. Not just because it is the site of many festive occasions, and good food and an occasional glass of wine. But also because this is where some of the most serious affairs of statecraft are concluded and conducted. And as you have no doubt already been reminded, Ben Franklin was this nation s first diplomat.

Some 226 years ago, Ben Franklin traveled to France to secure assistance in our struggle to establish an independent state. Now, I believe we all were taught about Lafayette and about the Statue of Liberty, about the longtime connection and affection between France and America. But I don t recall ever learning in school how hard it was to actually forge that link. Indeed, Franklin s primary mission in France was to persuade a very reluctant King and his court to abandon the policy of neutrality they had held at the time and to actively support the American cause against the British. It was slow going. At one dinner, a condescending nobleman turned to Mr. Franklin and said; It is a grand game you are playing in the colonies with the British what a fine spectacle you are offering us. A frustrated Franklin shot back Yes, but the spectators unfortunately are not paying up. [Laughter.] I believe the French have a saying, what is it, the more things change, the more they stay the same? [Laughter.]

Certainly, the work of diplomats hasn t gotten any easier in the centuries since. Nor, apparently, has our relationship with France. But in most other aspects and respects, I think it is safe to say that the world is seeing a great deal of change right now. And indeed, your visit to this city comes at a particularly eventful time. This week started in Pakistan with the capture of Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, whom we believe to be the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, and it will end on Friday with the report of UN weapons inspectors, Mr. Blix and Dr. el-Baradei, on Iraq s disarmament. Now I m sure all of us are watching with some interest the destruction of a few al-Samoud missiles in Iraq, but those missiles are simply a drop in the bucket. According to the United Nations, Iraq still has thousands of chemical and biological munitions and warheads, as well as tons tons of chemical and biological weapons and precursors. And we haven t said a thing about the 25,000 liters of anthrax. But of course, Iraq is hardly our only concern at the moment. We were speaking at the table about the developments on the Korean Peninsula, where 37,000 American men and women continue to serve, and on any given day, about 140,000 of our citizens are present in Seoul or the immediate environs. The tough talk coming out of Pyongyang would, for that reason and more, be of direct concern to us in any case, but it is especially troubling given that we now know that government is actively pursuing a nuclear weapons program. Actively pursuing that program while six million North Koreans are at risk of starving to death. The situation is grim, but I do believe, as our President said, that we will be able to grope and crawl and fight our way through to a diplomatic solution. And, of course, this Department is going to be working closely with our allies and our partners in the region, in northeast Asia, toward that very end.

And just last week, you may have seen in the papers, Afghan President Hamid Karzai came to Washington to discuss the future of that country. While there is no question that the 23 million people of Afghanistan are far better off today than they were under the rule of the Taliban and al-Qaida, there is still plenty of work to be done. Both in terms of ongoing military operations against terrorists and the international humanitarian effort to stabilize the situation.

While I would say that Iraq and North Korea and Afghanistan are certainly some of the main focal points for State Department activity now, they are not our only priorities. We have Americans today being held hostage by drug-running thugs in Colombia and violent unrest cropping up in Cote D Ivoire and in Venezuela. This morning, some of my colleagues testified on Capitol Hill about the Millennium Challenge Account, our new foreign aid program, which will deliver billions of dollars to countries most in need and most able to put the money to good use, for the benefit of their citizens. And tomorrow, Congress will look at our HIV/AIDS programs and prevention around the world. I should note that this terrible pandemic has the potential to be one of the most destabilizing and disastrous international tragedies in my or your lifetimes.

Moreover, these priorities don t even begin to account for the day to day work that goes into forming this nation s foreign policy. In fact, the people sitting at your tables, hosting your visits here today, in many cases, my colleagues, are a good representative sample of our work. They do everything from negotiating the finer points of treaties and agreements to sharing our nation s best values and best visions with the rest of the world. Many of your hosts basically keep this building running, including by making sure the thousands of visitors who come here are treated right and, along with our own employees, are kept safe. Basically, the bottom line is that what the people in this room do every day, in fact, everything we do in this Department, it all matters, in an immediate and sometimes in an urgent way. And it often has a lasting effect.

Now, as the Deputy Secretary of State, it s my job to keep track of all of this work, both as the Chief Operating Officer to Secretary Powell, who s the Chief Executive Officer, and also as an adviser to the President. I can tell you that I ve fought battles in my time for this country in war. I built my own business in a time of peace. I ve traveled around the world. I ve tried to cherish my family here at home. But the fact is that nothing, nothing, has been quite like working here.

Working in government, especially in this place at this time, is really in a way like being in the center of a maelstrom. It s exciting. It s terribly addictive. And, I must admit, it can be exhausting. But I have to tell you that this is the life, the life of public service, that no matter what I do and where I go, keeps calling me back to Washington.

I m going to make an assumption that all of you are at least seriously considering a career in public service. You d not have been selected for this program, indeed, for this prestigious program, if you weren t. And I d like to say that this is an important time for you to make that choice. Indeed, I think it s an important time for all of our brothers and sisters to make a choice.

September 11th taught us all that we can no longer afford to look at the safety and security of our lives as somebody else s responsibility. It s no longer a matter of someone else s son or daughter, or for some of you in this room, maybe your father or mother, defending our interests halfway around the world. Because the front line of this fight is not only in the caves of Tora Bora. On September 11th, it ran through the 104th Floor of the North Tower. And the 4th Corridor of the Pentagon E-ring. In October of last year, 2002, it ran through a nightclub in Bali. And last weekend, it ran through an apartment in Pakistan. The stark truth is that our way of life is under attack. And in that sense, all Americans are on the front line. And so we all need to know what it is we stand for and we all need to take a stand.

We need to know that we stand for liberty of belief and for freedom of action. Fairness. Justice. Full protection of the rule of law. The right to opportunity for all. The energy and optimism of the American spirit. But we also need to know that we are hardly alone in holding these values. No one in this world wants to be denied the right to worship God, or to speak or to think freely. No one wants to hear the midnight knock of the secret police, come to take away a loved one in the dead of night. No one wants to be denied the ability to put food on the table or children in school.

And that is why today, we are taking a stand in Afghanistan and in Iraq. I know there is a tremendous amount of concern around the world and in our own country and in this room, I m sure, about both situations. And in particular, how to handle Saddam Hussein. I think it s quite understandable. I ll tell you that one of the more difficult challenges of governance is learning to ask the right questions. But finding the right solutions is, without a doubt, and order of magnitude more difficult. There is rarely an obvious way to address even the simplest foreign policy matter. War is, without question, never going to be this nation s preferred solution. Never. War is horrible. And as Vietnam veterans, I think both Secretary Powell and I believe we have a special responsibility to do everything in our power to see that the mistakes our government made then are not repeated today.

At the same time, we as a nation can t allow a sensible reluctance to fight prevent us from using force if force is necessary to protect and defend thisnation. And the fact is that this nation, and, indeed, the United Nations, cannot afford to stand idly by while Saddam Hussein, a ruthless, ambitious dictator with no regard for international law and the will of the community of nations or even for the welfare of his own people, keeps and continues to amass chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

And I think all Americans, regardless of whether we are marching in formation or in protest, we all share a fundamental belief that this is a nation worth defending. So today, we must all be prepared to take a stand not just in Afghanistan and not just in Iraq, but also here at home.

There is a scene toward the end of Shakespeare s Macbeth where, after amortizing his soul and nearly every shred of his humanity to ambition, Macbeth has a moment of clarity, when he realizes what he has done and he speaks with devastating insight about the futility of life. It is a tale told by an idiot, he says, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. And while Macbeth s circumstances were extraordinary, to say the least, far too many people in our country will reach the end of their lives to find themselves haunted by that same sentiment. But all of you in this room today have a chance to see something different when you stop and you take stock of your lives and yourselves, because you have a chance to live a life of significance.

At a remembrance ceremony this past September 11th, our President said; There is a line in our time and in every time, between the defenders of human liberty and those who seek to master the minds and souls of others. Our generation has heard history s call and we will answer it. So, in these coming years as you define your futures, I challenge each of you to find your own way to answer that call, to rediscover for your generation what it truly means to be an American in this world. And to redefine the concept of citizenship as a personal test of commitment, as well as an affirmation of the dynamic values and durable ideals that make us all American.

Indeed, I hope this week in Washington helps you in that endeavor and I certainly appreciate the opportunity to talk with all of you, the next Greatest Generation. [End]

Released on March 13, 2003