www.channelnewsasia.com First created : 14 March 2003 0831 hrs (SST) 0031 hrs (GMT) Last modified : 14 March 2003 0831 hrs (SST) 0031 hrs (GMT)

World oil prices slumped on Thursday as the twisted road to war in Iraq appeared to lengthen, warm weather approached and Venezuela pumped more crude.

In New York, the reference light sweet crude contract for April delivery skidded US$1.82 to US$36.01 a barrel.Advertisement

In London, the price of Brent North Sea crude oil for April delivery slid US$1.44 to US$32.47 a barrel.

Traders said wrangling at the United Nations had further delayed a vote on a new resolution that could pave the way to war with Iraq.

They added that US President George W Bush had run in a diplomatic tangle in the UN Security Council.

The US, looking for a way around French, Russian or Chinese vetoes, said it could allow a UN Security Council vote on war against Iraq to slip into next week or even forgo the vote altogether.

Expectations of lower fuel demand as spring approached in the northern hemisphere also weighed on prices.

News that Venezuela had recovered from strike action to push production up to 2.95 million barrels a day depressed prices.

On Tuesday, oil ministers of members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed to maintain current production quotas but pledged to avert shortfalls in the event of war.

news.independent.co.uk By Steve Connor Science Editor 14 March 2003

The Maya disappeared more than 1,000 years ago, leaving pyramids, a unique form of writing and a network of lost cities in the deserts and jungles of Central and South America.

For two centuries archaeologists have speculated why their civilisation collapsed, with theories ranging from civil war to overpopulation and environmental degradation.

Today, an international team of scientists publishes powerful evidence pointing to a series of devastating droughts over a period of 150 years, which played a pivotal role in ending one of the most intriguing cultures in human history.

Cores drilled into the muddy sediments of the Cariaco Basin of the southern Caribbean Sea have identified three intense droughts around AD810, AD860 and AD910, which correspond to the periods where the Maya are thought to have abandoned some of their cities.

The scientists, led by Gerald Haug, professor of geology at the GeoForschungSzentrum institute in Potsdam, Germany, conclude in the journal Science that a change in the climate pushed the Maya civilisation into terminal decline. "These data suggest that a century-scale decline in rainfall put a general strain on resources in the region, which was then exacerbated by the abrupt drought events," they say.

The Mayan civilisation, which existed for about 2,000 years, disappeared around AD900. The Mayans mastered a system of counting, were able to chart the movements of the stars and planets and established a rich commercial trade and ritual tradition based on bloodletting and human sacrifice.

Their disappearance went unnoticed until the early 19th century when an American explorer, John Lloyd Stephens, discovered the lost Maya city of Copan deep in the South American jungle.

The civilisation stretched across much of what is now southern Mexico, Belize and Guatemala. Its history extends over a period of two millenniums, with the culture blossoming and the population growing to between 3 million and 13 million people in the "classic" period between about AD250 and AD750.

But Professor Haug said the civilisation experienced a "demographic disaster" between AD750 and AD950. Many of the densely populated cities were suddenly emptied. Eventually the civilisation collapsed, with only a fraction of the Maya population surviving.

Some archaeologists suggested that the demise was caused by civil war between competing Maya groups. Others suggested migration, disease, over-farming, or a combination of these factors.

The sediments from the Cariaco Basin off the coast of Venezuela contained seasonal layers of titanium deposited into the basin by local rivers – making the amount of the titanium an accurate indicator of regional rainfall.

Previously, archaeologists estimated the years when Maya cities were abandoned by analysing the last dates carved into the local monuments. Professor Haug found a remarkable match between this archaeological evidence and the dates of the worst periods of drought estimated from the lowest levels of titanium in the Carioca Basin.

Water was an important natural resource for the Mayan people– they went to great effort to collect rainwater in cisterns and to build an extensive network of canals and irrigation channels.

For small villages, a relatively short drought of even a few years would not perhaps have caused mass deaths but for a large urban centre with a dense population such droughts could easily prove terminal, Professor Haug said.

Decline and fall - end of great empires

Lost civilisations and abandoned cities are the stuff of historical fiction but there are many true-life examples. The monument of Great Zimbabwe, right, is the most famous stone building in southern Africa. It is thought to have been built over a period beginning in 1200 and ending around 1450 but not everybody agrees on who was responsible. The most likely are the Karanga people.

For hundreds of years the lost city of Angkor Wat, left, in present-day Cambodia, was legendary. Peasants told French colonists of "temples built by gods or by giants". Stories told of a lost civilisation but archaeologists realised the city was the centre of a Cambodian civilisation, built more than 2,000 years ago but abandoned after invasion by the Thais.

The mystery of the huge statues on the Easter Islands, right (now called Rapa Nui), can also be explained by the rise and fall of a "lost" civilisation. When people first arrived on Rapa Nui, they quickly exploited the palm forests and planted banana trees and taro root. The population flourished until the 17th century but the depletion of natural resources led to a severe fall in numbers, raising questions over who was responsible for the statues and how they were moved to these remote islands.   14 March 2003 23:09

www.japantoday.com Friday, March 14, 2003 at 09:20 JST

CARACAS — Venezuela's polarized political crisis does not need a binding mediation by the OAS secretary general, the Chavez administration said Thursday.

"We consider him (OAS chief Cesar Gaviria) a facilitator, not a mediator. Mediation introduces a binding element which we believe Venezuela's situation does not warrant," said Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel.

Rangel told journalists that an eventual change in Gaviria's functions - which the opposition proposed during the last meeting of the Friends of Venezuela group - would introduce "an element of binding international mediation," that is it would obligate the parties to accept the Organization of American States' head's decisions.

Gaviria has been sponsoring a dialogue between President Hugo Chavez's administration and the opposition since Nov 8 to seek an electoral, democratic, constitutional and peaceful solution to the ongoing political conflict between government supporters and opponents.

Rangel said that the opposition's efforts during the second Friends of Venezuela meeting that took place in Brasilia last Monday failed because its proposal to have Gaviria mediate in the conflict, instead of merely facilitating the talks, was rejected.

Administration and opposition representatives at the negotiating table are presently discussing two proposals tendered last January by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter.

Carter's first proposal calls for a constitutional amendment to reduce the presidential term from six to four years, the institution of a runoff presidential election and a number of other changes.

The second proposal calls for a referendum to be held on Aug 19 - which is the midway point in Chavez's presidential term - to determine whether the Venezuelan leader should step down. Although the opposition prefers the constitutional amendment, the administration reiterated Tuesday in a written document its desire that a referendum be called on Aug 19 as the Constitution currently establishes.

If the administration's option wins out, the opposition would need only to file a formal request to set the referendum process into motion.

Rangel noted that any electoral option would be the exclusive concern of the National Electoral Council, "which is an autonomous and independent power." But "in order for any electoral process to take place in Venezuela, the National Electoral Council must first be formed," Rangel said. (EFE News)

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.