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

story.news.yahoo.com Thu Mar 13, 5:27 PM ET Add Science - AP to My Yahoo! By PAUL RECER, AP Science Writer

WASHINGTON - A study of southern Caribbean sediments suggests that a centurylong dry trend may have been the killing blow in the demise of the Mayan civilization that once built pyramids and elaborate cities in Mexico.

Konrad A. Hughen, a geochemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said sediments from the Cariaco Basin in northern Venezuela clearly record a long dry siege that struck the entire Caribbean starting in about the seventh century and lasting more than 100 years.

Within this dry period, said Hughen, there were years of virtually no rainfall. It was in those periods of extra dryness, he said, that the Mayan civilization went through a series of collapses before its final demise. Hughen is co-author of a study appearing Friday in the journal Science.

The Cariaco Basin is on the southern Caribbean; the Mayan lived for about a thousand years on the Yucatan, now part of Mexico, on the northwestern edge of the Caribbean. Hughen said both areas share the same climate, with a wet season and a dry season, so the dry trend detected in the Cariaco Basin sediments is thought to reflect the same climate experienced on the Yucatan.

Hughen said the Maya flourished in what is known as the pre-classic period before 700 A.D., building cities and elaborate irrigation systems to support a population that soared above a million. The civilization collapsed and many of the sites were abandoned early in the 800s. They were later reoccupied only to collapse again, with some cities deserted in 860 and others in 910.

"Those abandonments occur synchronously with the timing of the droughts in our record (from the sediments), suggesting the droughts were causing those events," said Hughen.

The sediment records show that the gradual drying started about 1,200 years ago, but there was still enough rain for the Mayans to flourish.

"They were still getting rain, but clearly it was less than their grandparents did," said Hughen. "Then, all of a sudden, there were periods of nine, three and six years when there were very dry conditions."

He said the populations were already stressed by a trend of sparse rainfall and the "exceptionally severe" periods were enough to cause the collapses.

"A severe event didn't have to be long" to force the Mayans to abandon some sites, said Hughen. "Each one of those dry events resulted in the collapse of a certain portion of the Mayan population."

A severe dry spell in 910, he said, "was the last straw."

Mayan communities in the southern and central lowlands collapsed first, while those in the northern highlands lasted for another century before the final collapse.

"The northern areas had access to more ground water resources," said Hughen. "They were able to weather the first and second dry periods, but not the third."

T. Patrick Culbert, a professor emeritus at the University of Arizona and a noted authority on the Mayan culture, said the climate study offers a plausible explanation of what happened to the Mayans.

"They were so vulnerable that anything could have knocked them over," said Culbert. "If there were these severe droughts, it would have been a disaster for them."

Takeshi Inomata, an associate professor at the University of Arizona who studies early American civilizations, said the study by Hughen and his colleagues supports other studies linking climate to the Mayan collapse. There could have been other contributing causes, he said.

"The general climate problems may have contributed to the Mayan collapse, but that isn't all that we need to consider," Inomata said. "It may have been more complex than that."

On the Net: Science: www.sciencemag.org

www.newratings.com 03/13/2003 Wachovia Securities

NEW YORK, March 13 (New Ratings) — Analyst Yves Siegel of Wachovia Securities upgrades Hanover Compressor Company (HC: NYSE) from "market perform" to "outperform." Shares of Hanover Compressor Company, an oilfield services and drilling company, are currently trading at $6.00. According to Wachovia Securities’ research note, Hanover Compressor Company has overcome the worst contract compression conditions in 4Q02. Wachovia Securities mentions that the company is likely to exhibit improved results in its global compression operations, despite the problems in Venezuela. The analyst believes that the stock is attractively valued at the current level. The analyst, however, expresses caution regarding the Venezuelan situation and the company’s failure to attain the projected cost savings and restructuring targets. The EPS estimates for 2003 and 2004 are $0.30 and $0.70, respectively. The P/E estimates for 2003 and 2004 are 20.0x and 8.6x, respectively. Wachovia Securities upgrades Hanover Compressor Company from "market perform" to "outperform."