www.vheadline.com Posted: Friday, November 08, 2002 By: VHeadline.com Reporters

Residents of the eastern Caracas suburb of Chacao are hoping to collect around 7,000 signatures that they will then deliver to the National Electoral College (CNE) in two weeks time to call for a vote to see is the suburb's residence approve of the continuing protest in Plaza Altamira by a group of dissident military officers calling for a consultative referendum or President Hugo Chavez Frias' resignation.

Many local residents are complaining about the effects the protest is having on transportation in the area and an appeal has already been made to the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ) to order an end to the protest.

Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ) rejects President's CNE request.

The Supreme Tribunal of Justice has declined a request by President Hugo Chavez Frias, asking the Court to set aside recently approved legislation, which prevents the board on the National Electoral College (CNE) from being disbanded until a new board has been appointed.

The refusal will now permit the CNE to continue processing the opposition's petition for a consultative referendum, which will be non-binding, on the President's rule. Despite the resignation of CNE president, Roberto Ruiz, earlier this month the CNE is assuring that it will be able to process the petition and decide on its validity within the 30 day timeframe it previously set out.

www.canada.com Chris Varcoe
Calgary Herald Thursday, March 20, 2003

Oil prices continued to cool off Wednesday, sinking below $30 US a barrel for the first time this year as energy markets expect a brief war in Iraq.

With a U.S.-led war imminent in the Middle East, crude oil for April delivery plunged $1.79 to $29.88 US a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. In London, benchmark Brent crude futures fell 50 cents to $26.75 a barrel on the International Petroleum Exchange.

Industry analysts said overheated oil prices, which ran up to $39.99 a barrel last month, have lost ground due to expectations that Middle East supplies won't be seriously disrupted by a war with Iraq.

"We saw significant speculation running up the price of oil," said Rick DeWolf, an energy analyst and principal with Navigant Consulting in Calgary.

"Now that there's the certainty of war, Saudi Arabia and others have assured the world that there will be sufficient oil supplies."

During the past week, crude prices have tumbled more than 20 per cent. The slide mirrors a precipitous drop that opened the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

"Oil prices just got hammered today. I keep saying we had a war premium last week, and this week we have a peace premium," Phil Flynn, a senior energy analyst with Alaron Trading Corp., in Chicago said. "It's a sign of confidence that this war will go very quickly and very easily."

Military action in Iraq is expected to halt the country's production of oil, which averaged 2.3 million barrels a day last month. Iraq's southern neighbour, Kuwait, may also be forced to shut some oilfields near its northern border.

International oil giant Royal Dutch/Shell Group said Wednesday it had closed an oilfield in Iran, close to the Iraqi border, because of its proximity to the potential conflict zone.

While oil prices hovered above $30 a barrel for the past three months, some industry insiders fear prices could tumble sharply in the weeks ahead as the world becomes awash in crude.

OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia has cranked up output in recent weeks to more than nine million barrels a day to help offset lost oil from Venezuela, which suffered labour disruptions earlier this year. Other OPEC members are producing at capacity.

Crude inventories have also been rising recently in the United States from rock-bottom levels. The American Petroleum Institute reported Wednesday a five-million barrel build-up last week, although the U.S. Department of Energy pegged the number at 400,000 barrels.

The United States is also ready to release oil from its strategic petroleum reserves to prevent a supply interruption, but only as a last resort if OPEC producers are unable to overcome the shortage.

Any decision would probably be taken in tandem with the International Energy Agency, which monitors government oil stocks in 26 industrialized nations.

For Canada, high oil prices have meant climbing energy costs for consumers and many manufacturing businesses, but rising profits for petroleum producers.

"For Canada, oil is a two-edged sword," Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge said Tuesday.

"We see significant income gains, particularly in Western Canada. Those income increases in the West offset the losses in the East where the economy is more closely tied to manufacturing and exports."

With files from Reuters

cvarcoe@theherald.canwest.com

www.canada.com Hanneke Brooymans and Renata D'Aliesio
The Edmonton Journal Thursday, March 20, 2003

EDMONTON - The Edmonton man who was wounded by a gunman in Yemen is in stable condition in a Swiss hospital, and his mother and pregnant wife are now with him.

Mark Edwards and three other oilfield workers employed by Nabors, a Houston-based drilling company, were shot Tuesday by a Yemeni national who later turned the gun on himself. Edwards was the sole survivor of the attack, which took place in the company's oilfield office in the northern province of Marib, about 160 kilometres northeast of the Yemeni capital, Sanaa.

Edwards was in critical condition when he was flown to a hospital in Geneva, Switzerland, Nabors's president Ziggy Meissner said Wednesday.

He said Edwards's health has improved. "He's stable. He's still in intensive care, but he's well under control, so I don't think it's life-threatening anymore.

"We are in no rush to bring him home," Meissner said from Houston, Tex. "The main thing is he's healing up. His family is there and when he's ready to go home, he's going home."

Meissner said Edwards's wife and mother are in Geneva.

Meanwhile, Edwards's next-door neighbour in Edmonton said the oilfield worker was worried about tensions in the area and was looking for another job.

"He told me he didn't want to work in that part of the world because of the situation there," said Minem Saad, a limousine driver. "He was trying hard to find another job, like in the Caribbean."

Saad said he was surprised when his wife called to say Edwards had been shot. "When that happened, I said to my wife, 'He's a tough guy. He'll be all right.' "

He said he had the odd beer with Edwards and often gave him lifts to the airport. Their wives are close friends, he said.

Edwards' wife, Ninotsaka, is pregnant and has been sad and worried a lot, Saad said. "The night before the accident happened she said to my wife, 'I wish he would come back because of the war that's coming.' "

Tuesday's shooting is not considered connected to the American war against Iraq or terrorism.

Edwards, who has two boys from a previous marriage, met his wife while working in Venezuela.

He had been working for Nabors in Yemen since January 2002, and was scheduled to return to Edmonton on April 4.

Edwards would typically work about six weeks in Yemen, then spend a month at home, said Saad.

Richard Durand, who has been Edwards's friend for 10 years, said the news of the shooting shocked him. He often asked his friend if it was safe working in the Middle East.

"I always kidded with him that he should duck those bullets. To think that he actually took one really bothers me."

Edwards has a very strong character and hardly anything ever bothered him, Durand said. "He was catching scorpions out there. He likes a brush with danger. For him, that's a highlight."

Doug Scheelar, a former employer of Edwards, also remembers him as a "very happy-go-lucky guy."

Work on the rig where Edwards was shot has been suspended until Nabors and police complete their investigation, Meissner said.

The company operates six rigs in Yemen, with 50 to 60 workers on each rig. About a quarter of the workers are foreigners.

Nabors has operated in Yemen since the 1980s. Meissner said no other company workers have died there.

Overall, Yemen is a safe place to work, said Meissner. "Yes, you have to deal with the local tribes and sheiks and it is a wild country, no question. But we enjoy good relationships there with the locals. I consider Yemen not any more dangerous than other places in the world."

Over the years, Foreign Affairs has often warned Canadians against travelling to Yemen. On Feb. 21, the federal department advised Canadians to defer travelling to Yemen until further notice. And last week Foreign Affairs advised Canadians to leave if their presence is not essential.

Between 1996 and 2001, about 157 foreigners have been kidnapped, said the Yemen Gateway, a non-partisan resource for researchers, students and journalists.

In 1993, Edmontonian Mike Schmitz, a salesman for an oil-supply firm, was abducted and taken hostage about 100 kilometres south of the Yemeni capital. The kidnappers were using Schmitz as a bargaining tool in a bid to reclaim land confiscated by the government.

Schmitz was eventually released unharmed.

rd'aliesio@thejournal.canwest.com hbrooymans@thejournal.canwest.com

www.recordonline.com March 20, 2003 By Chris Bender Times Herald Record cbender@th-record.com

Threats of war, record cold temperatures and the two-month oil strike in Venezuela, which ended early February, caused the price of propane to skyrocket. In the first week of March, the national average reached $1.72 per gallon, according to the Energy Information Administration. That was the highest price ever on the EIA's price survey, which dates back to October 1990. Customers in the mid-Hudson Valley are paying considerably more than in years past. Porco Gas Service in Marlborough, for instance, is charging 29 percent more this year than last. For the average home heating account, Porco is charging about $1.63 a gallon, up from $1.26 a year ago. Overall, mid-Hudson Valley propane customers are paying an average of 37 percent – or $550 – more a year than last March, according to a New York State Energy Research and Development Authority weekly report. "They [prices] started coming down," said Tom Hesslop, legislative chairman for the New York Propane Gas Association. "But prices are still dramatically above last year." Propane can be found as a gas or a liquid, and is used for heating and cooling homes, cooking and lighting. Approximately 8 million U.S. homes use propane, according to National Propane Gas Association. A typical home with propane heat consumes 1,100 gallons a year, paying an average of $1.84 a gallon, or $2,024 for the year, according to NYSERDA. With the price of oil experiencing record highs, propane prices naturally follow suit because the gas is a byproduct of crude oil and natural gas liquids. Oil prices are currently in the mid-$30s per barrel, an "unprecedented" price for recent years, said Joseph Armentano, president of the New York Propane Gas Association. To ease the financial burden on residential customers, some marketers have set up payment plans to pay bills over an extended period, Armentano said. According to Mike Taylor of Combined Energy Services in Monticello, the cold temperatures this winter caused the pipeline supplying much of the Northeast's propane to run at 25 percent of its total capacity. This prompted price increases for consumers and companies to "spot" buy or purchase propane outside their normal source. It also caused eight- to 12-hour waits for trucks looking to fill up for their deliveries. The Texas Eastern Products Pipeline may be working better due to warmer weather, but the supply for the pipeline is "historically low," said Hesslop. Watkins Glen, Oneonta and Selkirk are the pipeline's three supply terminals providing gasoline and propane for New York state. A sizable portion of the financial strain for local gas companies was transportation expenses from Selkirk to their smaller storage facilities. Taylor spent $1,200 for each tractor-trailer load, $800 more than normal. For now, prices have fallen slightly, but Armentano cautions that at the end of March there may be a major price spike like the ones in February. For now, prices have fallen slightly, but Armentano thinks a war in Iraq could bring another spike.

www.forbes.com Reuters, 03.20.03, 9:04 AM ET By Sujata Rao

LONDON, March 20 (Reuters) - World oil markets have been able to shrug off the effective loss of Iraq's oil exports because its high sulphur sour crude is of precisely the quality that is in abundant supply, traders say.

"It has got to the situation when we actually need a war to get Iraqi crude off the market," one trader with an oil major said. "There is an awful lot of heavy sour crude on the market -- it's a global phenomenon."

As the first U.S. missiles pound Baghdad, the absence of Iraqi crude supplies is hardly being felt as world markets are awash with barrels from the OPEC cartel.

Dealers had believed the loss of Iraq's 1.7 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude could send oil prices rocketing, and necessitate a release from international emergency stocks.

But now they say extra oil is the last thing they need.

"Sour crudes will suffer a lot with this war," said a U.S. trader. "If the U.S. releases crude from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve it will almost all be sour. If there is no release, Saudi Arabia will cover the shortage and Saudi oil is sour."

Sour differentials are hovering near historical U.S. lows of $7 under U.S. benchmark WTI sweet crude, as traders bet a war will be short.

European benchmark sour Russian Urals too is falling steadily from the recent highs caused by shipping delays.

Oil prices which spent most of 2003 above the $30 a barrel mark due to war jitters and the loss of barrels from strike-hit Venezuela, have steadied in recent days, partly because of large output increases by OPEC.

Saudi Arabia, seeking to cushion oil markets against a halt in Iraqi exports, raised supplies in April by up to 12 percent and is already pumping well above nine million bpd of its 10.5 million bpd capacity.

"What Saudi has done is produced more and more in anticipation of war. There is loads of it hitting the U.S. and no one really needs it right now," one player said.

The International Energy Agency, the West's energy watchdog, said on Thursday it saw no need yet to release emergency oil stocks as it was confident OPEC could make up for the shortfall.

But OPEC said the market was oversupplied.

"Oil prices are heading downwards. This shows there is more oil in the market than the market can absorb," OPEC President Abdullah al-Attiyah told Reuters in Doha on Thursday.

EUROPE TAKES VENEZUELAN CRUDE

The last planned shipment of Iraqi crude was set to sail from the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan on Thursday.

United Nations inspectors remain there to monitor exports and Iraq has said it will try to maintain the pipeline flow, but lifters who fear disruptions are not keen to send tankers there. Iraq's Gulf exports have halted.

Analysts say a key issue has been the delay to the war beyond February -- a month when winter energy demand is still high. In the milder second quarter demand usually drops about two million barrels per day.

U.S. refiners, preparing for the summer gasoline season have been running on low sulphur, or sweet, crudes rather than sour. This has started to send sour barrels to Europe in a rare reverse transatlantic arbitrage.

Several European plants have already bought Venezuelan sour crude, which has been falling fast against the U.S. sweet benchmark, and some importers say it is landing in Europe at a $1 advantage to Mediterranean sour benchmark Urals.

"Urals is the last bastion of sour strength. Now with Venezuelan barrels arbing, it is under pressure to correct," one trader said.

Higher Russian exports in summer and the end of weather-linked shipment delays would also pressurise sours.

In Asia, buyers who have received full contractual volumes of Saudi and other OPEC grades, are now shying away from importing their usual diet of sweet West African grades.

"What we have is Asia not taking much West African crude and unwanted Venezuelan in the U.S., backing into Europe," a trader said. "The oversupply problem is just going around the world."

(Additional reporting by Manuela Badawy in New York)