Christy Espinosa / <a href=www.valleystar.com>Valley Morning Star

Jack Nelson stands in front the warehouse where the remainder of the sugar cane sits on the floor in Santa Rosa. Nelson was named Sugar Man of the Year for his contribution to the nation’s sugar industry. By TONY VINDELL tonyv@valleystar.com 956-430-6203

Working for the sugar cane industry for more than four decades has given Jack Nelson the thrill of his life.

Before retiring as president and chief executive officer of Rio Grande Sugar Growers Inc., Nelson received the Dyer Memorial Award Sugar Man of the Year for his contribution not only to the sugar cane industry in the Valley and the United States.

Nelson, who lives in Harlingen, said he was honored to get such a distinction.

He said being selected as the 2002 recipient meant competing again about 350,000 people who work for the industry nationwide.

"It’s a great honor to get this award," he said, "because you never figure you are going to get it."

This is the 45th time the award, named after B.W. Dyer, a sugar broker from New York City, has been given out since the first Sugar Man of the Year was recognized back in 1958.

"Your activities in the local community have been consistent with your steeling contribution to the sugar industry," read parts of citation Nelson received in May in New York City. "For over 43 years you have repeatedly distinguished yourself as a pioneer, scholar, innovator, agronomy expert and highly respected sugar industry leader."

Nelson, a member of the First United Methodist Church in Harlingen, has volunteered countless hours to many organizations.

Nelson’s career with the sugar industry began in 1960.

He worked for the Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association, helped developed the Amarah Cane Sugar Project in Iraq and worked at Ingenio Riopaila in Colombia.

His career in the Valley began more than 30 years ago and he has since dedicated about half f of his life working to improve the quality of sugar cane for the sugarhouse owned by Valley growers.

Nelson said the Valley sugar industry began with 25,000 acres, compared to the 48,000 acres cultivated today.

He said one of the things that makes him feel proud is the fact that he is leaving a highly productive crop and operations.

Nelson said growers produced one of the best years during the 2002-03 season, and although it was wasn’t compared to the bumper crop they harvested three years ago, this one was the best in sugar content.

He said he received the award while he was still on board at the sugarhouse and plans to retire later this year.

But he is not about to throw in the towel.

"I am going to work on a consultant basis," he said.

"I will be doing that here in Santa Rosa as well as in Guatemala, Venezuela and other places where I am needed.

"I am in pretty good shape to call it quits."

Slice of Life suggestions should be sent to City Editor Dave Ralph or Managing Editor Lucio Castillo by phoning 430-6206 or at davidr@valleystar.com.

The Washington Post, Friday, June 20, 2003; Page A25

Everyone agrees that the United States is far too dependent on imported oil. Liberals say we need to conserve more. Conservatives say we need to produce more.

It is the most ridiculous debate on the American political scene. We obviously need to do both. Every barrel added to domestic production and every barrel subtracted from consumption has the equivalent effect of reducing our dependence on unstable and unfriendly foreign producers.

Since the invasion of Kuwait 13 years ago, the U.S. military has been on active patrol in the world's oil patch. With American soldiers at risk securing our oil economy, liberals have to be willing to discomfit a few caribou and allow us to start pumping new oil from Alaska. If we'd listened to their arguments the last time around, we would today be without the million barrels a day we get from the North Slope.

Liberals also need to get over their allergy to the cleanest form of energy, nuclear power. The administration has proposed support for a new generation of safer nuclear reactors. You'd think environmentalists would be enthusiastic. Nuclear energy is remarkably benign: no greenhouse gases or other pollutants strewn in the air, the water and your lungs. Of course, like all energy, nuclear has its pollutant -- there is no free lunch -- but in this case you can find it, concentrate it, put it in box cars and ship it off to some Godforsaken mountain in the desert.

Yes, it will be a hazard to humans or whatever species succeeds us in 10,000 years or so. That is a pity. But we do have more immediate problems. Like today's terrorists, who are fueled by Saudi and other oil money.

Conservatives, too, will have to give up some cherished positions to encourage reductions in consumption. One of the reasons they have resisted consumption controls is our history of heavy-handed regulatory schemes. Mileage standards (CAFE, for corporate average fuel economy) on automobile fleets hugely distort the economics of the auto industry and indeed helped create the entire sport utility vehicle explosion (an unforeseen consequence of CAFE standards that treated SUVs as trucks and thus subject to less-stringent mileage requirements).

We must reduce oil consumption. The easiest way to do it is simply to artificially raise the price of oil -- i.e., tax it.

Oil is currently selling at about $30 a barrel. Slap, say, a $5 (or $10 -- the bazaar is open) tax on every imported barrel. And most important, keep the new price -- let's say $35 -- as a floor. The world market price is likely to fall as Iraqi oil comes online, as Venezuela stabilizes and as Russian and Caspian producers ramp up production.

This presents a wonderful opportunity to capture the fall in oil prices in the form of taxes. Say oil drops to $20 a barrel. Raise the import fee to $15 a barrel, so the consumer keeps paying $35 a barrel net. The windfall goes to the U.S. Treasury.

The benefits of such a scheme are enormous. Fixed and fairly expensive oil prices will induce consumers to cut oil consumption. It won't happen overnight. People are not going to junk their SUVs, but they will begin to make choices favoring greater fuel efficiency over time, as they did when oil prices rose in the 1970s.

The windfall to the Treasury can also be beneficial if the scheme is kept strictly revenue-neutral: Every penny of the import fee should be returned to the private economy in the form of (1) lower taxes (my choice: lower payroll taxes) and (2) a government check to poor folks to compensate for their higher fuel costs.

If the oil import fee is high enough, consumption will be depressed, which will further reduce the world price and further increase federal oil tax revenue (and thus reduce payroll or other taxes), creating a virtuous cycle whose most important effect is a reduction in our dependence on foreign oil.

You can play with the numbers. You can alter the tax to create the desired reduction. You can debate whether it should be slapped just on gasoline or on all imported hydrocarbon energy. (Economist Irwin Stelzer of the Hudson Institute is fleshing out this idea.)

But what is important is the principle: Increase production -- Alaskan oil and nuclear energy, for starters -- and decrease consumption by taxing imported oil.

It is a simple solution. It requires only that each side recognize the virtue of the other's argument. Which is why in today's Washington it doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of passage.

Taipei Times, Friday, Jun 20, 2003,Page 12

°?Electronics AAFES to buy Chinese TVs The US military will buy 45,000 high-definition televisions from Xiamen Overseas Chinese Electronics Co, one of China's biggest appliance makers, China's state-owned Xinhua News Agency said, citing the Xiamen Daily newspaper. The Army and Air Force Exchange Service, a purchasing agency, will take delivery now of 5,000 of the sets, capable of delivering sharper pictures than conventional TVs, Xinhua said. Xiamen Overseas will deliver the balance within a year. The report didn't give a value for the contract. Chinese appliance makers including Xiamen Overseas, Sichuan Changhong Electric Co and Konka Group Co may be assessed anti-dumping tariffs by the US after the US International Trade Commission ruled on Tuesday that cheap Chinese and Malaysian sets are hurting American producers.

°? Policy Mercosur pledges effort South American leaders agreed Wednesday to keep working toward greater regional integration by strengthening their countries' political and economic ties through the Mercosur trade bloc. The presidents of the Mercosur trading nations issued a communique at the end of a two-day summit here and expressed support for the group, whose members have been battered by economic crises over the last year. The leaders voiced their commitment to "the strengthening of Mercosur, with the aim of sustainable development of its member countries and their competitive insertion into the global economy." Mercosur members Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay held their biannual meeting at a riverside resort in the Paraguayan capital. Chile and Bolivia are associate members and Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez attended as a guest.

°? Computers Microsoft defends actions Microsoft Corp and the Bush administration defended their antitrust settlement, and the world's largest software maker urged a US appeals court to reject Massachusetts's call for tighter restrictions on its business practices. Micro-soft, which negotiated the settlement after the appeals court ruled the company illegally protected its Windows monopoly, said the agreement was approved by a trial judge who "considered but rejected" more restrictions. "The relief that Massachusetts seeks is so extreme that its own economist would not support several key aspects of it," Microsoft said in a brief filed with the appeals court in Washington. The settlement requires Microsoft to give computer makers freedom to promote rival software on personal computers powered by the Windows operating system. Windows runs 95 percent of the world's PCs.

°? Airlines NZ warns air carriers New Zealand's consumer watchdog, the Commerce Commission, has warned airlines to stop hiding extra charges that can add up to 44 percent to the price of cheap advertised fares, a news-paper reported yesterday. It said burying extra charges such as levies, taxes and insurance in the small print of advertise-ments misrepresented the price of fares, The New Zealand Herald said. Director of fair trading Deborah Battell said the commission was concerned about inadequate disclosure in advertisements. "When businesses are advertising, they should be advertising the price people have to pay," she said.

June 19, 2003, 11:26PM By MICHAEL DAVIS Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle

Unocal Corp. will soon decide if it will build a $500 million deep-water offshore port that would move crude oil through underwater pipelines to Texas refineries.

This could allow refiners to avoid transferring oil from supertankers to smaller ships to get it onshore, reducing the risk of spills in Galveston Bay or sensitive areas near shore.

But Unocal still has to convince refiners by showing the savings on fees.

"We've been working on the project for about two years," said Michael Wilems, vice president of the Unocal subsidiary doing the project, BOOTS LLC.

"We looked at the supertankers that were coming into the Gulf of Mexico and what we could do to relieve the cost, based on lightering fees and ports fees."

The facility would be similar to an existing one named the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, or LOOP. Located 18 miles south of Grand Isle, La., LOOP receives oil from tankers and moves it onshore through a pipeline.

The proposed Unocal facility would have its own catchy acronym -- BOOTS -- which stands for Bulk Oil Offshore Transfer System.

Because Texas ports are not deep enough to accommodate supertankers, oil arriving from places like the Middle East and Venezuela must be lightered. Crude is transferred from the supertankers, holding up to 2 million barrels, to smaller ships that take the oil to the refineries.

Environmentalists tend to favor moving oil onshore via pipelines as opposed to a tanker.

"Shipping petroleum products by a pipeline is often the safest route as long as the pipeline is monitored and any releases are immediately detected," said Chuck Wemple, executive director of the Galveston Bay Foundation.

"Pipelines aren't perfect, but as far as loss of life or damage to the environment, they are better than tankers or barges."

BOOTS would be a deep-water port 100 miles south of Beaumont, capable of offloading tankers at rates up to 1.2 million barrels per day.

The port would be capable of receiving vessels transporting crude oil from domestic Gulf of Mexico deep-water production fields.

The offshore port would be in a depth of 100 feet, deep enough it could berth a Very Large Crude Carrier class tanker, the largest that carries oil.

Before building it, Unocal has to prove the demand is there to justify the expense. It's doing that by asking for commitments from shippers to use the facility, in a process known as an open season.

Unocal said it has received expressions of interest for 500,000 barrels per day of the facility's capacity and is seeking further commitments for 700,000 barrels per day.

The open season ends July 3, and the company will make a decision in a few weeks, based on the commitments it receives, said Wilems.

The system could be in operation by 2007, assuming the company receives sufficient commitments and the necessary permits. Unocal plans to seek project financing.

Unocal has deep-water production that will be coming on line in a few years, Wilems said, and the port could be an alternative to shuttle tankers for that oil, although the economic feasibility is being judged on third-party users initially.

The offshore port would never replace the use of tankers to move oil into the area refineries.

Oil and petroleum products are the largest imports into the Port of Houston every year.

In 2001, about 670 million barrels of oil and petroleum products came into the port.

Valero Energy Corp., the nation's largest independent refiner, has not committed to using the facility, but the company would be interested if it could lower its transportation costs, a company spokeswoman said.

BOOTS and the LOOP would not be competing for customers because they serve different areas, Wilems said.

"We are addressing a completely separate market from the LOOP," said Wilems.

"We would be serving the Texas Gulf Coast, so there would be very little competition with the LOOP."

A spokeswoman for LOOP agreed that the facility would not be competing for its customers along the Louisiana coast.

The LOOP has a design capacity of 1.4 million barrels per day but usually handles 1 million barrels per day.

"It will be more complimentary to our operations," said Barb Hestermann, a spokeswoman for LOOP. "It's going to replace lightering."

The company estimates the facility would save users up to 60 cents per barrel in transportation costs.

"A new deep-water port and related pipelines will provide a more-efficient crude oil offloading facility that would result in reduced handling requirements, port calls and transit times, thus reducing costs and risks associated with the movement of crude to Gulf Coast refineries," said Joe Blount, president of Unocal's midstream and trade unit.

By Steve Schifferes BBC News Online, Washington

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is calling on President George W Bush in Washington at a time when US-Latin American relations are at a low ebb.

Lula has already stepped onto the international stage

During the Iraq crisis, the failure of usually reliable allies like Mexico and Chile to support the case for war deeply dented relations between the US and the nations south of its border.

Now, the leader of Latin America's largest economy, Brazil, has come to Washington to repair the damage.

Although Lula was also an opponent of the Iraq war, Brazil holds the key to the Latin American relationship, and President Lula is relishing his role as a bridge between other nations and the giant in the North.

It represents the best opporutnity in many months to get hemispheric relations back on track former Clinton chief of staff Mack McLarty

His agreement is also crucial for the United States if it wants to proceed with ambitious plans to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas by 2005, linking economies from Alaska to Argentina in a single economic zone.

The Brazilian president will be accompanied by no fewer than 10 cabinet ministers, in the biggest Brazil-US summit since World War II when President Frank D Roosevelt persuaded Brazil to join the war effort.

It could mark a new phase in the relations between the Western hemisphere's two biggest powers.

"Brazil represents the biggest regional opportunity for the US, but also the biggest challenge," writes former Clinton chief of staff Mack McLarty in the Washington Times.

"(The meeting) represents the best opporutnity in many months to get hemispheric relations back on track."

'Anchor of stability'

Lula, who began life as a firebrand trade union leader, has matured into a highly respected manager of the Brazilian economy who has won plaudits from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Lula's domestic reforms have provoked trade union protests

He has stabilised the currency and promised to tackle Brazil's large public sector deficit while targeting spending on the reduction of poverty and hunger.

"There is a recognition of mutual interest on the part of the US in Brazil's success. Brazil can be a very large anchor of stability," said former US ambassador to Brazil Anthony Harrington.

IMF managing director Horst Koehler says that Lula is doing an outstanding job in managing the economy and he is "deeply impressed."

The United States is the largest investor in Brazil, with 400 companies and investments of $30bn (£20bn), and Brazil exports some $15bn (£10bn) worth of goods to the US.

But Lula would like to ensure greater access for Brazil's huge agricultural sector to US markets before agreeing to any trade deals.

And Brazil would like to strengthen Latin America's own regional trade pacts, like Mercosur (which binds Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay), before proceeding to a pan-regional deal.

Meanwhile, the US is pressing ahead with bilateral deals, and recently concluded a free trade pact with Chile.

Brazil's ambitions

Under Lula, Brazil is trying to assert what it believes is its rightful place as the economic and political leader of Latin America after years of economic crisis and political turmoil.

He told the Brazilian Congress he was carrying out reforms to "transform our nation into a developed country that conquers the place it should have already occupied in this globalised world".

And, speaking at this week's Mercosur summit, he promised to work every minute to consolidate the dream of Latin American unity.

Lula is hoping that, by presenting a common front, Latin American countries can win concessions on trade from the US.

Meanwhile, American policymakers are increasingly looking to Brazil for help in resolving some of the most difficult hemispheric issues - including the confrontation between US companies and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, and the drug-trafficking issues in the Andes states.

Brazil and the US "have built strong, open relationships in the last few years," says Brazil's ambassador to the US Ruben Barbosa.

Despite their ideological differences, George Bush and Lula are both strong leaders with a down-at-home philosophy and a penchant for getting things done.

Now the challenge is to see whether Brazil can become the vehicle to rehabilitate the strained relationship between the US and Latin America.