Brazil's crude output reaches record levels

Brazil's National Petroleum Agency (ANP) has said that domestic crude oil output reached record levels in August, as offshore oil installations continued to boost productivity. The country produced 2.078 million b/d in August, up from 2.056 million in July. Production figures for August topped the record of 2.077 million b/d set in April.

Combined domestic crude oil and natural gas production also made record figures in August, reaching 2.471 million barrels of oil-equivalent a day, up from 2.448 million barrels of oil-equivalent a day in July.

August was the first month that the ANP released production figures for Brazil's offshore and inland oil fields. ANP's Director Victor Martins said the agency will now release production figures on a monthly basis in order to, “increase transparency in the agency's activities”.

Source: Wall Street Journal

For more news and expert analysis about Brazil, please see Brazil Focus.

Development of Sinai tourism creates frictions with indigenous tribes

Sinai has always been different from the rest of Egypt. It was not included in Herodotus' celebrated but still apt description of Egypt as the gift of the Nile. It is the bridge between Asia and Africa, the buffer fought over by conquering armies down the centuries. In recent years, the Egyptians have used it as the living emblem of what can be achieved through peaceful negotiation. Egypt recovered the Sinai from Israel as a result of its 1979 peace treaty with Israel.

For Hosni Mubarak, hosting the peace talks and previous major international get-togethers at Sharm el Sheikh helps draw attention to the benefits of jaw-jaw over war-war. Besides which, of course, Sharm el Sheikh is a very pleasant resort and being away from centres of population, it is easier to provide an appropriate level of security there.

However, the rapid development of the tourist industry in the Sinai, often through companies controlled by former regime stalwarts in the military and security establishment, has created frictions with the indigenous tribes. These look down with traditional disdain on the settled peoples of the Nile Valley. But they also resent the way that Egyptians have swamped the area with people from outside the peninsula. Since time immemorial, the Bedouin have survived by trafficking arms, cigarettes, drugs and, increasingly, people through the desert and mountainous region they know so well. Their resentment at the heavy-handed punishments given to miscreants has increased their sense of grievance against a central authority which they scarcely recognise and which they feel has done very little for them.

For more news and expert analysis about Egypt, please see Egypt Politics & Security.

© 2010 Menas Associates

Ghana needs national policy to protect resources

Chairman of the of the Constitution Review Commission (CRC) Prof Albert Fiadjoe has said that Ghana needs a national polity to ensure transparency, equity and accountability in the management of the country's natural resources including oil and gas.

Speaking at a one-day consultation on oil and gas, as part of the Western Regional Hearing and Consultation of the CRC, Fiadjoe said that such a policy would ensure the country's resources are managed properly, and that the stakeholders were brainstorming to find the right constitutional framework for the policy.

Fiadjoe made it clear that Ghanaians and especially those living in the oil find communities must benefit from the resource, and further added that gaps in gaps in the oil and gas regulatory regime must be looked at seriously.

A number of participants at the consultation called for the establishment of a Coastal Commission and Petroleum Commission.

Source: GNA

For more news and expert analysis about Ghana, please see Ghana Politics & Security.

General Vo Nguyen Giap at 100

Hanoi was awash with birthday wishes this month as Vietnamese authorities wheeled out elder statesman General Vo Nguyen Giap to celebrate his 99th birthday, though he is seen as 100 in Vietnamese culture.

Born in 1911 in storm-ravaged Quang Binh province on the north-central coast to a well-off farming family, Giap was educated through the French system. He entered Hanoi University in 1933 to study politics and law. Giap joined the Communist Party in 1931 after spending a year in jail for political activities.

Giap fled Vietnam for China in 1939 when the French made party membership of illegal. It was here that a close friendship and mutual respect developed between Giap and Ho Chi Minh.

While he was in China, Giap's wife sister, father, and sister in-law were arrested in Vietnam and executed. Giap returned to in 1944 and led Vietnamese troops against the Japanese until their surrender in 1945.

The birthday celebrations were incorporated into Vietnam's 2 September independence day observation, which this year marked 65 years since Ho Chi Minh stood in Hanoi's Ba Dinh Square, now the site of his mausoleum, at the end of the Second World War and announced Vietnam's independence from French rule.

The 1945 celebrations were short lived, as British forces arrived in southern Vietnam and Nationalist Chinese controlled northern Vietnam under an agreement signed by allies at the end of the Second World War. British and Chinese troops left Vietnam in 1946 once the French returned.

The independence movement then returned to the countryside and began an eight-year war of insurgency against the returning French government.This also marked the start of General Giap's illustrious military career. He led the Viet Minh troops in numerous victories against the French, culminating in a 54-day battle in the northwestern town of Dien Bien Phu that ended with the surrender of heavily defeated French forces on 7 May 1954.

General Giap went on to command North Vietnamese troops and insurgent Viet Minh troops in the south during the Vietnam War between 1960 and 1975. Though he is often credited with planning the Tet offensive in 1968, it has recently come to light that he was against the plan. It was pushed through by Prime Minster Le Duan and Vietnam's second military leader, Van Tien Dung.

General Giap left Vietnam for medical treat­ment before the Tet offensive began, only to return after the campaign had started. It failed in its main military objective to instigate a general uprising against the South Vietnam­ese government and American involvement and inflicted heavy losses on Viet Minh forces, which took some years to recover.

The offensive did have a huge political and propaganda impact, however, and for many marked the end of America's support for a continued presence in Vietnam. Despite the apparent disagreement between General Giap and Prime Minister Le Duan, Giap continued to wield considerable influence after the reunification of North and South Vietnam. He became defence minister in 1975 and deputy prime minister in 1976.

Though Giap was replaced as defence minister in 1980 and stepped down from the Politburo in 1982, he remained as deputy prime minister until 1991, retiring from politics at 80. Giap commanded Vietnam's military and insurgent forces for more than 36 years against the Japanese, the French, the Americans, the South Vietnamese, and the Chinese, and finally the Cambodian Khmer Rouge in 1979. Historian Stanley Karnow has described General Giap as ranking with Wellington, Grant, Lee, Rommel, and MacArthur.

In retirement, General Giap has remained vocal and often controversial, using his position as elder statesmen to be openly critical of the party and of development in Vietnam. He issues an annual open letter to the party and the press, using the opportunity in 2007 to criticise the educational system. He asserted that it needed a comprehensive, even revolu­tionary, overhaul as education had 'fallen far behind neighbouring countries.'

In 2009, he entered a more controversial debate when he used his open letter to criticise government plans to develop bauxite mining in the central highlands. Addressing the letter to Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, General Giap outlined his support for opponents to bauxite mining, which at the time included Vietnam's scientific community as well as local residents.

Giap called for further study of the proposal, saying that studies going back to the 1980s had shown that bauxite mining could have a "very serious and long-term harmful impact on the environment that could not be remedied".

General Giap's contribution to the debate was not well received by the government and was seen by some as the work of those wishing to discredit Prime Minster Dung. Giap is still a well-regarded figure of the revolution and many make use of his name to support their views.

For more news and expert analysis about Vietnam, please see Vietnam Focus.

© 2010 Menas Associates

Abuse investigation likely to highlight public sector deficiencies

Minister of Employment and Social Welfare Enoch Taye Mensah has set up a nine-member committee chaired by Deputy Minister Antwi-Boasiako Sekyere to investigate allegations of abuse and corruption at Osu Children's Home. Investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas of the New Crusading Guide revealed the abuse in a documentary.

The committee is to review video footage and examine the structure, general and financial administration of the home. Mensah told the committee he also expected it to look at past specific cases of abuse and re-examine the child protection system in Ghana as a whole.

Despite the existence of child protection legislation, he said, it was difficult to get the necessary administrative and budgetary support to implement the laws. There are 127 orphanages and homes in Ghana, he said, most of which did not provide adequate conditions for the children to live in. The government is currently revising adoption laws to make it easier for families to adopt children from orphanages, he said.

For more news and expert analysis about Ghana, please see Ghana Politics & Security.

© 2010 Menas Associates

Libya: Political Old Guard reduced to attrition

The strength of the political Old Guard is being reduced by attrition as age takes its toll and its members cease to be corner stones of the Qadhafi regime. The latest blow in this section is Khalifah Hanaish who for many years was an important apologist for Colonel Qadhafi and manipulator of tribal politics. He is reported to be seriously ill in Austria.

He rose from the ranks to become a general in the Libyan army in charge of aspects of security and armaments, on which issues he reported directly to the Leader. His loyalty was total and until two years ago, he was an important player in the circle around the Leader.

This process of attrition is gradually reducing the number of experienced and dependable senior personnel available to the Leader in his management of the country. As new individuals take over the reins of influence, so the regime will be less confident of its base.

In an interesting lecture to the Lawyers Union in Tripoli, a speaker made the point that the Revolutionary Committee movement and indeed, the revolutionary committees themselves are illegal under the present law since no parties are allowed to exist. He pointed out that the evolution of the movement has meant that the majority of ministers in the cabinet have always been from the ranks of the revolutionary committees.

It will be recalled that in recent years only two ministers have not had close connection with the revolutionary committees – Mustafa Abdel Jallil who was Minister of Justice and was nominated by Saif al-Islam Qadhafi and the head of NOC, Dr Shukri Ghanem whose alliance with Saif al-Islam was among the reasons for his accession to the cabinet. The narrowness of the cabinet's origins tells of the poverty in organised political activity and indicates that a popular dissident leader would face limited opposition in the country.

For more news and expert analysis about Libya, please see Libya Focus and Libya Politics & Security.

© 2010 Menas Associates

What effect will the election have on Brazil's energy sector?

Before becoming Lula's Chief of the Civil Cabinet and his right hand, Dilma Rousseff had been his Minister for Mines & Energy and chair of Petrobrás. Throughout Lula's eight-year mandate, she remained in control of the energy sector, under the political dominance of PT and PMDB parties.

The results were not encouraging. The sector today reflects the government's general proclivity towards nationalism and state interventionism. Petrobras' capitalisation has been an unmitigated mess, as has been the entire pre-salt institutional framework. These tendencies are likely to persevere under Dilma's tenure as president. Moreover, she is prone to greater influence than Lula by the radical wing of the PT party, which translates into a statist, xenophobic and anti-capitalist bias.

There might be more overtures to South American energy integration, but in practice this means yielding to the demands of Brazil's 'Bolivarian' neighbours led by Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez, plus Paraguay, thus continuing Lula's failed scheme of a "diplomacy of generosity" at the expense of the Brazilian taxpayer.

If the former São Paulo governor and main opposition candidate, José Serra, wins the presidency, there will be none of the latter, and indeed the model for the energy sector will most likely consist predominantly of public-private partnerships (PPP), for which laws are now in effect, but, under Lula, not enough political will to implement them.

Dilma can be expected to pursue Lula's national-developmentalist strategy, in the energy sector, as well as Brazilian infrastructure in general.

For more news and expert analysis about Brazil, please see Brazil Focus.

© 2010 Menas Associates