STOP NATO: �NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- ListBot Sponsor -------------------------- Start Your Own FREE Email List at http://www.listbot.com/links/joinlb ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [DynCorp has been implicated in flying attack helicopters during operations in southern Colombia against the FARC. This wouldn't be the first time that US organizations tied to the US State Department would be implicated in drug trafficking. Of course Colombia's National Institute of Legal Medicine is by no means an "independent" body, as it is state controlled, and any confirmation that DynCorp was involved in heroin smuggling would completely deligitimize the US presence in the region! Thus the clean bill of health. Nonetheless these allegations should be followed closely because they are more than likely to continue re-appearing over the coming years] Colombians clear U.S. firm of heroin suspicion BOGOTA, Colombia, July 16 (Reuters) - Colombian investigators have cleared a U.S. firm that is playing a key role in a massive anti-drug offensive of suspicions that some of its workers might have been sending heroin to the United States. An official at Colombia's National Institute of Legal Medicine said on Monday that new tests had shown that motor oil samples sent by Reston, Virginia-based State Department contractor DynCorp did not contain illegal drugs. The U.S. Embassy said last week that an initial test at Bogota airport in May 2000 had detected what could have been heroin in two motor oil samples. The company regularly sent samples of oil to its offices at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida for maintenance purposes, but the find raised suspicions that someone might be trying to smuggle heroin. DynCorp supplies crop dusting pilots and other personnel in the Plan Colombia anti-cocaine offensive, which is the recipient of about $1 billion in mainly military U.S. aid. The embassy said last week it had not been informed of the results of the new, more accurate tests, which the institute carried out the same month that suspicions emerged. Institute officials and Colombia's National Police, which had requested the tests, said last week that they did not know what the results had been. 18:19 07-16-01 [The OCP Pipeline mentioned in the article below has met huge public sector and civil society disaproval in Ecuador. As you will see bellow, there is a very CANADIAN element to all this. Alberta Energy Corp is the main interest holder in OCP's construction. Local and environmental groups have been particularly vociferous in opposing the proposed "northern route" for this pipeline citing the fact that it crosses 90+ seismic fault lines and through the Mindo nature preserve (which has one of the world's largest concentrations of bird species, many of them unique to the region) as evidence that the pipeline poses a serious environmental threat. Furthermore as Ecuadorian Armed Forces, with the assistance of US military advisors begin undertaking operations to cut the guerrillas lines of communication in norther Ecuador, it is feared that the FARC will retaliate by hitting the pipelines. This is a further source of potential problems. Finally, the groups opposing the "northern route" have proposed an alternate route to the south - which would be more expensive - but the potential environmental impact a lot lower.] AEC Enters New Growth Era in Ecuador with Start of OCP Pipeline Construction CALGARY, July 18 /PRNewswire/ - Alberta Energy Company Ltd. has embarked on a major oil growth initiative in the South American nation of Ecuador, founded upon the start of construction of the 450,000 barrel per day Oleoducto de Crudos Pesados (OCP Pipeline). On July 5, OCP started building the 500-kilometre, US$1.2 billion pipeline after receiving final regulatory approvals in late June. "This is a watershed event for the future of Ecuador. The start of construction illustrates the vision and foresight of the people of Ecuador, the Government of Ecuador and the partners in the OCP consortium. For more than a decade, lack of export capacity has prevented Ecuador from realizing the economic potential of its petroleum resources. The OCP Pipeline is a vital building block for the future of Ecuador. It will double Ecuador's oil pipeline capacity and encourage new investment. By mid 2003, new volumes of oil will be flowing to international markets," said Gwyn Morgan, AEC's President and Chief Executive Officer. OCP recently signed a fixed-price, engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract with Techint International Construction Corp., an international engineering and construction company based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The pipeline will run from Ecuador's interior oil fields, across the Andes Mountains, to a port on the Pacific Ocean. AEC is the largest interest holder in OCP with 31.4 percent. The other partners are: Repsol-YPF of Spain, 25.7 percent; Perez Companc of Argentina, 15.0 percent; Occidental Petroleum of USA, 12.3 percent; AGIP of Italy, 7.5 percent; Techint of Argentina, 4.1 percent; and Kerr-McGee Corp. of USA, 4.0 percent. Project financing, led by Westdeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale (West LB) of Germany, is being finalized and is expected to fund US$900 million of the estimated US$1.2 billion capital cost. AEC's equity investment is expected to be US$16 million in 2001 and US$80 million in late 2002 and in 2003. Project financing will be used to fund construction through most of 2002. "The start of OCP construction is a major milestone in a very clear strategy to combine AEC upstream and midstream strengths to create shareholder value. In 1999, we targeted South America's Oriente Basin, a highly attractive and under-explored region with significant growth potential. The Oriente holds an estimated 5 billion barrels of undiscovered reserves and several billion barrels of undeveloped potential in existing fields. But the country's oil growth had long been constrained by a single export pipeline operating at full capacity. AEC's entry into Ecuador marked the first time a producer with oil pipelining as a core business entered the basin. I'm proud of the role AEC Pipelines has played in achieving this vital project," Morgan said. AEC entered Ecuador through our 1999 acquisition of Pacalta Resources, which was then producing about 36,000 barrels per day. Through development and additional investment, AEC's Ecuador production is now about 53,000 barrels per day. Once OCP is complete, scheduled for the second quarter of 2003, AEC plans to double production to more than 100,000 barrels per day. AEC's 100 percent owned Tarapoa Block will be developed to productive capacity estimated at 80,000 barrels per day, while AEC's 40 percent share of Block 15 will be developed to reach a projected 30,000 barrels per day. Full cycle finding and development costs are expected to be less than US$4.50 per barrel. With OCP construction underway, AEC has increased its capital spending budget for Ecuadorian oil exploration and development by US$56 million this year. This will go primarily to drill appraisal and delineation wells in the Eden Yuturi field on Block 15, which holds an estimated 60 million barrels, net to AEC. The Company's proved and probable reserves in Ecuador were 287 million barrels at year-end 2000 and the Company holds 726,000 net acres of exploration lands. AEC's Ecuador oil production through the new pipeline will be marketed to existing buyers and new customers. Current production is sold to Western Hemisphere refiners - about 60 percent to the U.S. West Coast, 25 percent to South America and the remainder to buyers along the U.S. Gulf of Mexico and Eastern Seaboard. Construction of the 450,000 barrel per day OCP Pipeline is expected to open new investment in Ecuador's upstream sector. The pipeline is expected to have 60,000 barrels per day of spare capacity. AEC plans to participate in upcoming bidding rounds on new exploration lands. AEC will also pursue opportunities that may open up in existing oil fields as a result of the Government of Ecuador's privatization initiatives. "The OCP development means that AEC now has exceptionally strong growth in all three of our operating platforms - Canada, the U.S. Rockies and now Ecuador," Morgan said. AEC is focused on Growth, Value and Performance as it builds a Super- Independent oil and gas company. This strategy capitalizes on the world-class assets and high-quality, long-life reserves that AEC has established in its three strong growth platforms - Western Canada, the U.S. Rockies and Ecuador. Last year, the Company set a target to double production from existing assets within five years. As one of North America's largest independent oil and gas producers, AEC's daily production is expected to exceed 380,000 barrels of oil equivalent in 2001. The Company is also looking to establish additional growth platforms through new ventures exploration in Alaska, the Mackenzie Delta, Australia, Congo and Azerbaijan. Midstream natural gas storage and oil pipelines assets comprise approximately 20 percent of the Company's asset base and provide a growing source of cash flow. Currently, AEC's enterprise value is approximately C$13 billion. AEC's Common Shares trade on The Toronto Stock Exchange (AEC) and on the New York Stock Exchange (AOG). A map of the pipeline route is located on AEC's web site: www.aec.ca. ADVISORY - Certain information regarding the Company set forth in this document, including management's assessment of the Company's future plans and operations, may constitute forward-looking statements under applicable securities law and necessarily involve risks associated with oil and gas exploration, production, marketing, and transportation such as loss of market, volatility of prices, currency fluctuations, imprecision of reserves estimates, environmental risks, competition from other producers and ability to access sufficient capital from internal and external sources. As a consequence, actual results may differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements. SOURCE Alberta Energy Company Ltd. CO: Alberta Energy Company Ltd. ST: Alberta IN: OIL Ecuador government employees to strike for pay QUITO, Ecuador, July 16 (Reuters) - Public sector employees called for an indefinite strike starting on Tuesday to demand better pay in Ecuador, where two-thirds of the population lives in poverty. Some 41,000 government employees in the Education, Health, Labor and Social Welfare Ministries among others are expected to join the strike. "We are asking for salaries to be balanced out so they cover 75 percent of the basic basket of goods," the president of the Public Servants' Federation (Conseup), Hector Teran, told Reuters on Monday. A strike by public sector doctors and health workers has already halted medical services nationwide, except for emergency room care, for close to two weeks. Teran said that with an additional $40 million -- about 10 percent of what it cost the government to capitalize two state-controlled banks earlier this year -- public servants could gain a decent salary. Ecuador is struggling to recover from an economic crisis that led the government to dollarize the economy in April 2000 to halt the devaluation of the poor Andean nation's currency and curb Latin America's highest inflation. According to the state Institute of Statistics, the basic basket of goods for a family of four costs about $289 a month, while a family's average monthly income is just $201. About 67 percent of Ecuadoreans live in poverty, according to the institute. 12:47 07-16-01 [The Ecuadorian government has sunk nearly a billion dollars of Western loan money into restructuring the country's collapsed banking sector (as a result of elite coruption), for an eventual mass selling-off to outside investors. In fact, most of the IMF program has only been concerned with shoring up this sector of the economy and has imposed measures that extract the highest price for this reconstruction from the poorest in Ecuadorian society.] Ecuador mulls state-controlled Filanbanco options QUITO, Ecuador, July 16 (Reuters) - Ecuador is analyzing ways to strengthen state-controlled Filanbanco, one of the country's biggest banks, which include splitting it up or merging it with another entity for reprivatization, the Banking Superintendent said on Monday. Filanbanco was taken over by the government in December 1998 due to a lack of liquidity amid a financial crisis where nearly half the country's banks fell into state hands. "There are several alternatives subject to analysis at this time. One is 'good bank, bad bank,' in theory. The other is that the bank can continue on its own two feet since right now it is undergoing internal improvements, cost reduction," Banking Superintendent Miguel Davila told Reuters. Another option would be to merge Filanbanco with another financial institution, possibly state-controlled Banco del Pacifico, he said. ING Baring, hired by the government to aid in the administration of Filanbanco, said in late June that a reprivatization of the institution is viable. In May, the government capitalized Filanbanco with $300 million in state bonds to strengthen its capital adequacy ratio, which failed to meet international standards. Filanbanco posted $957.5 million in assets, $942.2 million in liabilities and $587.5 million in deposits in April 2001, according to figures from the Banking Superintendency. Analysts consider that banks are the weak link in Ecuador's economy, which was slammed by a 7.3 percent decline in gross domestic product in 1999. 14:38 07-16-01 >> ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Colombians clear U.S. firm of heroin suspicion BOGOTA, Colombia, July 16 (Reuters) - Colombian investigators have cleared a U.S. firm that is playing a key role in a massive anti-drug offensive of suspicions that some of its workers might have been sending heroin to the United States. An official at Colombia's National Institute of Legal Medicine said on Monday that new tests had shown that motor oil samples sent by Reston, Virginia-based State Department contractor DynCorp did not contain illegal drugs. The U.S. Embassy said last week that an initial test at Bogota airport in May 2000 had detected what could have been heroin in two motor oil samples. The company regularly sent samples of oil to its offices at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida for maintenance purposes, but the find raised suspicions that someone might be trying to smuggle heroin. DynCorp supplies crop dusting pilots and other personnel in the Plan Colombia anti-cocaine offensive, which is the recipient of about $1 billion in mainly military U.S. aid. The embassy said last week it had not been informed of the results of the new, more accurate tests, which the institute carried out the same month that suspicions emerged. Institute officials and Colombia's National Police, which had requested the tests, said last week that they did not know what the results had been. 18:19 07-16-01 AEC Enters New Growth Era in Ecuador with Start of OCP Pipeline Construction CALGARY, July 18 /PRNewswire/ - Alberta Energy Company Ltd. has embarked on a major oil growth initiative in the South American nation of Ecuador, founded upon the start of construction of the 450,000 barrel per day Oleoducto de Crudos Pesados (OCP Pipeline). On July 5, OCP started building the 500-kilometre, US$1.2 billion pipeline after receiving final regulatory approvals in late June. "This is a watershed event for the future of Ecuador. The start of construction illustrates the vision and foresight of the people of Ecuador, the Government of Ecuador and the partners in the OCP consortium. For more than a decade, lack of export capacity has prevented Ecuador from realizing the economic potential of its petroleum resources. The OCP Pipeline is a vital building block for the future of Ecuador. It will double Ecuador's oil pipeline capacity and encourage new investment. By mid 2003, new volumes of oil will be flowing to international markets," said Gwyn Morgan, AEC's President and Chief Executive Officer. OCP recently signed a fixed-price, engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract with Techint International Construction Corp., an international engineering and construction company based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The pipeline will run from Ecuador's interior oil fields, across the Andes Mountains, to a port on the Pacific Ocean. AEC is the largest interest holder in OCP with 31.4 percent. The other partners are: Repsol-YPF of Spain, 25.7 percent; Perez Companc of Argentina, 15.0 percent; Occidental Petroleum of USA, 12.3 percent; AGIP of Italy, 7.5 percent; Techint of Argentina, 4.1 percent; and Kerr-McGee Corp. of USA, 4.0 percent. Project financing, led by Westdeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale (West LB) of Germany, is being finalized and is expected to fund US$900 million of the estimated US$1.2 billion capital cost. AEC's equity investment is expected to be US$16 million in 2001 and US$80 million in late 2002 and in 2003. Project financing will be used to fund construction through most of 2002. "The start of OCP construction is a major milestone in a very clear strategy to combine AEC upstream and midstream strengths to create shareholder value. In 1999, we targeted South America's Oriente Basin, a highly attractive and under-explored region with significant growth potential. The Oriente holds an estimated 5 billion barrels of undiscovered reserves and several billion barrels of undeveloped potential in existing fields. But the country's oil growth had long been constrained by a single export pipeline operating at full capacity. AEC's entry into Ecuador marked the first time a producer with oil pipelining as a core business entered the basin. I'm proud of the role AEC Pipelines has played in achieving this vital project," Morgan said. AEC entered Ecuador through our 1999 acquisition of Pacalta Resources, which was then producing about 36,000 barrels per day. Through development and additional investment, AEC's Ecuador production is now about 53,000 barrels per day. Once OCP is complete, scheduled for the second quarter of 2003, AEC plans to double production to more than 100,000 barrels per day. AEC's 100 percent owned Tarapoa Block will be developed to productive capacity estimated at 80,000 barrels per day, while AEC's 40 percent share of Block 15 will be developed to reach a projected 30,000 barrels per day. Full cycle finding and development costs are expected to be less than US$4.50 per barrel. With OCP construction underway, AEC has increased its capital spending budget for Ecuadorian oil exploration and development by US$56 million this year. This will go primarily to drill appraisal and delineation wells in the Eden Yuturi field on Block 15, which holds an estimated 60 million barrels, net to AEC. The Company's proved and probable reserves in Ecuador were 287 million barrels at year-end 2000 and the Company holds 726,000 net acres of exploration lands. AEC's Ecuador oil production through the new pipeline will be marketed to existing buyers and new customers. Current production is sold to Western Hemisphere refiners - about 60 percent to the U.S. West Coast, 25 percent to South America and the remainder to buyers along the U.S. Gulf of Mexico and Eastern Seaboard. Construction of the 450,000 barrel per day OCP Pipeline is expected to open new investment in Ecuador's upstream sector. The pipeline is expected to have 60,000 barrels per day of spare capacity. AEC plans to participate in upcoming bidding rounds on new exploration lands. AEC will also pursue opportunities that may open up in existing oil fields as a result of the Government of Ecuador's privatization initiatives. "The OCP development means that AEC now has exceptionally strong growth in all three of our operating platforms - Canada, the U.S. Rockies and now Ecuador," Morgan said. AEC is focused on Growth, Value and Performance as it builds a Super- Independent oil and gas company. This strategy capitalizes on the world-class assets and high-quality, long-life reserves that AEC has established in its three strong growth platforms - Western Canada, the U.S. Rockies and Ecuador. Last year, the Company set a target to double production from existing assets within five years. As one of North America's largest independent oil and gas producers, AEC's daily production is expected to exceed 380,000 barrels of oil equivalent in 2001. The Company is also looking to establish additional growth platforms through new ventures exploration in Alaska, the Mackenzie Delta, Australia, Congo and Azerbaijan. Midstream natural gas storage and oil pipelines assets comprise approximately 20 percent of the Company's asset base and provide a growing source of cash flow. Currently, AEC's enterprise value is approximately C$13 billion. AEC's Common Shares trade on The Toronto Stock Exchange (AEC) and on the New York Stock Exchange (AOG). A map of the pipeline route is located on AEC's web site: www.aec.ca. ADVISORY - Certain information regarding the Company set forth in this document, including management's assessment of the Company's future plans and operations, may constitute forward-looking statements under applicable securities law and necessarily involve risks associated with oil and gas exploration, production, marketing, and transportation such as loss of market, volatility of prices, currency fluctuations, imprecision of reserves estimates, environmental risks, competition from other producers and ability to access sufficient capital from internal and external sources. As a consequence, actual results may differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements. SOURCE Alberta Energy Company Ltd. CO: Alberta Energy Company Ltd. ST: Alberta IN: OIL Ecuador government employees to strike for pay QUITO, Ecuador, July 16 (Reuters) - Public sector employees called for an indefinite strike starting on Tuesday to demand better pay in Ecuador, where two-thirds of the population lives in poverty. Some 41,000 government employees in the Education, Health, Labor and Social Welfare Ministries among others are expected to join the strike. "We are asking for salaries to be balanced out so they cover 75 percent of the basic basket of goods," the president of the Public Servants' Federation (Conseup), Hector Teran, told Reuters on Monday. A strike by public sector doctors and health workers has already halted medical services nationwide, except for emergency room care, for close to two weeks. Teran said that with an additional $40 million -- about 10 percent of what it cost the government to capitalize two state-controlled banks earlier this year -- public servants could gain a decent salary. Ecuador is struggling to recover from an economic crisis that led the government to dollarize the economy in April 2000 to halt the devaluation of the poor Andean nation's currency and curb Latin America's highest inflation. According to the state Institute of Statistics, the basic basket of goods for a family of four costs about $289 a month, while a family's average monthly income is just $201. About 67 percent of Ecuadoreans live in poverty, according to the institute. 12:47 07-16-01 Ecuador mulls state-controlled Filanbanco options QUITO, Ecuador, July 16 (Reuters) - Ecuador is analyzing ways to strengthen state-controlled Filanbanco, one of the country's biggest banks, which include splitting it up or merging it with another entity for reprivatization, the Banking Superintendent said on Monday. Filanbanco was taken over by the government in December 1998 due to a lack of liquidity amid a financial crisis where nearly half the country's banks fell into state hands. "There are several alternatives subject to analysis at this time. One is 'good bank, bad bank,' in theory. The other is that the bank can continue on its own two feet since right now it is undergoing internal improvements, cost reduction," Banking Superintendent Miguel Davila told Reuters. Another option would be to merge Filanbanco with another financial institution, possibly state-controlled Banco del Pacifico, he said. ING Baring, hired by the government to aid in the administration of Filanbanco, said in late June that a reprivatization of the institution is viable. In May, the government capitalized Filanbanco with $300 million in state bonds to strengthen its capital adequacy ratio, which failed to meet international standards. Filanbanco posted $957.5 million in assets, $942.2 million in liabilities and $587.5 million in deposits in April 2001, according to figures from the Banking Superintendency. Analysts consider that banks are the weak link in Ecuador's economy, which was slammed by a 7.3 percent decline in gross domestic product in 1999. 14:38 07-16-01
