Darren Gemoll 6/2/05 EDGE Spring Bruce LusignanSouth American Oil Production; and the Crises That Surround ItFor years, the impoverished nations of South America have fought to survive and maintain order within their nations. Many people are blind and only see these countriesas drug producers and traffickers, yet they possess something of great wealth and fortune that is very dear to the entire world, and especially the United States of America. They have some of the largest amounts of natural petroleum in the world in South America. Petroleum, which is often referred to as black gold, is a crude oil that is only found in the upper strata of some places in the Earth’scrust. This valuable resource of the Earth does not replenish itself like many other resources do, therefore it is in high demand. In addition, one would suspect that thisgives these impoverished nations a chance to have a stable and strong economy based on supply and demand throughout theworld, however, this is far from the case for the citizens of the South American oil producing countries. Countrieslike Ecuador have for years struggled to keep their large supply of this precious resource safe and protected, as wellas not overused. The leaders of these nations realize that when they need help when it comes to protection and a large supply of oil, the United States is the place to search. Ecuadorian Energy Minister, Pablo Teran feels that it is a daunting task to keep all of the pipelines and oil facilities safe. In an interview with a PBS reporter, PabloTeran stated that he is “so glad that the United States has gotten involved in trying to solve the drug problem in Colombia, and for that they have given a lot of aid to Colombia but very little to other countries. We [have] got to protect the entire Amazon, and it’s very difficult to protect every single well, every single camp, and every single executive which is moving back and forth. And therefore, we are going to do it under our limited resources.”There are three main producers of this precious resource in South America: Venezuela, Ecuador, and Colombia.The greatest of amount of this petroleum is exported to the United States, the largest buyer in the world of natural petroleum, and also the most careless with this resource. However, there are companies worldwide which employs the useof petroleum from these SouthAmerican nations. Among them are: Arbusto Energy, Citgo, ChevronTexaco, BP, Exxon Mobil, Occidental Petroleum, and Conoco Phillips. In the past year or so, ChevronTexaco has had an extremely large Oil output from their production in South America, namely Venezuela. During the first quarter of this fiscal year ChevronTexaco’s South American output ofoil was up 28% over the previous quarter’s amounts. This increase is the most extreme percentage increase for an American company in recent days, an increase from 71,000 barrels of petroleum a day, to 91,000 barrels of petroleum aday. This major increase was due to production from the 3.8billion dollar Hamaca crude oil upgrader. ChevronTexaco’s manager of investor relations, Randy Richards stated in a conference call that “Hamaca is producing approximately 180,000 barrels a day of synthetic crude.” Though this large of amount of petroleum being exported brings money into the starving economies of Venezuela and Ecuador, there is a very serious problem that could go along with the increase in South American oil production.The problem that may soon come to rise for these South American countries, as well as others across the world is the threat of depletion. Venezuela is at the peak of its oil production, and President Hugo Chavez is not very optimistic about the future of petroleum production. Hefeels that the “world is about to face an energy crisis because the demand for oil keeps growing even though production is already at its maximum.” President Chavez goes on to say that they are “producing at full steam” and are still headed for trouble very soon because “the United States and other developed countries, but more so the UnitedStates, have built a way of life based on the wasteful consumption of oil, which is non-renewable.” In addition, asummit was held in mid May of 2005 between members of the OPEC, eight of the eleven nations were present at the summit. Though the main goal of this summit was to access economic situations and problems with the oil production, itwas clear no progress had been made to bridge the gap of poverty throughout these nations. The official summit document stated that the current rules of international commerce, those rules promoted by the United States and other nations with their status, only seem to “widen the gap between developed and developing countries” throughout the world. Though some of the stronger voices of the Arab nations were not present at the summit, the South American powers of Venezuela, Argentina, and Brazil were all in attendance. The oil production in these countries which was always seen as the only true way of aiding the economies of theseimpoverished nations has actually thrown them into turmoil, and for some, even farther into poverty than ever before. However, billions of American dollars pay to keep these projects up and running until they exhaust, and until they stop benefiting the people of the United States. Furthermore, the United States government has spent even more money to ensure the safety of the pipelines running throughout Colombia and Venezuela. For example, the Bush administration formulated the “creation of a special two thousand to four thousand member ‘Critical Infrastructure Brigade’ of the Colombian army that would be deployed to protect [United States] owned oil installations. Specifically, it would be assigned to guard a nearly five hundred mile pipeline that carries oil belonging to Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum Corporation from the CanoLimon oilfields in northeast Colombia to the Caribbean port of Covenas. The pipeline has been a frequent target of guerrilla bombing attacks” (Vann). This “Critical Infrastructure Brigade” caused the White House to have to ask the United States Congress to grant 98 million dollars for training, arming, and supplying United States air support for the troops assigned to protect their asset, the lucrative pipeline. Anne Patterson, a United States Ambassador involved with the pipeline stated that