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[Translation of an article from Página/12 of Buenos Aires for June 8. See original here and related article here.]

by Sebastián Premici

“I never understood why they privatized it. What they did with the oil fields was terrible, we could see that, but we did not know the whole of it. The business had very good economic results, you could see it on the books, but none of it stayed here.” Omar Stocco is a chemical engineer and plant manager of the YPF refinery in Luján de Cuyo, Mendoza. He has worked for the company for 25 years and was a witness to the whole process of privatization. Now, at 52, he will be in charge of security at the refinery, which currently produces 13,000 cubic meters of fuel. But he will also be a witness to the new managerial and political change in the petroleum company. “Everything is in place for things to be done well,” he declared. (more…)

[Translation of an article from El Clarín of Santiago, Chile, for April 21. See original here.]

By Marcos Roitmann Rosenmann

Measures taken to nationalize and to recuperate basic riches in Latin America or Africa or Asia have always suffered the ire of colonial centers and the enterprises affected. There is no shortage of examples: Lázaro Cárdenas, Jacobo Arbenz, Fidel Castro, Omar Torrijos, Velasco Alvarado, Salvador Allende, Evo Morales, Hugo Chávez; the list is long.

Accustomed to ordering and to being in charge, arrogant empires are unfamiliar with the concepts of independence and sovereignty. They are reluctant to deal as equals. Paternalism, based on positions of strength, shapes the discourse of imperial haughtiness. To declare oneself opposed to paternal authority and the established order usually brings on exemplary punishment: blockades, destabilizing processes, economic strangulation, assassinations of leaders or coups d’état. These days, the expropriation of a private company, Repsol YPF, whose interests are those only of their stockholders and whose objective is to obtain profits at the cost of any ethical, judicial or environmental consideration, awakens the ire of the hegemonic powers, their institutions and principal political leaders. (more…)

[Translations of two articles from La Jornada of Mexico City for March 18, a day celebrated in Mexico as the anniversary of the expropriation of the country’s petroleum industry in 1938, during the administration of President Lázaro Cárdenas, in office from 1934 to 1940. The resulting state enterprise, Pemex, has supplied the country’s petroleum successfully ever since but in recent years has been the target of privatization attempts by conservatives. Cárdenas is considered the most leftist of the country’s presidents. His son, Cuauhtémoc, also a leftist and also prominent in politics, was at one time head of the government of the Distrito Nacional, ran for president in 1988 and was one of the founders of the Partido Revolucionario Democrático (PRD).]

Cárdenas says Pemex contract “clearly in violation”

[See original here.]

By Alma E. Muñoz

Mexico, DF – On the 73rd anniversary of the expropriation of petroleum declared by Lázaro Cárdenas del Río, his son, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano, spoke of the unconstitutionality of the incentive contracts Petróleos Mexicanos is preparing to award for the exploitation of its Magallanes, Carrizo and Santuario fields. (more…)

Brack guarantees sanctions and prosecutor warns of penalties of up to 20 years in prison

[Translation of an article from La Razón of Lima for June 23.]

Residents of 28 indigenous communities in the Parinari and Urarinas distrricts, in the province of Loreto, are without water and are prevented from fishing, their principal source of food, after waters of the Marañón River were contaminated by a spill of more than 400 barrels of petroleum, severely affecting the ecosystem of the region.

Residents of the area told local media that “everybody is desperate because they don’t know what is going to happen in the next few hours due to the lack of commitment by Pluspetrol and the authorities. Two children have already suffered stomach problems because they drank water from the river. We have managed to take pictures of contaminated fish, with their fins coated in oil.” (more…)

[Translation of an article from Clarín of Argentina for May 6. The Malvinas Islands, in the South Atlantic off the Argentine coast, have long been the subject of dispute between Argentina and Great Britain, where they are known as the Falklands. In 1982, the two countries fought a 74-day war over the Malvinas and the nearby South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands, resulting in the deaths of 255 British troops and 649 Argentines. The British won a military victory but Argentina still claims sovereignty, as stated formally in its 1994 constitution.]

The British firm Rockhopper announced today that it has discovered petroleum in the northern basin of the Malvinas Islands, where it had begun exploring toward the end of last month in the midst of a dispute between Argentina and Great Britain over sovereignty of the islands and the rights to resources in the archipelago. The Argentine foreign office issued a statement warning London and the privately owned company that it “would take all necessary measures within the framework of international law to prevent these illegal acts.” (more…)

[Translation of an article from La Jornada of Mexico City for April 4.  See related article below.]

By Israel Rodríguez

The Comité Nacional de Estudios de la Energía (CNEE – National Committee for Energy Studies), which brings together academics and specialists in the field, has warned Mexico of the potential danger to the country’s petroleum industry of international treaties and settlements of disputes with transnational enterprises, since producing countries usually lose in this type of dispute. (more…)

He accuses the company of trying to destroy his country and delegitimize its court system

[Translation of an article from La Jornada of Mexico City, based on Agence France Presse and Prensa Latina dispatches.]

Quito, April 3 – Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa announced on Saturday that he will propose to the Unión de Naciones Suramericanas (Unasor) the creation of a united front against transnationals like the US company Chevron, which he accused to attempting to destroy his country.

Correa described as “scandalous” a ruling issued by an international tribunal in The Hague, the Netherlands, favoring Chevron-Texaco because, he said, it destroys the sovereignty, the institutions and the juridical security of the South American country. (more…)

The federal government refuses to reveal the contents of the “incentive contracts”

[Translation of an article from the March 18 La Jornada of Mexico City concerning attempts to privatize Pemex, the state-owned oil company.  Pemex was formed in 1938 by President Lázaro Cárdenas after a strike by petroleum workers against the British and US owners.  It is now the world’s tenth largest oil company and the fifth largest oil exporter.]

By Roberto González Amador

The privatization of the Mexican petroleum industry is moving forward out of our reach. That is the opinion of a group of artists, intellectuals and academicians who have issued a declaration in which they call for halting a policy the group asserts is handing over substantial control of the state-owned industry to private capital. (more…)