T Rex in Colombia

Since I have relatives in Colombia, I was interested in Tillerson's visit to that area, scheduled for next Tuesday.

The very unpopular FARC ex head is running for president, ELF is busy bombing people, including FARCites who came in from the cold, and there has been a reversal (i.e increase) in cocaine growing, meaning more money for bad guys to push around elected officials and poor farmers.

and the drug gangs have moved to the Venezuela border area, while hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have skedaddled to Colombia's border as refugees, or just cross the border to shop for groceries (hmm...the same thing happened when Mugabe wrecked the economy of Zimbabwe: lots of folks took a bus and shopped in Botswana).

Sigh.

Alas, it's not easy to find what is actually being discussed.


Fake news: Headline: Reporters prevented from seeing Tillerson on horseback. (LATimes)

real news? Sputniknews: a summary of what T Rex is doing on his trip in Latin America.

Headline: Venezuela Crisis Tops Tillerson's Agenda on Tour of Latin America

I don't usually read Russian fake news, but in this case they do add more information than I found elsewhere.

After stopping in Peru to meet officials Tillerson in Columbia on Tuesday will meet with counterparts and the president to discuss the surge in coca cultivation and cocaine production, including a growing refugee population in the country. The US Secretary of State will stop in Jamaica before heading back to Washingon.

Since this is a Russian news organization, the story comes complete with whining that TRex is warning them against Russia

Although the US aims to pursue its own interests in the region, Tillerson appeared to suggest that Washington was worried that rival powers, including Russia, had the audacity to do the same.

BBC says TRex says Venezuela may face a military coup, (but is not advocating one).

well, there is an election coming up there, and it's not like the CIA (and China and Russia and Cuba) doesn't try to influence elections behind the scenes.

StrategyPage has a small paragraph on Venezuela and drugs on their essay about the ten largest threats to peace in the world:

This country has the largest oil reserves of any nation on the planet. But it also has one of the most corrupt, ineffective, lawless and clueless governments in the world. Venezuela has become a home base for drug cartels, Iranian Islamic terrorists and Chinese investors seeking a long term relationship.

Drug gangs already exercise considerable power in Venezuela and that may increase if major creditors (China, Russia, Iran) do not intervene. The neighbors do not want to intervene as that is not the accepted way of handing these things. However the neighbors are faced with a choice of either intervening to deal with the chaos and violence or do nothing and wait for the chaos and violence to come visit.

AlJ essentially notes the same problem of the Venezuela "crisis" fueling crime in nearby countries.


more at ColombiaReports,

While officials in both countries say Colombia’s peace process tops the agenda for US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s upcoming brief trip to Bogota, there are major differences of opinion on how to accomplish that.
In remarks Thursday in advance of his six-country tour of Latin America, Tillerson focused on reducing cocaine production as the key to securing Colombia’s peace.
“We continue to support [Colombia’s] sustainable peace, but challenges do remain. Colombia is the world’s largest producer of cocaine—the source of 92% of the cocaine seized in the United States,” Tillerson said in a Texas speech outlining his goals for this week’s trip.

an "independent" news site. Part of the article is good, but since they spend half the article bashing Trump and saying Tillerson gets all his Latin American information from Fox news, you can probably guess their point of view.

TRex gets his news from Fox? You must be joking (or think your readers only believe the party line).

Hello: TRex ran Exxon, who has business in Colombia, so I think maybe he has other sources for information of what is going on there than Fox News, or even the US State Department.

and the small but lucrative oil industry there has taken a hit by the drop in oil prices.

The peace process with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) finally got underway on 6 December following a new peace agreement, after the previous attempt was dramatically rejected in a referendum in October. As thousands of FARC fighters move to disarmament zones and camps to turn in their weapons and become civilians, Colombia hopes it can quickly seize economic benefits of peace in rural oil-rich areas.

However, it may be too late for a new Colombian oil boom. .... Production fell to 846,000 bpd by October 2016 and oil exports and oil derivatives have fallen a staggering 46.9% in a month-to-month comparison between January 2015 and 2016. After the oil prices plummeted in 2015, the amount of public revenue the commodity brought fell from 20% to zero.

weak oil reserves, poor roads and inadequate pipelines have cut the profit. and the article notes the locals are restless and could go back to picking up their rifles and killing oil workers again if things don't improve.

My son lives in the South, and FARC and cocaine growing was big in the lower altitude areas nearby, and as I have mentioned in previous posts, we had relatives both in the police/army and in FARC.

Most of the oil comes from the northern areas of Colombia, but the Putumaya area is not that far away as the crow flies (that is, a rocky dangerous road to get down there: Landslides anyone?) and if developed, could be a source of work for people in that area of Colombia.


could shale/fracking come to the rescue?


In other words, the US Shale oil production has hurt dictators like Venezuela and Iran but also friends like Saudi and Colombia.

sigh.

and then there is this: trade practices and tariffs might hurt some Latin American countries.

It's not just oil that we are talking about:
AlJ reports that Argentina's biofuel may face tariffs. there was something in the news awhile back about Brazil putting Tariffs on US ethanol too.
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HERE is an article complaining about the Chinese investment in oil production in Colombia... but they are improving the infrastructure too.

Just a reminder we live in a multinational world.
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Colombian embassy notes what is to be discussed is the peace agreement.

Dallas article on Tillerson's background here.

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the "Greens" are all hip about getting rid of oil, which I agree. But in the third world, getting rid of oil means stopping development.

Here, every 50 centavo (one US cent) increase in LPG or diesel makes a headline, because it lowers the income. It lowers the income of the tricycle drivers, and increases the fares for those using this cheap form of transport. And for out local farmers, it means an increased expenses for fertilizer, rototillers/handplows, threshers, and of course transporting rice to the markets, not to mention cooking your food without the hazard and asthma inducing smoke of an open fire.

Right now, I can sit outside my house and watch all the trucks carrying "palay", recently harvested rice, to the rice dealers. We had a good winter season harvest that is going on now, and with the increase in wealth in our area (partly from local jobs and partly from OFW sending money home), we had to make the main street one way, and so the alternative route goes by our house.