Venezuela and Brazil signed accords on Thursday pledging to boost trade and link their economies through energy cooperation as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva seek to deepen ties.
Chavez said Venezuela will provide 100,000 barrels of crude oil per day to a refinery being built in Brazil by the two countries' state-run oil companies -- Petroleo Brasileiro SA and Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA).
Petrobras will have a 60 percent stake in the refinery in the state of Pernambuco, with PDVSA holding 40 percent under an agreement signed by officials on Thursday.
It was one of 12 commercial accords finalized after Chavez and Silva met privately. Petrobras also is to help quantify oil reserves in Venezuela's lucrative Orinoco River basin.
Silva also said Brazil hopes to create "a balance in our commercial relationship" -- which has recently seen Brazilian exports to Venezuela rise rapidly while its imports from Venezuela have fallen.
Brazilian exports to Venezuela grew to US$3.8 billion in the first 10 months of this year, a rise of 29 percent over the same period last year, Venezuela's state-run Bolivarian News Agency, or ABN, reported.
In the same period, Vene-zuela's exports to Brazil were US$296 million, a decline of 44 percent, ABN reported.
Venezuela's economy has been booming, propelled by high oil profits, and imports have risen sharply, including food products and industrial supplies from Brazil.
Silva said he expects Brazil will also become an increasingly major oil supplier and may eventually join OPEC. Last month the country announced the discovery of an offshore reserve estimated to hold 5 billion to 8 billion barrels of oil.
"We still aren't in OPEC, but we're close," he said.
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so
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