Venezuela and Colombia Agree on Gas Pipeline

Foreign ministers Carolina Barco of Colombia and Ali Rodriguez of Venezuela

Caracas, Venezuela, June 20, 2006—Venezuela and Colombia held an important bi-lateral summit last Thursday in Caracas, in which they finalized agreements for a long-awaited gas pipeline, which will run between the two countries and could eventually provide access to markets in Asia.

Construction on the pipeline is set to begin on July 8th for the 230 kilometer underwater gas pipeline, which will connect Colombian Punta Ballenas in the region of La Guajira, with the city of Maracaibo in the western Venezuelan state of Zulia.

According to Rafael Ramirez, Venezuelan Minister of Energy and Petroleum, Colombia will initially be exporting gas to Venezuela through the pipeline in order cover the great Venezuelan demand, but that Venezuela will be self-sustaining by 2008 and exporting natural gas by 2013.

“In the first instance the gas pipeline will allow us to import for Zulia, 150 million cubic feet of gas daily and afterwards we can export to Colombia and Central America the same amount.”

The Colombia Universal, reported on Friday that Chevron Texaco had announced last week that they had finished drilling three additional wells in La Guajira, which will ensure the existence of enough Colombian gas to fulfill Venezuela’s needs.

Meanwhile, the Bolivarian News Agency reported that the discovery of new Venezuelan natural gas reserves will incrementally multiply the 26 billion cubic meters of natural gas that Venezuela is reported to currently have on the market, and Venezuelan and Colombian authorities hope that the pipeline will eventually be extended to the Colombian coast in order to sell Venezuelan gas to China and other Asian countries.

The pipeline was originally agreed upon in July 2004, but due to reccurring tensions it was not finalized until last week. According to Iván Orellana, director of International Relations of the Venezuelan Ministry of Energy and Petroleum, the construction of the pipeline will take exactly one year, and will cost $280 million, which will be completely financed by the Venezuelan state oil company, PDVSA.

Venezuela is currently also pushing for the controversial Great Southern Gas Pipeline, which would run from Venezuela to Argentina, and would be the largest pipeline in the world. President Chavez sees the Southern Pipeline as central to his plans for the alternative integration of South America.

The Guajira gas pipeline was just one of a number of topics which were discussed and agreed to last Thursday between Venezuela’s Chancellor Alí Rodríguez Araque and Colombia’s Carolina Barco at the Second High Level Bi-national Commission meeting (COBAN).

Rodríguez called the meeting a “total Success” and stated, “We tackled a very full agenda, that included trade exchange, energy aspects, physical integration, the functioning of bilateral mechanisms, aspects related with the environment and in conjunction with other aspects.”

Venezuela and Colombia also evaluated the route of an oil pipeline, which Venezuela is planning to build in conjunction with Ecopetrol and would run between Cabrutas to Tumaco, Colombia, on the Pacifica coast. Venezuela’s oil minister Rafael Ramírez declared that this Project, “is very important for Venezuela because it is our outlet towards the Pacific and the expanding Asian markets.”

Both countries also ratified their commitment to fight against narcotrafficking, contraband, and crime along their 2,219 kilometer shared boarder.

“We ratify that we have a common problem, which we will only overcome through collaboration. The problem of the boarder is complex and that’s why we are working intensely in every aspect of that complexity,” declared Rodriguez.

Venezuela and Colombia agreed to expand a gasoline supply project in the Venezuelan boarder states of Táchira, Apure, and Amazonas, in order to attempt to combat the contraband of fuel in Colombian territory.

Because of Venezuela’s recent exit from the Community of Andean Nations (CAN), the Colombian minister of Foreign Relations announced that a commission of Venezuelans will be visiting Colombia in the upcoming days in order to agree on new bilateral trade rules between the two countries during Venezuela’s five-year long official exit from CAN.

Venezuelan Government Warns that some TV Licenses Might Not be Renewed

Minister of Communication and Information William Lara
Credit: MinCI

Caracas, Venezuela, June 19, 2006—Venezuela’s Minister for Communication and Information, William Lara, reiterated President Chavez’s remarks last week that the government will evaluate whether broadcasters have been complying with the country's Media Responsibility Law. If the evaluation finds that they have not, some broadcasters, whose licenses are up for renewal in 2007, might not be able to renew these. The announcement caused an uproar among opposition leaders, who charged the government with wanting to stifle free speech.

President Chavez first made the announcement about possible non-renewals of broadcast licenses last week, when he said, “I have ordered the revision of TV channel concessions. There are some channels that want to change, to respect the constitution, who had supported the coup in 2002, which was all of them. Back then we had the chance to eliminate these [licenses], but despite this we called for dialogue.”

During the April 2002 coup attempt nearly all major private television stations collaborated with coup organizers to present a false image of the events that led to Chavez’s detention and then, when the coup was collapsing, failed to report on the demonstrations demanding his return.

Chavez went on to say, “We need to review the licenses of the TV stations which will be expiring soon, in 2007. We cannot be so irresponsible to keep giving concessions to a little group persons so that they may use these against us… I don’t give a damn what the oligarchs of the world say. What is important to me is the fate of my homeland.”

Communications minister Lara clarified Chavez’s remarks a few days later, saying that any such non-renewal of broadcast licenses would take place by the letter of the law and only following a thorough review of the extent to which broadcasters are abiding by the Law of Social Responsibility in Radio and Television.

“To follow the content of television and radio programming in Venezuela is to comply with our duty,” said Lara on Saturday. Lara added that so far the institution in charge of observing the media, the telecommunications commission CONATEL, has documented many violations of the media’s duties as outline in the Social Responsibility law.

Defending against charges that the government was persecuting the media, Lara said, “Applying the law in no way whatsoever is to persecute. Applying the law is to act in accordance with the state of law, just as the Bolivarian government of Venezuela is doing. What some owners of radio and television service providers need to understand is that impunity has ended in this country.”

International media groups such as the Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ) and the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) immediately condemned the government’s announcement. “We urge President Chavez to abstain from making these kinds of threatening commentaries, which inhibit the work of the press,” stated the CPJ according to the news agency AFP.

Similarly, the president of the Commission on Liberty and Press of the IAPA, Gonzalo Marroquín, said, “These threats do no stop being worrisome and feed a climate of antagonism, especially in an electoral period in which the media must play the part of scrutiny in order to give the public a diversity of points of view.”

The Law of Social Responsibility in Radio and Television, which was passed in late 2004, specifies, among other things, that broadcast media must abide by a certain broadcast schedule if they want to depict graphic violence or sexuality, requires the broadcasting of a certain proportion of nationally produced programming, restricts advertising, and allows for the participation of citizens in determining broadcaster’s compliance with the law. Violations of the law’s provisions can lead to fines and, in extreme cases, to a temporary or even permanent suspension of broadcast licenses.