Obama-Lula meeting, March 2009: Brazil offers to replace Venezuela as energy supplier

Authors:
Luis Alberto López Rafaschieri and José Alberto López Rafaschieri
www.morochos.net

While some believe that Lula met with Obama to defend Chavez, the truth is that there is one word that best represents what the United States and Brazil spoke last week: Energy.

And who can blame them? The United States has constantly expressed its discomfort about relying on foreign -and problematic- energy suppliers, and Brazil is a big energy producer that apparently has surpassed the backward ideas of the old Latin American left.

From the U.S. perspective, Venezuela has become an unstable country, whose government is incapable of ensuring a reliable energy supply for the future. Since the arrival of President Chavez, the Venezuelan oil production has shown a decline that seems to have no remedy. In addition, the Venezuelan government is constantly changing legal conditions and is an enemy of the United States.

And from the Brazilian perspective, the U.S. is the biggest market in the world. Brazil knows that this opportunity would only be ignored by an unprofessional government, so while others destroy their oil industry and reputation, Brazil emerges as the best alternative to replace Venezuela.

Brazil is less confrontational, is about as close geographically as Venezuela, has a very powerful oil industry and recently discovered new oil reserves offshore -estimated at 80 billion barrels- Besides, Brazil is the planet's largest exporter of ethanol, what gives it an advantage over the problematic supplier.

Ethanol is a cleaner-burning fuel than gasoline and is made from renewable sources. This is wonderful for the U.S., because Americans do not just want to minimize purchases of Venezuelan crude oil, but also reduce their overall dependency on petroleum. These are long-term plans that are already in development.

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