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Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador forge closer energy links(EFE News Service Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The presidents of Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador used Friday's inauguration here of a natural-gas pipeline to advocate an ambitious plan for regional energy integration. Host Alvaro Uribe, Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez and Ecuador's Rafael Correa signed of memorandum of understanding on extending the conduit to link all three nations in accord with Chavez's vision of a network encompassing much of Central and South America. Specifically, Uribe told Chavez that Colombia is ready to carry the pipeline opened Friday into neighboring Panama and to cooperate on another conduit that would allow oil-and-gas-rich Venezuela to export fuel to Asia from Colombian ports on the Pacific. The host also expressed a willingness to alter the planned course of a pipeline to bring gas from the Caribbean to southwestern Colombia in order to facilitate a link-up with Ecuador. "Colombia wants to contribute its geographic location to this integration," Uribe said after he and his two colleagues unveiled the plaque commemorating the opening of the Antonio Ricaurte leg of the pipeline that will transport gas from Colombia's offshore wells in the Caribbean to the Lake Maracaibo region of Venezuela. The occasion brought the three heads of state to Ballenas, a coastal town in the northeastern Colombian province of La Guajira, bordering Venezuela. Built by Colombian state oil company Ecopetrol and giant Venezuelan counterpart PDVSA at a cost of $467 million, the conduit can carry up to 500,000 cubic feet per day of natural gas. The project also calls for another pipeline carrying Venezuelan gas to Colombia, which - like Ecuador - has significant amounts of petroleum, but nowhere near on the scale of Venezuela, the world's No. 6 oil exporter and a key supplier to the United States. "Energy integration is vital," Chavez said in a speech that included several references to South American liberator Simon Bolivar, the socialist president's personal hero. Correa, for his part, appealed to Chavez to bring Venezuela back into the Community of Andean Nations, or CAN, the regional bloc Caracas quit last year after members Colombia and Peru signed bilateral trade pacts with Washington. The CAN "is your natural place, which you never should have left," the Ecuadorian told Chavez, suggesting the presidents of the member nations - the others are Bolivia and Chile - draw up a new document governing the functioning of the bloc. If within a year the CAN is not serving a purpose, "we'll all leave," Correa said. "President Chavez: quickly return to the CAN", Uribe chimed in, before retiring with the Venezuelan for bilateral talks on Caracas' role in trying to broker a prisoner exchange between the Colombian government and the country's largest rebel group. The Revolutionary Armed Force of Colombia, FARC, want to trade 45 high-value captives for hundreds of jailed guerrillas, and while both Bogota and the insurgents insist they want a deal, they remain far apart on terms. Uribe, a conservative and Washington's closest ally in Latin America, gave his blessing to the mediation effort by Chavez, who has supplanted the ailing Fidel Castro as the Bush administration chief irritant in the region. Copyright 2007 EFE News Services (U.S.) Inc., Source: The Financial Times Limited |