If there is a country up for sale from top to bottom in especial all the resources in it’s depths is Brasil;
It is a shame and a embarrassment to see the greed and the incompetence of the so called leaders and managers of the country in the dealing with all the riches that are in brasilian soil and beneath; is a crude and revolting reality that the ones in power are operating against the national interest and for personal gain are involved in distributing for a price the resources within the national territory.
Let me start in the twentieth century when it was impose by the Roosevelt government that there was no petroleum in brasilian territory; for many years the governments allow this lie to become true and who ever denounce it would have to pay; so it happened wit one of greatest writers in brasilian literature for all ages Antonio Bento Monteiro Lobato; he did expend his entire family’s coffee made fortune, was imprisoned but he did found and prove that in the Bahia’s Reconcavo there was oil; his drilling business was shut down by a dictator name Getulio Dorneles Vargas and the Petrobras company was then created admitting in silence and implicitly, that really the black gold did existed in Brasil’s sub soil; this dictator also in the process created a law that is still in use to the day : it states that the property is limited to the soil and everything existing bellow belongs to the government(of the moment).
This is just a example of how the subservience and greed walk hand to hand in a place were the rule is: when in power profit from it ; there are other examples of manipulation and ownership of brasilian natural and mineral resources were sold to the highest bidder by the authorities’ in power ; from before and after; From Percival Farquhar that with the help of the emperor Pedro II and a entourage that also included later on Rui Barbosa broke down financially Irineu Evangelista de Souza the Baron and later Viscount of Mauá that was the great brasilian entrepreneur and fierce Farquhar’s rival and foe ; to the billionaire Daniel Keith Ludwig In 1967, then considered to be the richest man in America - owner and founded of National Bulk Carriers, and the “father of the Super Tanker” launched his biggest enterprise ever – an attempt to convert four million acres of Amazon rain forest into productive forestry operations, rice paddies, cattle ranches and mines.
Mr. Ludwig had good company in his experiment in the Amazon. In 1927, Mr. Henry Ford bought almost a million hectares in the Amazon jungle, bordering the Tapajós River, and began a gigantic rubber plantation. The operation – and Fordlandia, ultimately failed due to changing economies, rubber prices and new growing sources in SE-Asia, and World War II, however… only after millions (today’s billions of US-dollars were spent).
Called the JARI project, Mr. Ludwig’s operation was so vast that even he and the Brasilian government couldn’t keep it secret. The ultimate exploiter – Ludwig against the earth’s largest jungle; leveled the rain forests, and planted new trees, to be used as raw materials (cellulose) for paper. To convert the pulp into paper, he had manufactured and assembled a complete mill on barges and towed it from Japan - a floating pulp mill with paper converting machinery, and situated it in the mouth of the Jari River (a tributary to the mighty Amazon River, with its own newly built Ludwig’ town of Laranjal do Jari, and near to the capital of Macapa, then the territory of Amapa, Brasil).Due to changing economies, and Brasil’s government bureaucracy, Mr. Ludwig abandoned the project in the early 80s, and sold to a consortium of banks, with CAEMI as the largest private investor partner, the Company (project) renamed the entity CAEMI e JARI.
In the late 90s, and early 21st century, pieces of the Company-project were sold to various companies – BHP and Mitsui bought the mining segment of the business, and new owners took over the pulp and paper mill, which continues operation this day as Jari Celulose S/A. Those are examples of how those individuals in power making no difference if in a dictatorship state or in a pail democracy are determinate to profit from the riches in Brasil1s territory having no respect even for their international partners in crime .
Those were examples of the procedures and the lack of parameters for greed stricken officials in that so very rich country; but the real reason for this article was about the news of the stolen computers and hard drives from a container that was send from a rig in the Tupy drilling area one of the richest in the world for the production of gas and oil that when explored will take Brasil from the 24th position as a world producer to the 8th so gigantic are the amounts of those two riches in that area to the main Petrobras office in Rio de Janeiro when they disappeared wile under the responsibility of Halliburton company that was hired by Petrobras for 2,7 billion dollars to manage the drilling projects of that company; this contract is considered one of the greatest ones if not the great in the oil industry so far.
Halliburton is today’s Schlumberger front; the once great French company in oil prospecting and mineral resources management become a international conglomerate and did run into some “let’s say problems“; and so it had to downsized its appearance in the oil business; Halliburton as all the evolved companies had their amount of dubious and disqualifying moments but the Dick Cheney’s company had a great chair of on their own; the involvement of it in the recent Iraq’s war fair is just one of them.
Industrial and technological espionage is for the oil business the same as for governments; the ownership of knowledge and property are rarely respected and are always targeted by rivals; so as the other side try to get it the proprietors must do their best to stop them from doing it : that is not the case in a country assailed by thievery, corruption and lack of self respect as it is the case of Brasil; those stolen information’s were vital and of great economical and strategic value for the future of gas and oil exploration and for the strengthen of the economical and social development of a nation , I say were because those information’s are now being analyzed and will be put for a good use for the ones that paid for have it . And once again someone profited with the loss of a entire country; a fact unquestionably denounced by me in many of my writings about my personal experiences in 30 years of involvement in the oil industry.
The Petrobras GEOP (geological survey unit) was in the years before the privatization of Petrobras and the lien sales of oil areas very relapse in the protection of their geo reports that come also in the hands of the ones that bought them even before they were put for sale; the brasilian tax payer paid for but never got benefits from it, instead somebody did it for them in a individual and personal level.
The scandals and the theft will amount to nothing, there will be no serious enquiring of it, no one will be punished; and unscrupulous people as always will profit from the disgrace and the misery of a country and its people ; in the same level as P36 was sunk killing 14 workers to make disappears with the evidence against the Joel Rennó’s mismanagement at the front of the company in contracts for construction and “adaptation” of platforms; and the passing of inside information that benefited and made a millionaire of the son of the ex president of Brasil Fernando Henrique Cardozo ; Paulo Henrique in the sale of Maritima to Pride international; this recent theft of computers hard drives and all the information’s contained in them will be forgotten and become another clear testimony of everything that is shadowy very shameful and disgraceful in business will prosper and go unpunished if it happened in Brasil.
