TOTAL to take advantage of new Colo

[dawnstar@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Subject: TOTAL to take advantage of new Colombia oil policy

And they still dont have effecive extradition of drug criminals. US
attorney general Janel Reno last March asked for extradition of five
Columbian drug traffickers, including Jaime Orlando Lara, whose cartel
supplies 80 per cent of all heroine entering the US from Columbia, as
reported in the Financial Times, UK.  Up until then, no Columbia
national had been extradited to the US since 1991.The drug trade there
is flourishing. US State Dept experts say the number of hectares of
illegal drug crops grew by more than 25 per cent last year.

To see TOTAL's Columbia oil and gas business, <http://www.total.com/>

dawn star
Roger Bunn wrote:
> 
> Overdoses from heroin are inceasing at a fast rate
> in the land of the cocaine mountain.. Columbia..
> 
> REUTERS reported:
> BOGOTA - (14.5.99) Colombia has passed new measures aimed at eviving
> > its flagging oil industry by eliminating a series of environmental>
> restrictions that had been causing lengthy delays in exploration
> activity and test drilling.
> Industry sources said Wednesday they welcomed the move, contained
> in a presidential degree signed last week but not widely publicized at
> the time, adding it could help spur fresh foreign investment in
> Colombian oil.
> The decree means private sector oil companies no longer have to
> apply for environmental licenses to carry out seismic surveying and
> only need a single license to sink any number of test drills in an
> exploratory block, rather than a license for each well.
> 
> Under the terms of the law, which has already come into effect,
> companies will still have to take care not to damage the environment
> around their operations. But they will be subject to regular audits
> rather than forced to comply with a whole series of regulations before
> starting up operations.
> Multinationals operating in Colombia have regularly blamed complex
> environmental licensing laws, under which licenses can take more than
> a year to process, for hampering exploration work.
> According to official figures less than 20 percent of Colombia's
> potential oil-bearing regions have been explored.
> The country's oil output is currently stagnant at about 850,000

> barrels per day (bpd) and could dwindle to less than 200,000 bpd by
> 2010 if major new finds are not made.
> "The decree on environmental licenses is a useful step. It is part
> of a series of things. The question of royalty payments is also
> important especially in the case of small and medium-sized fields,"
> said one multinational oil industry source, who declined to be named.
> Last week, Congress approved the government's economic and social
> Development Plan that introduces more flexible royalty payments on oil
> production. The law must still be ratified by the Constitutional Court
> and signed by President Andres Pastrana.
> Until now, the government had levied 20 percent royalties on oil
> fields regardless of output levels. Under the new rules, smaller
> 
> fields will pay less royalties and the percentage will rise depending
> on production levels.
> Multinationals had long complained the state take was too high and
> that profit margins in Colombia were too low compared to other
> countries.
>      (C) Reuters Limited 1999.
> 
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> 
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>                           ========================