On Dec. 22, the Russian government succeeded in its long-standing campaign to wrest control of the country’s largest single foreign investment project — the $22 billion natural gas development on the Russian Pacific island of Sakhalin. The project includes the first liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant and related export facilities built in Russia. According to the deal, Royal Dutch Shell, Mitsui & Co., Ltd., and Mitsubishi Corp. will each surrender half of their shares in the Sakhalin Energy consortium. In their place, OAO Gazprom, Russia’s state-controlled natural gas monopoly, has taken a majority (50 percent plus one share) stake in [...]
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — Brazil defies definition. Its contrasts and contradictions are everywhere — from the Europeans of the south to the African heritage of Bahia, the megalopolis of Sao Paulo to the untouched remoteness of the Amazon, the joyous samba amid the chronic gun violence of the shanty settlements. It has world-class companies like energy giant Petrobras, but in many ways is a highly uncompetitive economy. But the most overwhelming contrast is between the fabulously wealthy and the desperately poor. By every international measurement, Brazil is one of the most unequal societies on earth, a condition that has [...]
PIRIÁPOLIS, Uruguay — Workers in this Uruguayan town have been busily crafting the finishing touches on beachfront shops and restaurants. The Southern Hemisphere’s summer is arriving to this time-travelers’ destination, a place oddly reminiscent of a mid-century resort in the South of France. With summer’s arrival, hordes of tourists from neighboring countries should start rolling in at any moment. As laborers toiled here, somewhere else in the continent a modern brand of Latin American professionals wrapped their work on a more ambitious project. South America’s new crop of leftist leaders met in Cochabamba, Bolivia, to chart a course of regional [...]
