Latin America NEWS

China's finance and investment spending in Belt and Road countries fell slightly in the first half compared to a year earlier, with no new coal projects and investments in Russia, Egypt and Sri Lanka falling to zero, new research showed. Saudi Arabia was the biggest recipient of Chinese investments over the period, with about $5.5 billion, According to the Shanghai-based Green Finance and Development Center (GFDC) in research published on Sunday.

"Leaks, rusted pipes, pieces of broken equipment scattered about and staircases leading nowhere: Lake Maracaibo’s oil field is a metaphor for Venezuela’s once-flourishing petroleum industry that is now on its knees.More than a century ago, the Maracaibo basin in northwestern Zulia state was the birthplace of a business that transformed the country into one of the world’s 10 largest oil producers and a Latin American economic heavyweight. By 2008, the country was producing 3.2 million barrels of oil a day. Just 13 years later, it can only muster 500,000 to one million barrels per day amid a grinding economic crisis marked by years of recession and hyperinflation. Venezuela’s gross domestic product per capita is now similar to that of Haiti."

Yet another bold statement and prediction by Arthur Berman, former geologist and now an industry consultant who earned the wrath of Shale drillers by forecasting that natural gas is about to run out now says “Permian region of Texas and New Mexico won’t last for long.” Berman’s grim outlook is supported by analyses of reserves and production data from more than a dozen prominent shale drillers.

Drilling of first exploration well in a four-well campaign in the Echo Energy plc’s Fracción C asset, onshore Argentina has commenced. The Company will update shareholders with progress on both the exploration drilling program and extended testing as the program advances.