Arpel Predicts A Bright Future for Latin America’s Energy Needs, Focus Reports
Release Date: 2010-09-23
With an increasing demand for global energy resources and a wider concern for the impact of our consumption on the environment, Latin America has in the last few years begun to invest in securing their energy needs. A recent interview with the Regional Association of Oil and Natural Gas Companies in Latin America and the Caribbean (ARPEL) provides a clear insight into the ambitions of the region to become a global energy powerhouse while meeting their own requirements. The organization is one of a kind in its aim to build and promote an integrated energy agenda at a regional level. Recently ARPEL moved to include biofuels on its agenda, foreseeing that these will provide the necessary agility to future energy crises, particularly in the oil sector.Among the main priorities of Latin America’s energy agenda are the need to better coordinate and cooperate amongst the different countries. The reality is that the region has an overabundance of energy resources. “Today Latin America can easily be a net exporter of energy”, told Milton Costa Filho, the President of the Board of ARPEL to representatives of Focus Reports. “We currently are not because there is a lack of energy integration in the region, but we have the potential, and we have the resources in whatever source you can think of: oil, gas, coal, hydro, nuclear, thermal and biofuels, so the region is very rich”, he added.
The key to unlocking the region’s potential lies in mustering the political will to develop political agreements and commercial exchanges that would allow for the seamless transfer of generated energy from one country to another. Once Latin America is able to master this interdependent relationship they would maximize the use of all available energy resources which would allow for them to export on a global scale. ARPEL sees this prospect as crucial to the economic and social development of the region, and is pushing both the private and public sectors to seize the day. Let us just hope that squabbling over ideologies and political allegiances typical of the region do not spoil this unique opportunity.
| Type: | NORMAL |
| Company: | Focus Reports |
| Country: | Switzerland |