Today, I want to focus on black gold production south of the Rio Grande. Latin America’s political leaders believe (or claim to believe) that the economic future of the region is promising. They avail themselves of every summit, every conference or bilateral gathering to express their full confidence in growth, progress and development (today called “sustainable,” even when the Amazons continue to suffer). The Cuban president and his minister for the economy, for instance, insisted that this year we would grow like doped-up champions, by no less than 4 %. I think this is magnificent, charming. The one, tiny problem is that, in order to grow like that, exponentially, one has to burn oil at the same pace. So, what legs do we have to stand on? See country graphs below. Does Latin America have the fuel needed to reach such an ambitious goal? Might this not be another […]