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Costa Rica To Bid For Regional
Refinery Contract
Costa Rica is preparing its
offer for the bid to be the
chosen for the Mesoamérica
refinery, said the Ministro de
Ambiente y Energía (MINAE) -
Environment and Energy Minister
- Roberto Dobles.
The Minister assured that though
it had not been initially
contemplated fr the location of
a plant in the Pacific coast,
however, unofficial news from
Mexico is that there is a good
probability for one of Costa
Rica's coast could be chosen.
Dobles assures that his ministry
will work to obtain the contract
that will require a us$6 billion
dollar investment.
For their part, the Mexican
secretario de Energía, Fernando
Canales, announced that the bid
for the construction of a mega
refinery that will supply
gasoline to the 10 countries
that make up Mesoamérica will be
on August 31.
The Mexican secretary said in a
press conference that companies
that are interested in the
project are Chevron-Texaco,
Conoco Phillips, Oxy, Shell,
Mitsubishi, Velero Energy,
British Petroleum (BP),
Marubeni, Mitsui and the
Brazilian, Petrobras.
Financial support for the
project will come from the Banco
Interamericano de Desarrollo
(BID), Banamex, Scotia
Financial, Morgan Stanley and
Global Resource, among others.
The Mexican minister added to
his comments, that according to
a study by the KBC Advanced
Technologies consultants, the
most appropriate locations for
the refinery would be Quetzal in
Guatemala and Armuelles in
Panama.
However, Dobles said that the
report does not exclude the
possibility of a plant in Costa
Rica. The MINAE Minister said
that Costa Rica will continue
forward with its plans to submit
a bid.
At the beginning of June the
heads of government of Central
America, Mexico, Dominican
Republic and Colombia agreed
that the investor with the
winning bid will decide where
the plant will be located.
The plant, according to the
Mexican minister, will have a
capacity of refining 360.000
barrels a day, of which Mexico
will supply some 230.000 barrels
of crude oil a day under a long
term agreement.
The other 130.000 barrels will
be the responsibility of
operator of the refinery to
locate from countries like
Venezuela and Ecuador.
Once the bid has been awarded,
the completion of the
construction will be by 2010.
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Mesoamérica is a
region that extends roughly from the Tropic of Cancer in central
Mexico down through northwestern Costa Rica.
The term is generally used to denote the peoples and cultures of
that region before the Spanish conquest.
The name Mesoamérica was first used by the German ethnologist Paul
Kirchhoff to refer to a region of similar cultures characterized by
the practice of agriculture and a sedentary lifestyle.
The term has now become part of the vernacular in pre-Columbian
anthropological studies. By contrast, the sister terms Aridoamérica
and Oasisamérica have not entered widespread usage.
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