News From Brazil

O Rio de Janeiro, my adopted hometown, so many great things will be happening to Rio in the next few years, my hope is that is will finally come back to the glamourous city that it once was.
Decades of military rule followed by incompetent government both on the municipal and state level has left Rio an empty shell of what it once was. Crime, intertwined with corruption, hasnt helped either.
With the World Cup in 2014 and the Summer Olympics in 2016, Rio will be at the forefront of international attention. Hopefully the news will be positive.
Here is a list of some of the news from Brazil over the past few weeks.


1. Madonna just spent a week in Rio de Janeiro and secured a 7 million USD donation from local billionaire Eike Batista for her foundation in Malawi. Madoona is the patron saint of cougars....

2. The popular sports of frescoball and soccer have been banned on the beaches in Rio between 8 am and 5 pm until March. Overcrowding and stray balls add up to injuries during the summer. Its unfortunate because they are both popular sports and are part of the beach culture. Some of my friends consider it a human rights issue!

3.Want to spend a week in Rio de Janeiro in style during Carnaval? If you can muster up the money, this penthouse on Copacabana Beach is fit for a king.

4.Petrobras (the national oil company) is showing its strength and is now the 4th largest oil company in the world. Their off shore blocks are proving to be very rich in reserves. Their stock has now rebounded to pre crisis levels.

Watch Out, Brazil is Going to Kick Some Butt

Food prices, oil prices are all going up up up. Rice is being hoarded, riots happening in Haiti, Iowa farmers buying tracts of land in Roraima State here in Brazil. The price of corn, wheat and rice is going through the roof. Droughts in Australia, along with the appetite for ethanol are being considered the major cause of this price increase.
When I went to Calgary a few weeks ago to visit family, I flew from Rio via Houston and then up to Calgary. I call it the petroleum milk run. All three cities are major oil cities, so the chances of sitting next to a petroleum person is very high. As it turned out, I sat next to a woman who is part of Petrobras in Houston, and she works in the ethanol division.
I asked her about the ethanol industry in Brazil and in the rest of the world and i learned something very interesting. In Brazil, ethanol is made from sugar cane. The leftover of the sugar cane is used as fuel to power the ethanol plant. Talk about sustainability and non polluting! In contrast, the ethanol plants in the US use corn to extract ethanol and the husks are not used to power the ethanol plants. They need to burn coal....
We need to stop using major food sources to make ethanol. Sugarcane is NOT a major food source, corn wheat and rice are.
Petrobras is poised to kick some butt in the near future.....