New Costa Rican President Oscar Arias has signaled he will end the moratorium on oil drilling declared by his predecessor, saying his two-month-old administration is “studying the viability” of oil exploration about 50-60 miles off Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast. Arias made the announcement on May 30, the day he and members of his administration met with representatives of Brazil’s government-controlled oil company Petrobras and Brazilian Development, Industry and Foreign Trade Minister Luiz Fernando Furlan. Aside from exploring the possibility of offshore-oil development, the officials discussed the progress of a project to build a plant that would distill ethanol from African palms. The US$20 million plant, for which an environmental-impact study is now under way, would be built in Costa... [Log in to read more]
