Les rêves de grandeur des Albanais

Un chiffre rond et des célébrations d'une ampleur inédite. Quelque six millions d'Albanais des Balkans fêtent les 100 ans de leur indépendance de l'Empire ottoman proclamée un 28 novembre par Ismail Qemali, chef du premier gouvernement de l'Albanie libre. Mais, comme le soulignent tous les médias de la région, aujourd'hui ces réjouissances concernent une population éparpillée sur au moins cinq Etats : l'Albanie, le Kosovo, la Macédoine, le Monténégro et la Serbie. Et la perspective d'une union nationale au sein d'une "Grande Albanie" est présente dans tous les esprits.

"L'avenir nous invite à créer un espace unique pour une nation unique" : le Premier ministre du Kosovo, Hashim Taçi, a dit ce que tout le monde pensait tout bas. Le chef du gouvernement kosovar a aussi indiqué que son pays, qui n'est toujours par reconnu par l'ensemble de la communauté internationale, allait se poser en défenseur de Albanais de Macédoine, mais aussi de la vallée de Presevo, dans la Serbie voisine. "Nous serons les gardiens de leurs droits et leurs revendications", a-t-il dit le 25 novembre lors d'une réunion des leaders albanais de la région, à Skopje. "Par l'intermédiaire de l'Union européenne nous allons réaliser notre projet d'unité nationale", a lancé le Premier ministre albanais Sali Berisha, devant une foule exaltée de 10 000 personnes dans la capitale macédonienne.

C'est à Tirana, la capitale albanaise, qu'aura lieu le point d'orgue des cérémonies, ponctuées par de nombreuses initiatives - parfois insolites - visant à renforcer la fibre patriotique, comme la confection d'un gâteau de treize tonnes à l'effigie de l'aigle bicéphale, la peinture d'un drapeau géant portant le même symbole le long de "l'autoroute de la Nation" reliant l'Albanie au Kosovo, ou encore le sacrifice de quelque 2000 moutons lors d'un méchoui en plein air le 28 novembre.

Détourner les Albanais de leurs problèmes quotidiens

Ces excès n'ont pas fait l'unanimité dans la presse locale. Dans le journal Panorama, l'essayiste Edmond Tupja s'interroge sur le sens de ces célébrations "dans un pays où d'autres libertés fondamentales - justice, expression, science, éducation - sont en panne". Son confrère du magazine Klan, Koloreto Cukalli, se permet même d'imaginer une "célébration qui tourne à vide", boycottée par des Albanais plus soucieux d'améliorer leur quotidien que de faire la fête. Pour beaucoup, l'ampleur des cérémonies tend justement à détourner les Albanais de leurs problèmes présents.

A l'instar du quotidien Express du Kosovo voisin, de nombreux journaux se sont également interrogés sur le sens de cette "hystérie irrépressible où le patriotisme devient presque une compétition". Mais dans ce pays, où les Albanais représentent plus de 90 % de la population et sont avides de reconnaissance internationale, le ton était souvent beaucoup plus compréhensif. "Cette jubilation est légitime, malgré les excès, l'euphorie, le folklore, le mauvais goût, la médiocrité ou l'amateurisme des symboles sur les places publiques", écrit l'éditorialiste Shkëlzen Maliqi. Je pense que l'on peut pardonner aux Albanais cette exaltation éphémère, après un siècle de corps à corps avec le destin, d'insécurité, d'isolement, de dictature, de répressions et de stagnation... Les Albanais fêtent leur joie d'être aujourd'hui sur la bonne voie", poursuit-il.

Mais dans des pays où les Albanais sont minoritaires, ces célébrations ont souvent pris des airs de provocation. Des heurts entre groupes de jeunes Macédoniens et membres de la communauté albanaise (25 % du pays) ont eu lieu à Tetovo, dans l'ouest de la Macédoine, où la population a arboré des drapeaux albanais sur les façades des maisons. Les Albanais du Monténégro ont également défié la récente loi interdisante le déploiement des symboles nationaux des minorités dans les lieux publics. A Presevo, en Serbie, la population albanaise a érigé un monument à la gloire des combattants de l'Armée de libération du Kosovo morts lors d'accrochages avec les forces gouvernementales. Une initiative qui a provoqué la colère du Premier ministre serbe Ivica Dacic, rapporte la radio B92 de Belgrade. "Il s'agit d'une provocation inutile. L'Etat va réagir", a-t-il déclaré.

Source - http://www.courrierinternational.com/revue-de-presse/2012/11/28/les-reves-de-grandeur-des-albanais

Canadian energy: The sands of grime

THE oil town of Fort McMurray gets a bad press. GQ magazine portrayed it as a hellhole of testosterone and tattoos, where drunken oilworkers shower strippers with cash and get into fights because there’s nothing else to do. Esquire called it “the little Canadian town that might just destroy the world”.

There is a grimy grain of truth in such stories. Extracting oil from Alberta’s oil sands does indeed cause environmental problems. And Fort McMurray is a bit macho. It is a frontier town of ultra-low temperatures (-20°C is about average in winter; -51°C has been recorded) and ultra-high wages (average household income is C$178,000, which is also $178,000). The population is mostly young and male. Some do indeed prefer more raucous entertainment than say, joining a book group to discuss “Eat, Pray, Love”. “I wish they’d ban truck nuts,” sighs a female resident, referring to the toy testicles with which some young men decorate their trucks.

But there is another story about Fort McMurray: a tale of innovation and energy reserves so vast that they could have geopolitical consequences. Canada’s oil sands contain some 170 billion barrels of oil that can be recovered economically with today’s technology (and perhaps ten times that in total). Canada thus has the world’s third-largest proven oil reserves, after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. And since most oil-rich nations’ reserves are under state control, Canada has the largest reserves that private companies are free to invest in—more than half of the global total, reckons Ken Hughes, Alberta’s energy minister.

Other countries welcome the idea of plentiful energy from a stable democracy. It could reduce the rich world’s dependence on the Middle East. There are “no bribes or body bags”, grins an oil-industry booster. And the potential is immense. A new study by the Alberta Geological Survey estimates that the province has huge resources in its shale beds as well as its oil sands: 3,400 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 420 billion barrels of oil—numbers comparable to America’s.

However, Canada’s output of 3.5m barrels of oil a day is less than half that of America. (America’s output is set to exceed Saudi Arabia’s) Several problems hobble Canadian energy: geology, capital, people and pipes.

First, geology. Canadian oil is hard to extract. It mostly comes in the form of bitumen, which is “hard as a hockey puck” at 10°C, as the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), an industry body, puts it. If it is far below ground, it must be blasted with steam to make it flow, and then pumped out. This process (known as “steam-assisted gravity drainage”) was developed in Alberta. In the past decade, with high oil prices, it has made the oil sands economical to exploit. But precariously so: the best projects break even when oil is $30 a barrel, but many new ones need it to be $80 or more. (West Texas Intermediate is currently $85.)

Canada gets less than it should for its oil because it lacks enough pipelines. Environmentalists oppose them, arguing that pipes leak (which is always possible) and that Canada’s heavy oil causes more greenhouse-gas emissions than other oil (which is true, but not by much). President Barack Obama has delayed the approval of a pipeline called Keystone XL, which would move Canadian oil to America’s Gulf coast. A decision is expected soon.

Alex Pourbaix of TransCanada, the firm behind the Keystone pipeline, insists that the project will be good for both countries. Canada forgoes a fortune—perhaps $20 a barrel—because it cannot get its oil to the sea. Canadian gas sells at a discount, too: North American prices are far lower than those in Asia.

Getting the oil to the sea

Another proposed pipeline, Northern Gateway, would carry oil to Canada’s west coast, whence it could be shipped to Asia. Canada would benefit from having a choice of customers. But the government of British Columbia, and various aboriginal groups, have yet to say yes.

To exploit its hydrocarbons, Canada needs capital: some $50 billion-60 billion a year, on recent trends. Such sums are “far more than Canadian capital markets can raise,” says Dave Collyer of the CAPP. Canada gets plenty of foreign investment: Syncrude, one of the biggest oil-sands developers, is a joint venture that includes American, Chinese and Japanese partners. But lately the country has grown frostier towards foreign capital.

In October Canada’s federal government temporarily blocked a $5.2 billion bid by Petronas, Malaysia’s state energy giant, for Progress Energy Resources, a Canadian natural-gas company. It has yet to approve a $15 billion offer by CNOOC, a Chinese state-owned firm, for Nexen, a Canadian oil-and-gas firm. A deadline passed last week; a decision may come next month. Mr Hughes says he is keen on foreign investment so long as foreign firms abide by the same rules as Canadians; but it is not up to the provincial government.

The other big bottleneck is human capital. Hardly anyone lives near the oil sands, so labour must be imported, from other parts of Canada and from abroad. People from 127 countries live in Fort McMurray, says Ken Chapman of the Oil Sands Developers’ Group. They speak 69 languages. The Walmart in town looks like the United Nations, except that all the shivering Africans are buying woolly hats. Mr Hughes expects to see a skills shortfall of 100,000 people in Alberta by 2017. Canada’s immigration rules are more liberal than America’s, but firms still gripe about delays. An Irish worker in Fort McMurray complains of having to fly to Calgary to sit a test of English proficiency. It’s her native language, and the test is online.

Companies poach staff from each other, bidding up labour costs. It would be easier to attract workers to Fort McMurray if the town were more liveable; a one-bedroom flat can cost $2,000 a month. To build more homes, however, the town must wrestle with provincial red tape—and also attract legions of builders, plumbers and electricians, all at inflated wages.

Working conditions in the oil sands are tough. Touch a metal pipe with your bare hand at minus 40 and it sticks. “It’s not for everybody,” shrugs an oil-firm boss. At remote work camps, companies provide hot food, warm cabins, broadband and squash courts. All this is costly. Many firms make equipment elsewhere and truck it in, so that fewer people have to toil in the cold. Some are hoping dramatically to raise the proportion of man-hours worked off-site.

With so many bottlenecks and a volatile oil price, firms are growing cautious. Suncor Energy and Canadian Natural Resources, among others, are putting new investments on hold. “It’s the uncertainty,” says Marcel Coutu, the boss of Canadian Oil Sands, a firm that owns 37% of Syncrude. “No one knows when or whether those pipelines will be built.”

Source - Economist

Brazil in Africa: A new Atlantic alliance

IN THE sweaty heat of northern Mozambique, Vale, a Brazilian mining giant, is digging up coal at its mine near the village of Moatize. A 400,000-tonne mound sits ready to burn. The mine can churn out 4,000 tonnes an hour but the railways and ports cannot cope. Vale is working to improve a line through Malawi to take the coal for export. OAS Construtora, another Brazilian firm, has signed a deal with the miner to build part of a new port at Nacala, 1,000km (620 miles) to the north-east, to do the same.

The continent is an important part of Vale’s future, enthuses Ricardo Saad, the firm’s Africa boss. He is not alone in his excitement about Brazil’s prospects. Relations with Africa flourished during the presidency of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. He travelled there a dozen times and African leaders flocked to Brazil. His zeal was in part ideological: he devoted much of his diplomacy to “south-south” relations—at the cost, critics say, of neglecting more powerful (and richer) trade partners, such as the United States.

Lula stressed his country’s “historic debt” to Africa, a reference to the 3.5m Africans shipped to Brazil as slaves. Outside Nigeria, Brazil has the world’s biggest black population. Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s current president, is continuing those policies—though with more emphasis on how the relationship benefits Brazil. There are many ways that it can. Africa needs infrastructure and Brazil has lots of construction firms. Africa sits on oil and minerals in abundance; Brazil has the firms to get them out. Its agribusiness giants are also eyeing up Africa. If the continent’s economy continues to grow as it has in recent years, it will produce millions of customers much like Brazil’s new middle class.

Brazilian businesses seem keen. In 2001 Brazil invested $69 billion in Africa. By 2009, the latest figures available, that had swelled to $214 billion. At first Brazilian firms focused their efforts on Lusophone Africa, Angola and Mozambique in particular, capitalising on linguistic and cultural affinity to gain a foothold. Now they are spreading across the continent.

So far a few large firms dominate. Vale’s coal mine in Mozambique is its biggest operation outside Brazil. Odebrecht has been building things in Africa since the 1980s. Early on it was involved in construction of the vast Capanda dam in Angola. It erected the country’s first shopping mall in the capital, Luanda. In Ghana, where demand for homes is so fierce that tenants have to pay up to two years’ rent in advance, OAS, a contractor of Camargo Corrêa, a big conglomerate, is putting up social housing.

Andrade Gutierrez, another construction firm, works on everything from ports to housing and sanitation projects in Angola, Algeria, Congo and Guinea. Petrobras, Brazil’s state-owned oil behemoth, is already pumping oil in Angola and Nigeria and is on the hunt for more in Benin, Gabon, Libya, Nigeria and Tanzania. Consumer companies are setting their sights on a growing market, too. O Boticário, a Brazilian cosmetics firm, has been peddling its products in Angola since 2006.

Brazil v China

Since Brazil cannot compete with the likes of China in the scale of its investment, it has to offer something extra: in particular, technical expertise. With similar climates, agriculture has been a fruitful field of collaboration. In 2008 Embrapa, a Brazilian agricultural-research institute, set up an office in Ghana. Through Embrapa, Brazil has provided technical assistance to the cotton industry in Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali. Brazilian companies that produce soya, sugar cane, corn and cotton were sniffing out investments in Tanzania earlier this year.

Brazilian firms hope that their reputation will ensure that opportunities keep coming. They are keen to distinguish themselves from competitors, especially the Chinese. They do not want to be seen as grabbing everything they can, says Rodrigo da Costa Fonseca, Andrade Gutierrez’s president in Africa. Whereas Chinese firms are lambasted for their working practices, their Brazilian counterparts emphasise that they play by the rules, are good employers and want to build enduring relationships by offering development aid as well as private investment.

In particular, Brazilians stress that in Africa they employ Africans (Chinese firms are often criticised for shipping in their own people). Around 90% of Odebrecht’s employees in Angola are locals, as are 85% of Vale’s employees in Mozambique.

The Brazilians have not managed to avoid all criticism. Vale has come under fire for its resettlement of over 1,000 families to make way for its coal mine. Most have been moved to a brand-new village at Cateme, 40km away from Moatize. Disgruntled villagers say the cost of living has soared because of the added expense of getting to Tete, the provincial capital. The ground is less fertile and water less plentiful at the new location, say inhabitants, and the houses provided by Vale are shoddily built. In January angry villagers blocked a nearby railway line in protest.

Vale says it is dealing with these problems—fixing the houses and putting on a bus into town. The company is paying the price for being first in, says Altiberto Brandão, who runs Vale’s mine at Moatize. Vale has a 35-year concession so it needs to keep locals on its side: “we don’t want 35 years of problems,” Mr Brandão insists.

Brazil is still enjoying its honeymoon in Africa, says Oliver Stuenkel of the Global Public Policy Institute, a think-tank. Still, Brazil should learn from the mistakes of others, he says. With its prominence in mining, there is always a danger that Brazil is seen as a new colonial power. Though its presence is growing, it is still paltry compared with China’s. Unlike China, Brazil does not need Africa’s resources but is more interested in diversifying its markets. There is no construction in Europe—there is nothing left to build there, laughs OAS’s Africa head, Leonardo Calado de Brito. “Africa is the place to be.”

Source - Economist