No oil wars in Latin America?

Via Chris Blattman, resource curse academic Michael Ross has a new paper which finds that in Latin America, unlike the rest of the world, oil wealth seldom leads to secessionist conflicts.

In the rest of the world, oil heightens the danger of both “governmental” conflicts (over control of the existing state) and secessionist conflicts (to form new states); but in Latin America, oil is only linked to governmental conflicts. This is not because Latin American petroleum has unusual properties, but because the region is uniquely “secession-proof”: there have been no separatist conflicts in Latin America for over a century. I explore two possible explanations for this anomaly: the region’s long history of sovereign statehood, which may have caused national borders to become more widely-accepted; and obstacles to the mobilization of indigenous groups along ethnic lines.

As a few of Chris' commenters point out, I think the obvious counterexample is Bolivia, where there are genuine and long-standing secessionist (and ethnic) tensions between the poorer, more indigenous highlands and the wealthier, whiter lowlands (where, incidentally, most of the natural gas is to be found). It is to be seen how these ultimately play out.

It also reminds one how sample size is an such obstacle to any sort of meaningful statistical analysis in international relations or development.

After Copenhagen? Cochabamba

Depressed about the failure of Copenhagen? Bolivian president Evo Morales isn't:

On Tuesday, Morales called the Copenhagen summit "a triumph of the people" because "the presidents came, proposed and went without hearing, but this time they could not impose their declaration."

It's not that he's not concerned about the earth, he just has an alternate solution in mind:

Bolivian President Evo Morales said Tuesday he's inviting activists, scientists and government officials from around the world to an alternative climate conference following the failure of a summit in Copenhagen to produce binding agreements.

The leftist leader said the April 20-22 meeting in Cochabamba will include indigenous peoples, social movements, environmentalists and scientists as well as governments "who want to work with their people."

Morales said the meeting is meant partly to pressure industrialized nations to accept that they have a "climate debt" to poor countries and will work toward an international court on environmental crimes.

Other topics will include a "universal proposal for the rights of mother earth" and the transfer of technology.

Melting Chacaltaya and the water poverty of the altiplano

Via MR, a frightening but not unexpected piece on the melting of the Chacaltaya glacier that supplied water to La Paz and El Alto in Bolivia, and the incipient water poverty of the altiplano. By Alma Guillermoprieto, whose collection of essays on Latin America The Heart That Bleeds is also excellent.

Turning Oil Into Salt (6): Batteries are the crux

Anyone plugging PHEVs has to address the issue of vehicle cost, and the authors own up to the fact that the battery is currently the critical bottleneck. They cite Ford that a lithium ion battery for a PHEV costs $8,000-15,000 (~$1,000 kWh), a number which needs to come down to ~$300/kWh for PHEVs to be cost-competitive.

One very interesting fact I did not know before was that the most costly element of a lithium ion battery is not the lithium or rare earth metals that get so much press, but rather “hair thin sheets of plastic called separators.” It turns out Exxon has the world’s best separator technology, and the authors hope a prize can inspire others to match it. I wish they had broken out in one place the cost of a battery by its different components, since without that it’s tough to infer more.

All the same, the question of raw material availability looms. The authors cite the well-known predominance of Bolivia’s lithium reserves and China’s rare earth metals reserves and point out known reserves elsewhere in the world. They also cite recycling and extending battery life as mitigating strategies for the West. But while they squarely name this challenge and address it head-on, I come away unconvinced that an electric car revolution wouldn’t be trading strategic energy dependency on one commodity (oil) for dependency on a host of others.

Ultimately, the authors also have the right, open attitude toward technology and avoid the “picking winners” trap:

As the backdrop of all of the above activities, it is important to remain open-minded about other battery chemistries and realize that advanced battery technology is only at the beginning of its upward trajectory. While significant progress is made toward mass production of advanced LiIon batteries, it would be imprudent for the government to crown one battery chemistry “the winner,” particularly in light of its questionable track record of picking R&D winners. With all their potential, the race is not over.

Yet despite that attitude and the optimism it engenders, in the end they do not illuminate a line of sight to the day that PHEVs will be cost-competitive with normal cars. And without that, their OFS story is basically a biofuels (or other hydrocarbon-to-liquids fuels) story... and is that really that revolutionary?

Shoddy energy journalism

Like I said, the media doesn't really get what's going on in Brazil - take for example the latest headline from Green Sheet, "Brazil Opts For Nationalized Oil Production".

No, Brazil is not "nationalizing" oil production in the sense the term is commonly used - expropriating private assets or unilaterally abrogating contracts with foreign companies. That's what Bolivia did in 2006, and what Venezuela did in 2007, which is why foreign oil companies are reluctant to invest in the Orinoco Basin despite its relative technical simplicity (increasingly scarce in new oil reserves).

The shared-production contracts that Brazil is moving to are common practice all over the world. And while Petrosal will be the legal owner of the pre-salt oil reserves (the surrogate state, if you will), foreign oil companies will be allowed to own up to 70% stakes in some fields.

It's a complicated situation, hard for anyone to understand. It doesn't need to be further complicated by imprecise language on the part of the media.

Plenty of lithium after all?

Nissan recently announced that the 24 kWh battery for the LEAF, its electric car, would use approximately 4 kg of lithium. Some industry observers were concerned that lithium availability would be a bottleneck for the budding electric car industry, but via Green Sheet, an expert contributor to the Gerson Lehrman Group runs an analysis based on the Nissan announcement and concludes that there may be plenty of lithium after all:

Lithium supplies from exisiting and expanded operations are therefore more than sufficient to meet potential demand for 500,000 lithium-ion battery powered vehicles in 2015 and could potentially meet demand for up to 2 million lithium-ion battery powered HEV and EV vehicles in that same period... Oversupply might be a more pressing question than lithium availability.

This is great news for companies planning to make electric cars, promoters of electric cars in general (e.g. some major cities), and probably the overall fight against climate change. It is not such good news for Evo Morales and Bolivia, who possess about half of the world's known lithium reserves and had grandiose dreams of major companies and country governments begging for minority stakes in lithium extraction operations.

If it's any consolation to them, resource wealth is often a curse and doesn't have a great track record of bringing long-term prosperity anywhere else...