Energy Summit Takes Place in Mexico
Mexico, Central America, the Dominican Republic and Colombia held a summit in Cancun to analyze the so-called Mesoamerican Energy Initiative and committed to progress in integration.

Host president, Vicente Fox, made the proposal for an agreement among 10 countries of seven projects, among them a refinery in Central America, a gas pipeline, and a thermoelectric and electrical interconnection system.

The meeting is also attended by Presidents Ricardo Maduro (Honduras), Oscar Berger (Guatemala), Leonel Fernandez (Dominican Republic), Abel Pacheco (Costa Rica), Martin Torrijos (Panama) and Elias Antonio Saca (El Salvador), and representatives from Nicaragua, Colombia and Belize.

The Mesoamerican Energy Initiative is a project of the Mexican government that will entail five billion dollars in investments and considered by local Foreign Minister Ernesto Derbez the most important of the region since the construction of the Panama Canal.

Derbez noted that the Summit was confined to make commitments official and to state the dates, and lamented the reduction of the project's speed due to financing and technical problems.

Fox announced that his country will contribute one million dollars to finance a technical committee to start research in January on the feasibility of Mesoamerican energy integration.

He noted the next meeting will be in the Dominican Republic in June to monitor the energy integration programs designed this Tuesday.

Mexico and Guatemala agreed to build electrical transmission lines between the two countries in 2006, and Panama and Colombia will finish still pending research to achieve the integration to the Mesoamerican network.

To make these projects reality the Summit participants expect to obtain the financial and technical support of the transnational and the Inter-American Development Bank, as well as the Central American Economic Integration), the Economic Commission of Latin America, and the Central American Economic Integration System.

The specialists found it curious that Fox proposed building a refinery in Central America because his government refused to modernize those existing in Mexico.

Fox wants to help the private sector and is interested in changing the state nature of the San Jose oil agreement that benefits the states of the region with cheaper Venezuelan and Mexican crude oil.