Madagascar Drills-deep to Make most of Unused Resources: Production of heavy oil in Tsimiroro [Video]

Target Madagascar looks at energy in this edition, and travels west to the country’s first-ever oil production facility, now onstream. There is enormous potential here, with estimated reserves of nearly two billion barrels. And not just any oil, the highly sought-after “sweet” heavy variety that also happens to be low in impurities and easier to refine.

“We produce heavy oil here in Tsimiroro where we have tanks that can store 160,000 barrels,” says petroleum engineer Mbola Andriamalala.

“This oil is very suitable for powering Madagascar. So, very soon, some of that oil is going to find its way here as fuel for power generation, and we hope eventually that will expand into other industrial fuels,” says Madagascar Oil boss John Claussen.

Two hundred and sixty seven million euros of private capital have been sunk into the project, and 90 percent of the workforce is local. Apart from making serious environmental commitments, the company has built schools and health infrastructure throughout the region. The oil will soon be firing the main power station in the capital Antananarivo.

“We will be transporting the fuel within Madagascar by road. And it’s an opportunity really to help the whole infrastructure. We will be doing part of that to help with our trucks, but as well there will be other opportunities that will come as the infrastructure grows and as the development grows here as well,” assures Claussen.

New investments could also follow linked to the growth of the project. There is talk of building a pipeline, or a port on the island’s west coast.

“Developing sites like this one could entirely transform the economy of Madagascar, so investors need to know about the vast potential that awaits them here,” reports euronews’ Serge Rombi.

Exploration has been intensive. It is now known that Madagascar has five sedimentary basins that look highly promising for hydrocarbons. 
A vast deposit of natural gas has recently been discovered in the south. As far as oil goes, new blocs to be auctioned off for exploration have been prospected.

“We think that Madagascar has a total geological reserve of about 1,500 billion barrels of oil,” says Omnis General Manager Bonaventure Rasoanaivo.

To encourage investors the authorities have promised to reform oil industry laws, and to encourage exploration companies are offered a VAT holiday until any is found.

“Next year year Madagascar will launch an international tender to investors for 40 offshore blocs, and three to four onshore ones,” adds Rasoanaivo.

Obviously the objective is to boost economic development but also to achieve energy independence via Madagascar’s considerable energy resources, until now under-exploited.

Madagascar Drills-deep to Make most of-Unused Resources

Can the super catchy song "Despacito" help increase tourism in Puerto Rico? [Radio]

Popular culture can be a major driver of tourism. Just look at "Game of Thrones" — tours of filming locations in Croatia and Northern Ireland have taken off. In New Zealand, the Hobbit Village, where "Lord of the Rings" was shot, is waiting for you.

The question is whether a super popular song can do the same thing for Puerto Rico? The music video for the song in question, "Despacito," by Puerto Rican recording artists Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee, has garnered a record 3.3 billion views on YouTube.

Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal talked to writer Matt Gross about the Puerto Rican tourism economy and "Despacito," a topic Gross explored for Bloomberg. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Kai Ryssdal: So, what do we know about this omnipresent song and tourism in Puerto Rico?

Matt Gross: It's obviously an incredibly popular song, but is it popular enough to send people across the waves over to Puerto Rico? That's a little bit harder to measure.

Ryssdal: What kind of things do people look at? I mean, I'm sure the Puerto Rican tourism bureau has numbers on this.

Gross: Oh well they do, and they don't. What the Puerto Rican tourism board is really excited about right now is that search queries are up. You look at Hotels.com and Orbitz and Cheap Tickets, Expedia, everybody is searching for Puerto Rico. Numbers are up 45 percent, 17 percent, 24 percent. But, that’s search queries, that's not the same thing as actually buying a ticket, booking a hotel, going to Puerto Rico, and spending money there.

A man takes a selfie with his friends in the San Juan neighborhood of La Perla, where the video for the song, “Despacito,” was filmed. - RICARDO ARDUENGO/AFP/Getty Images

Ryssdal: Yeah, you know, it's interesting, right? I talked about New Zealand and "Lord of the Rings" and "Game of Thrones" and Ireland – those did translate. I wonder how much a song is going to make you want to go to Puerto Rico.

Gross: I think if you're inclined to go to Puerto Rico already – the fact that there's this incredibly popular song, with a video filled with incredibly hot people dancing in colorful seaside locations – that's maybe going to push you over the edge and you're going to go. But whether it's gathering up all these new people, who had never heard of Puerto Rico before, and sending them on these trips, that's a much trickier thing to do.

Ryssdal: Well let me throw a dirty word or two in here that might explain why it won't translate – and those two words are: Justin Bieber.

Gross: Please, please this is a family radio show.

Ryssdal: That’s right, that’s right. His name is part of the success of this song.

Gross: His embrace of the song and his popularity may very well translate into people going to Puerto Rico. But you've got to think, I mean, he's got an audience of hundreds of millions of people. He says, you know, through the song "go to Puerto Rico," some infinitesimal percent of those people may actually go to Puerto Rico. It's a great little rounding error and it's going to make some money for the island. But is that generating a huge wave of visits there? We don't know yet. It’s hard to figure out.

Follow Kai Ryssdal at @kairyssdal. 

Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee perform onstage at the Billboard Latin Music Awards at Watsco Center on April 27, 2017 in Coral Gables, Florida. - Sergi Alexander/Getty Images

By Kai Ryssdal
Can the super catchy song "Despacito" help increase tourism in Puerto Rico?

Can Puerto Rico Cash In on the Success of ‘Despacito’? [Video]

Since the song Despacito, by the Puerto Rican artists Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee, came out last January, its YouTube video has been viewed more than 3.2 billion times, demonstrating that all you need to succeed in pop music is a catchy hook—plus nearly five minutes of incredibly hot men and women dancing sexily in the colorful, if gritty, beachside neighborhood of La Perla. (It also helps if you have Justin Bieber; a remix featuring him is officially the most streamed song of all time, barring Malaysia.) 

But is that enough for Puerto Rico, battered by the Zika virus and an island-wide bankruptcy, to succeed in tourism? Well, possibly! According to sources quoted in Travel Weekly, search queries for the island have risen year on year across major travel sites. “We know that popular culture has a strong influence on our travel decisions,” Taylor Cole, a spokesman for Hotels.com, told the publication. “Puerto Rico is the home of the singers Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee, and it gets a big shout-out in their hit song. Our search data suggests that Despacito is encouraging more people to explore this destination.”

Search queries, of course, are not the same as actual bookings or visits. An analysis by the Washington Post last month disputed breathless claims of a “45% hike in tourism.” And the island’s tourism statistics, which have only been updated through February, do not yet show much of an uptick.

“We are closely monitoring official data sources to evaluate how the increase in searches and interest correlates to the number of visits and sales,” Jose Izquierdo, executive director of the Puerto Rico Tourism Co., told Travel Weekly. “We know that Despacito has been more than just a catchy summer tune.”

The connection between pop culture and tourism, however, may be a deceptive one. Sure, it seems natural: Tourists want to participate in the pop culture of the places they visit. In Croatia, where Game of Thrones is partly shot, so many visitors have been coming to Dubrovnik, which stands in for the show’s King’s Landing and where you can take GoT tours, that the city is using surveillance cameras to limit their entry. You can’t get off the plane in New Zealand without considering a trek to the “Hobbit” village where Lord of the Rings was shot. And when European friends visit me here in New York, for instance, they always seem to want to go to jazz clubs; and Roman Holiday is fantastic inspiration for anyone who feels like traipsing around the Italian capital pretending to be a commoner.

Guests play backyard cricket at the Hobbiton Movie Set in Matamata, New Zealand.

Photographer: Joel Ford/Getty Images AsiaPac

But does anyone actually choose a destination based on pop culture? The best example we have of this is South Korea, which in the late 1990s, after the Asian financial crisis, embarked on a campaign to modernize and export its music, movies, and soap operas, and thereby increase the nation’s international cultural standing. This “hallyu wave,” as it’s known, really got going around 2010, and tourism statistics show that over the next five years arrivals increased by almost 50 percent, from 8.8 million to 13.2 million (2015 is the most recent year for which there are numbers). But that might not all be due to Gangnam Style, the Despacito of 2012.

“If I had to guess, I’d say that food and surgery are a far bigger draw,” said Euny Hong, author of The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture. Though Korea’s pop-culture campaign was certainly successful, Hong says tourism didn’t necessarily appeal to those who fell deeply in love with K-pop. They “aren’t that curious about visiting Korea,” she said. “Because, I mean, what’s their plan, hoping to run into G-Dragon on the streets of Seoul?”

Old San Juan, a top tourist destination in Puerto Rico.

Photographer: Maremagnum/Photolibrary RM

Good Korean food (like oysters) would be a stronger draw, she said. It’s the kind of thing that’s harder to reproduce abroad, whereas a YouTube video is the same no matter which country you play it in.

And when it comes to analyzing statistics, Hong said one must be skeptical. “There is no real way to quantify the effect of K-pop culture—it would be a post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy,” Hong said. “I even spoke to the Ministry of Culture some years back, and they admitted (rightly!) that it was impossible to quantify the effect.”

(For that reason, I’m skeptical of Slovenia’s recent claim that its 15 percent increase in tourist arrivals from the U.S. during the first half of 2017 is due to Melania Trump. Again, let's look to the food.)

If Korea has a lesson for Puerto Rico in here, it might be this: You can play up Despacito all you want (not that there’s any avoiding it right now), but tourists are going to continue to come for the same reasons as always: beaches, seafood, and salsa dancing. Catchy summer tunes may come and go, but hot locals are forever.

How Did Puerto Rico Go Bankrupt?

How Did Puerto Rico Go Bankrupt?

Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee perform onstage at the Billboard Latin Music Awards in April.

Photographer: Sergi Alexander/Getty Images North America

By 

Matt Gross

The summer hit is burning up on YouTube, yes, but like K-Pop hits before it, clicks don’t necessarily translate into tourists

Can Puerto Rico Cash In on the Success of ‘Despacito’?

Puerto Rican religious leaders thank Congress for debt-relief legislation

Christian leaders in Puerto Rico have sent a message of thanks to the US Congress for approving legislation to restructure the debt of the island’s government.

In their message the Church leaders said that they have pushed for “positive action” to relieve that debt, and welcomed the Congressional action to include Medicare funds for Puerto Rico. Without that step, they said, 900,000 people would have lost access to health care.

The letter was signed by Archbishop Roberto Gonzalez of San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Rev. Heriberto Martinez-Rivera, the secretary-general of the Puerto Rico Bible Society.

Puerto Rican religious leaders thank Congress for debt-relief legislation

Puerto Rico makes it a crime to smoke in cars with minors

 The U.S. territory of Puerto Rico has made it a crime to smoke inside a vehicle if one of the passengers is younger than 18.

The island’s Health Department said Sunday that violators will face a $250 penalty. Officials said 10 percent of money collected from those fines will go to the pediatric center at Puerto Rico’s largest public hospital.

The island banned smoking in all public and certain private places in 1993.

Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Puerto Rico makes it a crime to smoke in cars with minors

Puerto Rico oversight board to investigate debt and fiscal crisis

Puerto Rico's federally appointed financial oversight board said on Wednesday it will investigate the U.S. commonwealth's debt "and its relationship to the fiscal crisis" which has left it with $72 billion in debt and a 45-percent poverty rate.

The board, a creation of the 2016 federal Puerto Rico rescue law known as PROMESA, said in a statement that the investigation will review the fiscal crisis, examine the debt and how it was issued, including disclosure and selling practices.

"The Oversight Board considers this investigation an integral part of its mission to restore fiscal balance and economic opportunity and to promote Puerto Rico's reentry to the capital markets pursuant to its responsibilities under PROMESA," the statement said.

The board is tasked with managing the island's finances. Earlier this year it helped develop a 10-year fiscal turnaround plan, and is in charge of making sure it follows through.

Reporting by Daniel Bases; Editing by Sandra Maler

Puerto Rico oversight board to investigate debt and fiscal crisis

Puerto Rico public university doubles fees amid crisis

Puerto Rico's largest public university is doubling its course fees following demands that it slash its budget amid a dire economic crisis.

Students seeking a bachelor's degree at the University of Puerto Rico would pay up to $115 per credit instead of $56. Those seeking a master's degree would pay $270 instead of $140 per credit.

Student leaders rejected the increases approved late Monday by a university board. They say the move would limit access to education for thousands of people living on an island with a 45 percent poverty rate.

The increases are part of a fiscal plan that officials expect to submit Tuesday to a federal control board overseeing Puerto Rico's finances.

The university recently restarted classes following a two-month student strike to protest cuts and increases.

Puerto Rico public university doubles fees amid crisis