But rumblings below the surface (no pun intended) make things a little less stable than Correa would like, I'm sure. Army bigwig Zurita was moved in to turn Petroecuador around back in November; 6 months later he's ousted. In his short statement yesterday, Zurita sounded more than a bit bitter and twisted about the situation. Correa may well be making a tactical error in antagonizing the ranks of the military like this, cos one thing recent history has taught us about Ecuador is the need to keep the armed forces on your side.

update from el comercio:
Anoche, sin embargo, se conoció que el contraalmirante Luis Jaramillo, director de la Marina Mercante, fue designado titular de la empresa estatal. Es más, lo confirmó el presidente Rafael Correa en un diálogo en la TV.

Says the guy replacing him is Luis Jaramillo, director of the merchant marine. Also says Correa confirmed this on TV, so it must be true because if it wasn't on TV, it never happened.

My understanding is that the MM at least has experience operating the nation's tankers, although I wasn't able to find out how many they have or what condition they're in. One thing is certain though. If you're going to be an oil exporter, you need a way to get your product to market, and the tanker market is rather tight these days. This is partly due to the single hulled vessels coming off market as more and more ports ban them. Also, demand is increasing for dry bulk carriers (wheat, corn, soy, potash) so many of these ships are being converted.

I'll just quote here from Teekay's 2007 q4 report:

"Tanker sales for conversion (particularly for conversion to dry bulk carriers) continued to rise through Q4-07across all the
major tanker segments (i.e. VLCC, Suezmax, Aframax). The removal of these vessels from the tanker fleet has the effect of
dampening tanker supply growth."

Ecuador has a crisis on it's hands I'd say. They can't increase near-term production, and even if they could, they'd likely have problems getting to market. This is going to put pressure on them to come up with alternative sources of revenue. Trouble is, mining is in its infancy (some would call it crib death) and can't take up the slack any time soon.

My guess is, someone's going to have to lend them big money pretty soon, but who will it be?

ebear