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A huge oil discovery by the Spanish company Repsol has sharply boosted Argentina’s potential to cash in on energy and could eventually attract an infusion of investment to exploit the shale oil.

Experts said Tuesday the find is very promising, but it is unclear how much time and investment may be needed to capitalize on the oil beneath the rocky, barren plains of Patagonia. The company said the discovery includes 927 million barrels of recoverable oil and natural gas, of which 741 million barrels is oil.

Shares in Repsol YPF SA soared a day after the find was announced, rising 6.3 percent by the close of trading in Madrid and climbing 6 percent in afternoon trading in New York.

Former Argentine Energy Minister Jorge Lapena said it’s a “spectacular announcement” but that the reserves have yet to be proven and that studies on economic feasibility and environmental impact still need to be carried out.

“There’s still a long path to go from resources to reserves, and then to put them into production,” Lapena told reporters. He said the find, if proven, appears to represent about 40 percent of Argentina’s reserves.

Though potentially a game-changer for Argentina, the find is small compared to Brazil’s recent deep-sea oil discoveries, which experts have estimated could represent as much as 55 billion barrels. Venezuela, South America’s largest oil exporter, has a whopping 296.5 billion barrels in proven crude reserves.

Still, for Argentina the find could lead to an eventual increase in oil output, and other areas remain to be explored.

“It must be proven first of all that they’re commercially exploitable reserves, that’s to say the economic feasibility,” Daniel Bosque, editor of the Argentina-based website Enernews.

Jason Schenker, an energy analyst and president of Austin, Texas-based Prestige Economics LLC, said such oil discoveries “will be critical to meet rising global oil demand.”

“A significant oil find at current price levels is very positive for firms that can verify their size and extract them efficiently,” Schenker said. “Now, the questions will be: How quickly can this oil be brought into production … and at what price?”

Those are questions that Repsol isn’t immediately ready to answer with specifics.

But Kristian Rix, a Repsol spokesman in Madrid, said that because 15 vertical wells have already been drilled in the area and are producing 5,000 barrels a day of shale oil, “the development of this is uncomplicated from our point of view.”

“It’s a producing region, so all the infrastructure is there already, so putting new wells on line is very fast,” Rix said in a telephone interview Tuesday.

He said that while it’s typical in the industry to have a lag time of five to seven years between exploration and production, “this is clearly not the case here, because we’re already producing from wells.” He said it’s too soon to comment on projected investment or how long it could take.

“We are still at a very intense exploration stage,” Rix said.

He said the oil would be extracted by hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” the technique that involves injecting water, sand and chemicals at high pressure to force out the fuel. It’s not yet clear which water sources would be used in that process.

The shale oil was discovered in the arid “Vaca Muerta,” or “Dead Cow,” basin of Neuquen province in northern Patagonia, a region of treeless plains dotted with dry brush where there are two nearby lakes.

Repsol YPF owns oil rights to 12,000 square kilometers (4,600 square miles) of the basin, but like other oil companies, has just begun to search them. The discovery came while exploring an area of just 428 square kilometers (165 square miles) known as “Loma la Lata Norte.”

The company now plans to expand its drilling in a nearby area of about the same size that shows similar potential, Rix said.

Repsol YPF SA is based in Spain but operates in more than 30 countries around the world. As of Monday, Argentina is home to two-thirds of the 3 billion barrels of oil deposits that the company considers recoverable, up from half.

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Associated Press writers Ian James in Caracas, Venezuela, Bradley Brooks in Sao Paulo and Alan Clendenning in Madrid contributed to this report.

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Rodney Diverlus’s parents qualified to vote for the first time in last month’s provincial election after moving to Canada from Haiti — and they voted Liberal.

The reason: With a son and four daughters in or approaching university, they were swayed by liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty’s pledge to slash college and university tuition fees by 30 per cent.

But Rodney — a third-year student at Ryerson University, also voting in his first election, shunned the Liberals.

The reason: He sees too many holes and unanswered questions in the program.

McGuinty’s pledge sounded straightforward enough.

The province would give most undergraduate university and college students a grant amounting to 30 per cent of their fees. The grant would be paid directly to the university or college, which would then reduce the students’ fees accordingly.

Families with incomes above $160,000 would not qualify for the grants, nor would students at professional schools. And the grants would only apply to students within four years of graduating from high school.

The Liberals said five out of six students in the province would benefit from the program, which they said will start Jan. 1.

It was certainly going to cost real money: The Liberals estimated $423 million starting in 2012-13, and rising to $486 million in four years.

Rodney Diverlus was delighted when he first heard about the program. A performance dance student, he was accustomed to regular tuition fee increases. He has a student loan of $16,000.

“To know that the tuition fee would be reduced by 30 per cent, I was dumbfounded,” he said in an interview.

So were his parents. He has an older sister in graduate school, a younger sister graduating from high school this year, and two other sisters only a few years away from college or university.

But Diverlus found his initial enthusiasm cooling as he started pulling back the layers of the promise.

He began to realize, at the outset, that he might not be eligible for the grants on several grounds.

First, the program isn’t open to professional schools. That seemed to be targeted at law and medical schools, where nearly all students have degrees.

But what about performance arts programs, such as dance and music? And architecture, business and nursing? All are undergraduate programs, but could be deemed professional fast payday loan no faxing.

And the grant for all students is a flat $1,600 for university and $730 for college — despite the fact that some programs have significantly higher fees than the arts and science fees on which the basic 30 per cent grant is calculated.

Diverlus has another issue. He cut back to part-time status this year because he’s active in student government, but part-time students don’t get the grants.

Student organizations say there are other questions.

Nora Loreto of the Canadian Federation of Students notes that grants are only issued to students within four years of completing high school. Since many students take a year or more away from studies, they’ll lose grants when they do.

Others who work part time and take more than four years to get through a regular course will also be out of luck in their fifth and later years.

This is a particular issue for college students, who have often spent time in the workforce before returning to upgrade qualifications, she says.

Students are also puzzled by how the $160,000 limit on family income will be measured. Universities, who will be given the grant money to allot, don’t know their students’ family incomes.

Who will make the call? The Ontario Student Assistance Program has family income information on some students, but not all students use the program.

There’s even the question of whether the Liberal plan will require legislation or whether it can be set up under existing statutes. Steering new legislation through a minority legislature could be tricky.

When questions about the program’s details were put to the premier’s office, a spokesperson replied: “We’re looking forward to having more to say on implementation in the future.”

Diverlus and Loreto suggest the plan could be made simpler if it reduced fees for all students across the board.

That would spread the available money across a greater number of students, so the fees reduction would be less than 30 per cent, they acknowledge.

But it would be simpler to administer, and would bring part-time and older students into the tent.

Also read:

Easy ways to save for your child’s educationE

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This year’s annual construction industry awards by the Associated General Contractors of St. Louis includes for the first time specialty contractor awards in 10 areas and a Specialty Contractor of the Year Award.

The 14th annual Keystone Awards announced at a banquet Thursday night went to nine contractors chosen from nearly 30 finalists. Educational facilities, hospitals, apartments and data centers were among the project recognized, as well as industrial and heavy construction work. Also recognized were the projects’ owners.

Keystone Awards are not based on a project’s beauty, the AGC said. Instead, they recognize a contractor’s success in achieving solutions despite construction challenges.

General contractor members of the AGC determined the Special Contractor Awards based on the winners’ ability to stay within budgets and their overall experiences with the specialty contractor. The specialty contractor receiving the most votes by general contractors was also presented the Specialty Contractor of the Year award. That distinction went to Waterhout Construction Inc.

“It’s really exciting for our association to have the opportunity to highlight some of the tremendous projects completed by our members while at the same time honoring our specialty contractors for their contributions to the success of any project,” said Leonard Toenjes, AGC’s president. “More than ever in today’s competitive and challenging construction environment, collaboration is the key to making a successful project happen.”

The remaining 2011 awards:

General Contractor/Construction Manager/Prime Contractor

Project $45 million or more

Paric Corp.

Project

Stocks are opening higher as hopes grow that a plan to tackle the European debt crisis will survive.

The European Central Bank surprised markets early Thursday by cutting its benchmark interest rate.

Shortly after the open Thursday, the Dow Jones industrial average is up 128 points, or 1.1 percent, to 11,969. The S&P 500 index is up 12 points, or 1 percent, to 1,250. The Nasdaq is up 23, or 0.9 percent, to 2,663.

The Labor Department said the number of people who applied for unemployment benefits dipped slightly last week absolutely free credit score.

Greece’s prime minister surprised markets with a call this week to put a European rescue package to a vote. The prime minister was in an emergency meeting Thursday after members of his government called for him to step down.

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Germany’s unemployment rate slipped to 6.5 percent in October, an improvement credited to seasonal factors.

The Federal Labor Agency said Wednesday that 2.737 million people were registered as jobless in Europe’s biggest economy last month _ 59,000 fewer than the previous month. The unadjusted jobless rate was down from 6.6 percent in October.

However, the agency says that the seasonally adjusted jobless rate ticked up to 7 percent from 6.9 percent. In adjusted terms, the number of unemployed people increased by 10,000 following months of declines.

Germany’s economic growth has been losing steam lately amid clouds over the global economy and the eurozone debt crisis.

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The Occupy Wall Street movement has close to $300,000, as well as storage space loaded with donated supplies in lower Manhattan. It stared down city officials to hang on to its makeshift headquarters, showed its muscle Saturday with a big Times Square demonstration and found legions of activists demonstrating in solidarity across the country and around the world.

Could this be the peak for loosely organized protesters, united less by a common cause than by revulsion to what they consider unbridled corporate greed? Or are they just getting started?

There are signs of confidence, but also signs of tension among the demonstrators at Zuccotti Park, the epicenter of the movement that began a month ago Monday. They have trouble agreeing on things like whether someone can bring in a sleeping bag, and show little sign of uniting on any policy issues. Some protesters eventually want the movement to rally around a goal, while others insist that isn’t the point.

“We’re moving fast, without a hierarchical structure and lots of gears turning,” said Justin Strekal, a college student and political organizer who traveled from Cleveland to New York to help. “… Egos are clashing, but this is participatory democracy in a little park.”

Even if the protesters were barred from camping in Zuccotti Park, as the property owner and the city briefly threatened to do last week, the movement would continue, Strekal said. He said activists were working with legal experts to identify alternate sites where the risk of getting kicked out would be relatively low.

Wall Street protesters are intent on hanging on to the momentum they gained from Saturday’s worldwide demonstrations, which drew hundreds of thousands of people, mostly in the U.S. and Europe. They’re filling a cavernous space a block from Wall Street with donated goods to help sustain their nearly month-long occupation of a private park nearby.

They’ve amassed mounds of blankets, pillows, sleeping bags, cans of food, medical and hygienic supplies _ even oddities like a box of knitting wool and 20 pairs of swimming goggles (to shield protesters from pepper-spray attacks). Supporters are shipping about 300 boxes a day, Strekal said.

The space was donated by the United Federation of Teachers, which has offices in the building.

Close to $300,000 in cash also has been donated, through the movement’s website and by people who give money in person at the park, said Bill Dobbs, a press liaison for the movement. The movement has an account at Amalgamated Bank, which bills itself as “the only 100 percent union-owned bank in the United States.”

Strekal said the donated goods are being stored “for a long-term occupation.”

“We are unstoppable! Another world is possible!” Kara Segal and other volunteers chanted in the building lobby as they arrived to help unpack and sort items, preparing them to be rolled out to the park.

While on the streets, moments of madness occasionally erupt in the protest crowd _ accompanied by whiffs of marijuana, grungy clothing and disarray _ order prevails at the storage site.

It doubles as a sort of Occupy Wall Street central command post, with strategic meetings that are separate from the “general assembly” free-for-alls in the park. One subject Sunday was data entry: protesters are working to get the names and addresses of donors into a databank.

The movement has become an issue in the Republican presidential primary race and beyond, with politicians from both parties under pressure to weigh in.

President Barack Obama referred to the protests at Sunday’s dedication of a monument for Martin Luther King Jr., saying the civil rights leader “would want us to challenge the excesses of Wall Street without demonizing those who work there.”

Many of the largest of Saturday’s protests were in Europe, where protesters involved in long-running demonstrations against austerity measures declared common cause with the Occupy Wall Street movement. In Rome, hundreds of rioters infiltrated a march by tens of thousands of demonstrators, causing what the mayor estimated was at least euro1 million ($1.4 million) in damage to city property.

U.S. cities large and small were “occupied” over the weekend: Washington, D.C., Fairbanks, Alaska, Burlington, Vt., Rapid City, S.D., and Cheyenne, Wyo. were just a few. In Cincinnati, protesters moved their demonstration out of a park after hearing that a couple was getting their wedding photos taken there _ but the bride and groom ended up seeking them out for pictures.

More than 70 New York protesters were arrested Saturday, more than 40 of them in Times Square. About 175 people were arrested in Chicago after they refused to leave a park where they were camped late Saturday, and there were about 100 arrests in Arizona _ 53 in Tucson and 46 in Phoenix _ after protesters refused police orders to disperse. About two dozen people were arrested in Denver, and in Sacramento, Calif., anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan was among about 20 people arrested after failing to follow police orders to disperse.

Activists around the country said they felt that Saturday’s protests energized their movement.

“It’s an upward trajectory,” said John St. Lawrence, a Florida real estate lawyer who took part in Saturday’s Occupy Orlando protest, which drew more than 1,500 people. “It’s catching people’s imagination and also, knock on wood, nothing sort of negative or discrediting has happened.”

St. Lawrence is among those unconcerned that the movement has not rallied around any particular proposal, saying “policy is for leaders to come up with.”

“I don’t think the underlying theme is a mystery,” he said. “We saw what the banks and financial institutions did to the economy. We bailed them out. And then they went about evicting people from their homes,” he said. He added that although he is not in debt and owns his own home, other people in his neighborhood are suffering and “everyone’s interests are interconnected.”

In Richmond, Va., about 75 people gathered Sunday for one of the “general assembly” meetings that are a key part of the movement’s consensus-building process. Protester Whitney Whiting, a video editor, said the process has helped “gather voices” about Americans discontent, and that she expects it will eventually take the movement a step further.

“In regards to a singular issue or a singular focus, I think that will come eventually. But right now we have to set up a space for that to happen,” Whiting said.

Some U.S. protesters, like those in Europe, have their own causes. Unions that have joined forces with the movement have demands of their own, and on Sunday members of the newly formed Occupy Pittsburgh group demanded that Bank of New York Mellon Corp. pay back money they allege it overcharged public pension funds around the country.

New York’s attorney general and New York City sued BNY Mellon this month, accusing it of defrauding clients in foreign currency exchange transactions that generated nearly $2 billion over 10 years. The company has vowed to fight the lawsuit and had no comment about the protesters’ allegation about pensions.

Lisa Deaton, a tea party leader from southern Indiana, said she sees some similarities between how the tea party movement and the Wall Street protests began: “We got up and we wanted to vent.”

But the critical step, she said, was taking that emotion and focusing it toward changing government.

The first rally she organized drew more than 2,500 people, but afterward, “it was like, `What do we do?’” she said. “You can’t have a concert every weekend.”

The Wall Street protesters’ lack of leadership and focus on consensus-building has help bring together people with different perspectives, but it’s also created some tension.

“Issues are arising _ like who is bringing in sleeping bags without permission,” said Laurie Dobson, who’s been helping a self-governed “working group” called “SIS” _ for Shipping, Inventory and Supplies.

Sleeping bags were among items cited by Zuccotti Park’s owner, Brookfield Properties, as not allowed on the premises _ along with tents, tarps and other essentials for the encampment. By Sunday, all those items were back.

Strekal didn’t see that as a problem. Protesters could do it, he said, “because we’re winning the PR war.”

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Mexican authorities on Thursday raised to six the death toll from Hurricane Jova, which hit along the Pacific coast as a Category 2 storm, and warned the storm’s remnants could affect opening ceremonies of the Pan American Games.

The body of a man who apparently had been swept away by a river current was found covered with mud in the town of Cihuatlan in Jalisco state, said civil protection spokesman Juan Pablo Vigueras. The games are scheduled to open in Jalisco on Friday.

The five other victims drowned, were killed by mudslides or died in a collapsed house.

Rain from the remnants of Jova may change the open-air inauguration of the Pan American Games in the western city of Guadalajara, said Bernardo de la Garza, Mexico’s top sports official.

Heavy rain falling on Mexico’s west coast also may affect training sessions for the games’ triathlon, sailing and beach volleyball, he said. All three competitions are to be held in the beach resort of Puerto Vallarta just north of where Jova hit land early Wednesday.

Farther south, a low-pressure system continued to dump rain on southern Mexico and Central America, where it was blamed for the deaths of 15 people in Guatemala. Rains will likely continue during the next couple days as the system hovers over southeastern Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador, said the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida.

Guatemalan Vice President Rafael Espada said four people are missing.

He urged Guatemalans on Thursday to use the country’s highways only for emergencies, saying several were damaged by the storm or are blocked by mudslides.

The storm damaged at least 2,000 homes, said Alejandro Maldonado, director of Guatemala’s disaster prevention agency.

Meanwhile, Tropical Depression Irwin was expected to weaken as it swirled over the Pacific off Mexico’s coast and was forecast to become a remnant low within 24 hours, the hurricane center said.

Irwin’s maximum sustained winds Thursday afternoon were near 40 mph (65 kph). The storm was centered about 145 miles (235 kilometers) west of Manzanillo, Mexico, and was moving east at 6 mph (9 kph).

The depression’s was predicted to begin curving away from Mexico by Friday morning and head back out over the Pacific.

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The Philippine president has announced a 72 billion peso ($1.66 billion) stimulus package to cushion the economy as Asian governments step up efforts to ward off the global fallout from Europe’s debt crisis.

President Benigno Aquino III said Wednesday that the world economic slowdown is already having some impact on growth in Asia, including the Philippines, and the government “is working overtime to make certain that we do what must be done to maintain our economy’s momentum.”

On Tuesday, Indonesia’s central bank lowered its benchmark interest rate by a quarter percentage point to 6.5 percent to offset the impact of turmoil in financial markets and a slowing global economy.

Asia bounced back relatively quickly from the last global recession that was sparked by the 2008 financial crisis, helped in part by China’s massive stimulus spending. But some economists say the region is not as well placed to respond to a new slowdown because inflation is high and a lot of fiscal ammunition has already been spent fighting the last crisis.

Aquino said that his government’s additional spending this year includes 6.5 billion pesos ($149 million) for local infrastructure and poverty alleviation and 10 billion pesos ($230 million) to relocate squatters affected by floods and landslides Payday advance.

Another 5.5 billion pesos ($126 million) will be spent on national infrastructure projects and 6.3 billion pesos ($146 million) to upgrade two of metropolitan Manila’s light rail lines.

“This spending will provide added stimulus to our economy,” he said in a speech at the Foreign Correspondents Association of The Philippines. “The stimulus will be spent on projects that will have high macroeconomic impact, and will help the poor.”

The government’s economic growth forecast for this year has been lowered to a range of 5 percent to 6 percent from the 7 to 8 percent expansion projected in January. Aquino said the target for next year is also 5 to 6 percent growth.

The effects of the stimulus will be felt not just at the end of this year but also in the first half of next year, Aquino said. The spending is being funded from savings and existing loans.

Last year, the Philippine economy galloped to its highest annual growth in more than two decades, expanding 7.3 percent on strong foreign trade and election campaign spending.

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A year ago, we launched Moneyville with an excerpt from The Wealthy Barber Returns, the long awaited sequel to the bestselling book written 21 years ago by David Chilton.

The chapter used the story of a French philosopher redecorating his apartment as a proxy for what great spenders we have become 240 years later, seduced by the many easy ways we can borrow money, particularly lines of credit. There were no lines of credit in 18th Century Paris, nor did consumers have them as little as 20 years ago. But we have increasingly found them irresistible, treating the convenience and interest-only repayment schedules as a second income, rather then debt. They help us buy things we can’t afford and haven’t saved for, which is rather far from their original purpose of allowing us to borrow for large, unanticipated expenses that in the old days needed a fixed-term loan from the bank. A weeklong Moneyville series this winter, revealed that for some people line of credit spending is running wild.

The Wealthy Barber Returns has been in book stores for a few weeks and is already a bestselling Canadian title. Moneyville’s review by Ellen Roseman said many readers will find the message disturbing. Easy credit is killing us and we’re deluding ourselves about how we can stay in debt all our lives and still have a comfortable retirement.

We sat down again with Chilton to get his thoughts on how things have changed since the original Wealthy Barber was published. The good news is that we’ve started to save more, but the bad is that we’re spending even faster.

“The single biggest change in the last 20 years is that debt has escalated,” says Chilton. “And there are three reasons. Interest rates are low, so that you’re not punished so much for borrowing, lines of credit have made it easy to spend and average credit card limits have gone up.”

He believes our attitudes have also changed so that we aren’t as frightened of debt as we once were and at the same time have become consumed by consumption. “You want what you want when you want it,” he says. And lines of credit make it that much easier with money that seems almost free.

Chilton tells a story in the book about a woman who borrowed $60,000 from her credit line to help her son renovate his bathrooms. She assured Chilton it was nothing to worry about, because the reno only cost her $150 a month.

“I can afford it,” she said.

She reasoned that at her borrowing rate of 3 per cent, the $60,000 cost $1,800 a year in interest which worked out to the $150 a month or $5 a day. What’s the big deal? She was conveniently forgetting her principal repayment. The real cost was $150 a month, plus $60,000.

“That’s the thing,” Chilton says. “Many people with lines of credit have no plans to pay them back.”

Since these debts are usually secured by the equity in homes, they have essentially become reverse mortgages business card templates. Ater spending 25 years to pay off a mortgage, homeowners using their home as the security for new borrowing. What many don’t realize is that banks can call a line of credit at any time. They don’t because they’d rather have your monthly payment along with the debt. But they can.

These perpetual payments are robbing us of the ability to put money aside for retirement or into tax free savings accounts or even our kids RESPs.

“The issue is not about default,” Chilton says, “but not having enough money to save.”

Another worrisome trend is the attitude of young people towards saving and spending which is very much skewed toward instant gratification. Young people have access to debit and credit from an early age, much earlier than their parents did. “A lot of kids move out and want the same lifestyle as their parents right away, not realizing that it took their parents 25 years to achieve it,” he says.

And you shouldn’t look to your banker for help. The more they lend, the more profitable they are, so their incentive is make borrowing easy.

“Banks are businesses like any other,” Chilton says with a shrug. “Loblaws sell groceries, the Star sells newspapers, Dave Chilton sells books. Banks lend money.”

Chilton is a single parent, living Waterloo and has never had a line of credit. To be fair, unlike many of us he doesn’t really need one. Nor has he ever used a cash machine or a debit card. He pays wherever possible by cash because it makes the purchase real. He says the only reason he has a credit card is that he has to have to have one to travel – you can’t book a hotel room or airline ticket without one.

Looking to the broader economy Chilton sees governments facing on a larger scale what we face as individuals. The developed world has been living beyond its means and it has caught up to us. The developed world’s solution has been to lower interest rates to encourage more spending and the accumulation of more debt.

“I’m surprised we haven’t learned our lesson,: he says. “Solving crises with ever cheaper money leads to worse problems down the road. We’re going to have to put up with slow growth, which another reason why living within your means is a good thing.”

In the meantime he advises some simple remedies when you feel the urge to spend or peer or kid pressure makes you want to pull out some plastic. It’s all about four liberating words: I can’t afford it.

According to Chilton it’s an easy step to regaining control. Instead of trying to keep up with the Jones’ let them keep up you.

Win a copy of The Wealthy Barber Returns

Send an email to editor@moneyville.ca by the end of day Tuesday for a chance to win a copy of The Wealthy Barber Returns. The first five names drawn win a book.

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As interest rates on certificates of deposit continue their downward slog, annuities, money market accounts and even interest-bearing checking accounts are all emerging as attractive alternatives.

In the past 24 months, the amount invested in CDs nationally dropped nearly 30 percent, while those in locally based banks tumbled 40 percent. For the 75 banks based in St. Louis tracked by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, CD deposits totaled $10.48 billion at the end of June, down from $17.6 billion when CD interest rates in mid-2009.

There’s no secret why: The national and local average for a 5-year CD this week came with a 1.26 annual percentage yield, below inflation and down from about 4 percent in 2008.

So what’s an investor to do?

Many investors are ditching CDs in search of better returns or investments that provide better liquidity, such as money market accounts. CDs have long been viewed as a relatively safe place to invest money without the volatility of stock market swings, as the funds are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. But CDs also come with a catch