Centurion Aircraft Engines

Centurion Engines says that their powerplants will achieve a significant milestone this week. By the end of the third quarter, the companys says the engines will have logged over 2.5 million flight hours in GA aircraft and UAV’s.

“Approximately 1.5 million flight hours were logged by the Centurion 1.7,” said Jasper Wolffson, CEO of Centurion. “Its market launch in 2002 was the catalyst for developing alternative propulsion systems for small aircraft and UAVs. The successor models Centurion 2.0 and Centurion 2.0s now being in series production have logged 1 million flight hours to date. Well over 3,000 Centurion engines have been delivered thus far.”

Centurion says it engines have been designed to be installed in existing cowlings without affecting weight. This allows them to be used on a wide range of manned and unmanned aircraft. The company says the technical simplicity of replacing Centurion 1.7′s with Centurion 2.0′s on any aircraft is an added advantage.

Both engine models afford above-average reliability, the company says. According to FAA data, the average for general aviation in-flight shut downs is one in every 10,000 hours. For Centurion engines the average failure rate is more than 50 percent lower. The company says the 2.0 model offers a number of technological advancements over the 1.7 engine, including a 50 percent longer time between overhaul, and significant extension of the life of certain components, such as the clutch and gearbox.

“Centurion engines are future-proof in terms of both economical as environmental aspects, being able to use standard aviation fuels like Jet-A instead of having to rely on aviation gasoline (avgas),” explained Wolffson. Since the engine does not burn avgas, Centurion says among the “green” benefits of Centurion engines are no risk of carbon monoxide poisoning, zero lead emissions, and substantially lower nitrogen and hydrocarbon emissions than with avgas engines. Plus, Centurion engines are more fuel efficient across the board, and meet strict noise ordinance requirements.”

FMI: www.centurion.aero

RIO DE JANEIRO (Dow Jones)–Aircraft manufacturer Empresa Brasileira de Aeronautica SA (ERJ, EMBR3.BR), or Embraer, said Thursday it is seeking to expand its activities into the defense, security and energy areas.
The company aims to offer design, construction and sale of equipment, materials, parts and software for these industries, it said in a statement.

The proposal is being presented to the Brazilian government, which will have the right to support or veto the company’s proposal within 30 days, Embraer said. The proposal has already been approved by the aircraft maker’s board. If it gains government approval, the proposal will be submitted to a shareholders’ meeting for approval, Embraer said.

The company is also proposing to shorten its name to Embraer SA, it said in the statement.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Sept 16 (Reuters) - Brazil’s oil production in August hit a record of 2.078 million barrels per day (bpd), the country’s National Petroleum Agency said on Thursday, topping the previous record of 2.077 million bpd in April.

“This record shows that new production facilities are coming online, and it reflects the work that has been done over the years,” said Victor Martins, director of the agency known as the ANP. The release marks the start of the ANP’s effort to provide monthly production figures for the entire country.

Most observers have relied on monthly output figures from state oil company Petrobras (PETR4.SA: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), by far the country’s largest producer, as a proxy for the South American nation’s crude production.

The ANP said Petrobras in August produced an average of 1.898 million bpd, or 92 percent of the total, though that figure does not include barrels produced from fields where Petrobras is not the operator. In August, Shell (RDSa.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) was Brazil’s second-biggest producer with 90,700 bpd, followed by Chevron (CVX.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) with 64,000 bpd and Devon (DVN.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) with 22,900 bpd, the ANP said.

Brazil’s production of natural gas for the month averaged 62.5 million cubic meters per day, with Petrobras producing 60.8 million cubic meters per day.

BRASILIA, Sept 16 (Reuters) - Brazil created a record number of payroll jobs for the month of August in a sign that its economy is growing at a solid pace.

Latin America’s largest economy added a net 299,415 payroll jobs BRPROL=ECI last month, the Labor Ministry said on Thursday, the eighth straight month of increases. Job creation for September, October and November should also reach a record, said Labor Minister Carlos Lupi.

“(The number is) very strong. It came above what everyone had expected,” Bernardo Wjuniski, an analyst at Tendencias consultancy in Sao Paulo said. “The labor market continues very heated.”

The numbers come as expectations for growth this year and bets on inflation for 2011 continue to rise, even as the central bank has sounded dovish in recent months and looks poised to keep interest rates steady at 10.75 percent for some time.

The economy created 1.95 million jobs so far this year, according to the ministry, with Lupi reiterating 2.5 million jobs will have been created by December.

Brazil has proven a global bright spot this year, with the economy growing at a brisk pace even as more developed nations struggle with an uneven recovery. But despite stronger-than-expected growth in the second quarter, the central bank ended its monetary tightening cycle this month, citing a benign inflation outlook.

Analysts in a weekly central bank survey have since increased their expectations for 2010 growth to 7.42 from 7.34 percent in the latest weekly central bank survey, and raised their bets for 2011 inflation to 4.9 from 4.85 percent. The government has an inflation target of 4.5 percent, plus or minus 2 percentage points. While inflation pressures remain under control, some analysts worry about future price pressures.

“The central bank is going to have to be a little more vigilant,” said Ures Folchini at the Treasury desk at WestLB. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has made it a priority to increase payroll jobs. Most of Brazil’s workforce is not registered with the Labor Ministry and belongs to a vast informal economy.

The Miami Herald
Seven years of progress, expansion
BY CELSO AMORIM - www.brasilemb.org – Posted on Sun, Sep. 12, 2010

Seven years ago, many reacted with skepticism about the need to make changes in the world economic geography and that Brazil and other countries were ready to play a significant role in the World Trade Organization or gain permanent seats on the U.N. Security Council. Both the world and Brazil have changed quite rapidly.

Developing countries have presented higher economic growth, becoming central actors in the world economy.

Greater South-South coordination — at the WTO, International Monetary Fund, United Nations and new coalitions such as the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) — have raised the voices of countries once relegated to a secondary position. The more the developing countries discuss and cooperate, the more their voices will be heard. The recent financial crisis made it clear that the world can no longer be governed by just a few.

Progress on many fronts — from macroeconomic stability to social justice — has made Brazil more stable and less unfair, changing its perception abroad. A new group of countries has increasingly earned influence in the international agenda,
from climate change to trade, from finance to peace and security, and are bringing about new perspectives to global problems.

It was in this context that we advanced a comprehensive and proactive foreign policy. We sought to build coalitions that have gone beyond traditional alliances and relations that we strove to maintain and enhance, such as in the establishment of a Strategic Partnership with the European Union and a Global Partnership Dialogue with the United States.

Significant growth in our exports to developing countries and new mechanisms such as the G-20 within the WTO, the IBSA Dialogue Forum (India, Brazil and South Africa) and BRICs, reflect this trend towards a global foreign policy.

Steps toward integration

The basis for this new foreign policy was the increased integration of South America.
From Day One, President Lula has undertaken efforts toward integrating the continent, through trade, infrastructure and political dialogue, which saw the creation of a new entity — the Union of South American Nations.

The Mercosur-Andean Community agreement established a free-trade zone in South America, whose physical integration, linking the Atlantic and the Pacific, has seen remarkable progress.

Building on a better integrated South America, Brazil engaged in creating mechanisms for dialogue and cooperation with countries in other regions. The G-20 creation within the WTO, in 2003, marked the coming of age of countries from the
South, transforming once and for all the decision-making process in trade negotiations.

The IBSA allowed close coordination among three major multiethnic and multicultural democracies, which have much to say about upholding tolerance and reconciling development with democracy. The IBSA has become a model for projects benefiting poorer nations, thus demonstrating in practice that solidarity is not an attribute of the rich.

The summits between South American and African countries, as well as with Arab countries, connecting regions that were far apart, strengthened economic relations. Brazilian trade with Arab countries grew four-fold in seven years, while trade with Africa, five-fold, to more than $26 billion, surpassing trade with Germany and Japan.

These new coalitions are helping to change the world. The replacement of the G-7 with the G-20 constitutes evidence that decisions regarding the world economy lack legitimacy and effectiveness in the absence of emerging countries.
In the field of peace and security, Brazil and Turkey were able to persuade Iran to take on the commitments provided for in the Tehran Declaration. New perspectives and approaches are necessary to tackle issues previously dealt with exclusively by the permanent members of the Security Council. Despite resistance to an initiative nurtured outside the restricted circle of nuclear powers, we are certain that it will serve as a basis for negotiations and a settlement for that issue.

Good foreign policy requires prudence. But it also requires boldness. It is usual to hear that countries should act in accordance with their means, but the greatest mistake one could make is to underestimate one’s possibilities.
Brazil has acted with boldness and, like other developing countries, has changed its place in the world. Today such countries are bearing increasing responsibilities, entitled to play an ever more central role in the decisions that affect the destiny of the planet.

Celso Amorim is Brazil’s foreign minister.

Reuters – 8:06am EDT

SAO PAULO, Sept 13 (Reuters) – Economists in a weekly central bank survey raised their forecasts for growth in Brazil’s economy in 2010, while reducing estimates for inflation, underscoring expectations of little pressure on consumer prices from expansion in the country.

Brazil’s economy is seen growing 7.42 percent in 2010, up from the 7.34 percent estimate the previous week, according to a central bank survey released on Monday.

Economists also cut estimates for the 2010 benchmark IPCA inflation index to 4.97 percent from 5.07 percent in the previous week, the survey said.

Central bank officials have said slower growth in Brazil in the second half of the year should ease inflation pressures, after red-hot growth in the first months of the year raised concern about higher consumer prices.

In minutes from the central bank’s most recent rate-setting meeting that were releases last week, policymakers said they saw reduced risks to a benign inflation scenario. [ID:nN09171164]

For 2011, the IPCA estimates were raised slightly to 4.90 percent from 4.85 percent.
The central bank has a 4.5 percent inflation target for 2010 and 2011, plus or minus 2 percentage points.

World economy: The China cycle
By Geoff Dyer – Published: September 12 2010 20:03 |

Deep in the Amazon jungle, huge chunks of red earth are torn out of the ground at Carajás, the biggest iron ore mine in the world, to be transported halfway round the globe to the steel mills on China’s eastern seaboard. There they are turned into the backbone for millions of tower blocks in hundreds of booming Chinese cities.

Last year, China overtook the US to become Brazil’s biggest trading partner. The two large developing countries may be on opposite sides of the planet but their growing economic ties over the past decade have become among the enduring symbols of shifts in the global economy.

The duo could also be forging a path for one of the potential biggest realignments in the global economy over the next decade. With little fanfare, China is likely to emerge as the biggest direct investor in Brazil this year, following a string of deals announced in mining, steel, construction equipment and electricity transmission.

Such investments are part of a slow-burning but hugely important trend. Newly crowned the second-largest economy, eclipsing Japan, China is becoming the anchor for a new cycle of self-sustaining economic development between Asia and the rest of the developing world – one that is bypassing the economies of Europe and the US.

China is not only sucking in raw materials from other developing economies, just as it has during the past decade. It has also begun making investments in infrastructure and industry in those countries, some of which are made possible by its cut-price and increasingly sophisticated manufacturing companies or by the attractive financing terms it can offer. Beijing has for some years been investing in this way in parts of Africa: now such deals are being rolled out around the world. For many developing countries, the impact of the China boom is coming full circle.

“It is the start of a new cycle,” says Ben Simpfendorfer, an economist at RBS and author of The New Silk Road, a book on the surging economic ties between China and the Middle East, central Asia and south Asia. “China has companies that are willing to invest, they have products that are good enough, and they are backed by abundant liquidity in the country’s financial system.”

BEIJING MEETS BRAZIL
●Direct investment overseas by Chinese companies has increased from just $5.5bn in 2004 to $56.5bn last year. Chinese officials predicted last week that it would reach $100bn by 2013.
●About 70 per cent of the money invested last year went to other parts of Asia. Latin America came in second place with 15 per cent.
●Chinese companies have so far invested only very modestly in Brazil but Brazilian officials estimate that investment will exceed $10bn this year.
●Chinese banks have lent $10bn to Petrobras, the Brazilian oil company, and $1.23bn to Vale, the iron ore miner.

Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia consultancy and author of the recent book, The End of The Free Market, says there is no accident to this China-led process of decoupling from the west. It is, he says, a strategy to reduce economic – and to some extent political – dependence on the US.

“It is a very conscious policy, on the top of the agenda for the entire Chinese leadership,” he says. “They are looking for a hedging strategy because they feel uncertain about the long-term economic prospects of the developed world.”
Promoting innovation and stimulating domestic consumption are also part of that strategy, he argues, but pushing stronger economic integration with the rest of the developing world is the “one strategy that can be done quite quickly”.
Nowhere is the impact of this process being felt more keenly than in Brazil.

As trade has boomed with China during the past decade, Brazilians have sometimes complained of being relegated once again to their 20th-century role of providing commodities to the industrial powers. In the past year, however, the long-awaited wave of Chinese investment in the country appears finally to have reached Brazil’s shores. While it reached only $92m in 2009, the country’s officials estimate that it will exceed $10bn this year.

Wuhan Iron and Steel, for instance, paid $400m for a stake in a mining company owned by Brazilian industrialist Eike Batista, and is planning to build a huge steel mill beside the port near Rio de Janeiro that another of Mr Batista’s companies is constructing. Lifan, one of China’s biggest manufacturers of motorcycles and cars, already exports heavily to Brazil. Now the company’s founder, Yin Mingshan, says it is considering opening a plant to build cars in the country. “Brazil is a very promising market, with a vast territory and a big domestic market,” he says. “Some Chinese
businessmen are foolish enough to ignore doing business in Brazil but I am not that stupid.”

If investment in Brazil is one symbol of this new stage of economic Chinese engagement with the developing world, another is the flurry of new rail networks taking shape globally. Chinese railway construction companies are some of the most efficient anywhere, and have for several years been operating in neighbouring countries in central and south-east Asia. But in the past year they have also signed contracts in such diverse places as Ukraine, Turkey and Argentina.