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Oil Down in Asia, Brent-WTI Spread Widest Since April

By Eric Yep Crude-oil futures were lower in Asian trading hours Thursday as investors weighed the impact of rising U.S. oil inventories and the outcome of the U.S. Federal Reserve meeting. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in December traded at $96.54 a barrel at 0432 GMT, down $0.23 in the Globex electronic session. December Brent crude on London’s ICE Futures exchange fell $0.29 to $109.57 a barrel. The premium of Brent crude over Nymex WTI is at around $13 a barrel, its widest since April as supply disruptions in the Middle East have supported Brent prices while WTI is under pressure due to rising U.S. oil stocks. U.S. crude inventories rose more than expected in the week ended Oct. 25, by 4.1 million barrels to 383.9 million barrels, compared with an expected increase of 2.2 million barrels, Energy Information Administration data showed. […]

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WTI Oil Trades Near Four-Month Low as U.S. Crude Stockpiles Gain

West Texas Intermediate traded near a four-month low as crude stockpiles gained for a sixth week in the U.S., the world’s biggest oil consumer. Libya may resume production from one of its largest oil fields by next week. Futures were little changed in New York and poised for a second monthly drop. Crude inventories rose by 4.1 million barrels to 383.9 million last week, data from the Energy Information Administration show. Supplies were projected to climb by 2.4 million, according to a Bloomberg News survey of analysts. Libya’s Sharara field may restart within 10 days, Salah A. Ben Ali, the manager of international cooperation at the Oil and Gas Ministry, said at a conference in Singapore . “It’s tough times for the oil market,” said Ric Spooner, a chief market analyst at CMC Markets in Sydney. “The reason for the decline is apparent, with the U.S. data showing a […]

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Natural Gas Falls for Third Straight Day Ahead of Inventory Report

–Natural gas slide continues for third straight day –Traders concerned about high supplies and weak demand amid forecasts for warmer-than-normal weather –EIA data expected to show stockpiles above five-year average for last week By Brett Philbin NEW YORK–Natural gas futures fell for the third straight session on Wednesday, as traders await a government inventory report expected to show high supplies for this time of year amid forecasts for warm temperatures at the start of the winter heating season. Natural gas for December delivery settled 0.9 cents lower, or 0.2%, to $3.620 a million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices have finished lower in eight of the past nine trading days. “The weather forecast isn’t ominous for the next few weeks and we’re going to start winter with a comfortable amount of gas in the ground,” said Stephen Schork, editor of The Schork Report, an energy […]

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Iran attempts to woo investors with new energy contract terms

TEHRAN, Oct. 30 (UPI) — A new way of thinking about Iranian energy contracts could help meet the expectations of domestic and foreign investors, an Iranian lawmaker said. Shana, the Iranian Oil Ministry’s official news agency, said the government expects to unveil a new framework for oil contracts within the next six months. “It seems that the existing contracts could not meet the expectations of domestic and foreign investors and contractors and we need to reconsider them,” Gholam-Reza Manouchehri, a lawmaker tasked with assessing energy contracts, was quoted as saying Tuesday. Western sanctions on Iran’s energy sector are designed to starve it of revenue it could use to finance its controversial nuclear program. “In revision of oil contracts, key and positive points in the oil contracts [signed in] Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and the North Sea littoral states will be studied and taken into account,” Manouchehri said. “In […]

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Iraqi PM: US aid needed to battle al-Qaida

AP Photo WASHINGTON (AP) — A bloody resurgence of al-Qaida in Iraq is prompting Baghdad to ask the U.S. for more weapons, training and manpower, two years after pushing American troops out of the country. The request will be discussed during a White House meeting Friday between Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and President Barack Obama in what Baghdad hopes will be a fresh start in a complicated relationship that has been marked both by victories and frustrations for each side. Al-Maliki will discuss Iraq’s plight in a public speech Thursday at the U.S. Institute for Peace in Washington. “We know we have major challenges of our own capabilities being up to the standard. They currently are not,” Lukman Faily, the Iraqi ambassador to the U.S., told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday. “We need to gear up, to deal with that threat more seriously. We need support […]

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U.S. General Decries Spiraling Iraq Violence

TAMPA, Fla.—The top U.S. commander in the Middle East said Iraq has entered a downward spiral of violence that threatens to drive the country’s leader further into the hands of Iran and heighten sectarian tensions across the region. With Iraqi security forces responding inadequately, U.S. officials are concerned that al Qaeda will develop a haven stretching from western Iraq into Syria. “If left unchecked, we could find ourselves in a regional sectarian struggle that could last a decade,” Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, the head of the U.S. military’s Central Command, told The Wall Street Journal in an interview here. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki met with Vice President Joe Biden and congressional leaders on Wednesday, at the start of a visit to Washington and is set to meet President Barack Obama on Friday. The Washington visit comes at a pivotal moment. Gen. Austin and other U.S. officials have blamed […]

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Lebanon's energy minister say gas reserves now near 96 tcf

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Oct. 30 (UPI) — Energy Minister Gebran Bassil says natural gas reserves off Lebanon’s Mediterranean coast are far greater than previously estimated, saying there may be 95.9 trillion cubic feet plus 865 million barrels of oil. The estimates mark a massive increase in Lebanon’s potential energy wealth, fueling growing expectations the violence-prone country is on the brink of a boom that will, at a stroke, eliminate its deepening economic distress — a debt approaching $60 billion — as it stumbles from day to day without a government and faces calamity from the spillover from the civil war in neighboring Syria. Indeed, the figures cited by Bassil, whose term has been marked by a steadily deteriorating electrical supply that leaves much of Lebanon without power daily, are almost too good to be true, even with his caveats. “The current estimate, with a probability of 50 percent, for almost […]

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Lebanon’s energy minister say gas reserves now near 96 tcf

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Oct. 30 (UPI) — Energy Minister Gebran Bassil says natural gas reserves off Lebanon’s Mediterranean coast are far greater than previously estimated, saying there may be 95.9 trillion cubic feet plus 865 million barrels of oil. The estimates mark a massive increase in Lebanon’s potential energy wealth, fueling growing expectations the violence-prone country is on the brink of a boom that will, at a stroke, eliminate its deepening economic distress — a debt approaching $60 billion — as it stumbles from day to day without a government and faces calamity from the spillover from the civil war in neighboring Syria. Indeed, the figures cited by Bassil, whose term has been marked by a steadily deteriorating electrical supply that leaves much of Lebanon without power daily, are almost too good to be true, even with his caveats. “The current estimate, with a probability of 50 percent, for almost […]

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Iraqi tribes say Lukoil project must fuel better life

Al-Toraba, BASRA, Iraq (Reuters) – Sheikh Mansour Hamid al-Imara clutches his prayer beads and watches a huge new oil facility nearing completion across the road from his village, hoping that Russian operator Lukoil will offer his poor tribesmen a better way of life. "When the lights are on at the Lukoil plant, it’s a victory for us," he said, sipping tea with tribal elders in their reed meeting house, 65 kilometers (40 miles) northwest of the southern oil hub of Basra. "We are sitting on a huge pool of oil and want to take advantage of our resources. And the people of our tribe should be the first to be employed." After struggling for decades from sanctions and wars, most recently the U.S.-led invasion from 2003-2011, expectations run high among the 150,000 tribesmen living on West Qurna-2, the world’s second-largest undeveloped oilfield. Their sheer number leaves Lukoil with a […]

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