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Iran says nuclear deal possible this week in Geneva talks

GENEVA (Reuters) – An agreement that would open the door to a resolution of the decade-long nuclear standoff between Iran and six world powers is possible this week if negotiators exert the maximum efforts, Iran’s foreign minister said on Thursday. "If everyone tries their best we may have one," Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told reporters after a breakfast meeting with European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton. "We expect serious negotiations. It’s possible," he said when asked if an agreement was conceivable at Thursday-Friday talks between Iran and the five permanent U.N. Security Council members and Germany. (Reporting by Fredrik Dahl, Justyna Pawlak, Louis Charbonneau)

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Israel drills disputed West Bank oilfield with 3.5B barrels

RAMALLAH, West Bank, Nov. 6 (UPI) — Israel’s Givot Olam oil company says it’s exploring an oil field that could contain 3.53 billion barrels of crude, which along with the rich natural gas fields the Jewish state’s found under the Mediterranean Sea seems set to make it a regional energy power. There’s only one problem: Most of the Meged field, where Givot Olam started drilling in 2011, appears to lie in Palestinian West Bank, which Israel has occupied since June1967. On Tuesday, just hours before U.S. Secretary of state John Kerry arrived to press Israel on Washington’s latest peace initiative, Israeli negotiators told the Palestinians that the Separation Wall the Jewish state’s building across the West Bank will mark the border with a future Palestinian state. That would mean almost the entire Meged, which starts just inside Israel near the pre-1967 Green Line that separates the Jewish state from […]

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Eni Says Libyan Protests Could Block Gas Exports to Italy

By Liam Moloney ROME–Libyan natural gas exports to Italy may grind to a halt if protests at a key terminal continue, Paolo Scaroni, chief executive of Italian energy giant Eni SpA (ENI.MI), said Wednesday, indicating that civil unrest in the north African country could interrupt critical supplies to Europe ahead of winter. Protests at the Mellitah terminal are “pushing us to interrupt total [gas] exports to Italy,” said Mr. Scaroni in a radio interview. “This is worrying.” The Mellitah terminal, which is jointly run by Eni and the Libyan National Oil Company, is key to facilitating gas exports via the Greenstream pipeline from Libya to Italy. The pipeline can supply more than 10% of gas demand in Italy. However, Mr. Scaroni played down the risk to Italy’s gas supplies. “I see no problems of supply, there’s plenty from other parts of the world and with the present benevolent [warm] […]

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Report: Shell Nigeria falsely reports oil spills

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Amnesty International accuses Nigeria’s biggest petroleum producer, Shell, of manipulating oil spill investigations and documents in cases where the rights group says the company has wrongly reported on the cause and volume of pollution devastating the Niger Delta and made false claims about cleanup measures. The future of farmers and fishermen whose livelihoods are destroyed by such spills depends on reports that can be “very subjective, misleading and downright false,” according to an independent U.S. industry expert hired by Amnesty International to review documents newly obtained under Nigeria’s freedom of information law. The Amnesty report offers detailed analysis to back longstanding charges that oil companies blame sabotage for spills sometimes caused by corrosion and other faults in aging pipelines. Sabotage or oil theft means a community is not eligible for compensation. Shell Nigeria said it “firmly rejects (the) unsubstantiated assertions” and seeks “greater transparency and […]

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China urges cooperation ahead of climate talks

BEIJING, Nov. 6 (UPI) — China’s top climate change negotiator has urged richer nations to help developing countries cut their emissions, as they had pledged to do in 2009. Xie Zhenhua , deputy head of China’s National Development and Reform Commission, was referring to the 2009 U.N. summit in Copenhagen in which developed nations pledged $100 billion a year by 2020 to help fight climate change. Although a specific date for donor pledges to begin has still not been decided, developing countries have already contributed a majority of emissions reductions even without promised support from developed countries, Xie said. “This shows developed countries haven’t honored provisions in the [Copenhagen] convention, while developing countries have taken active actions at home to actively tackle climate change,” Xie was quoted as saying Tuesday by the Financial Times. “Especially in China, we haven’t got any financial or technology support but we’ve taken actions […]

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Asian Crude-Oil Market Stays Strong

By Eric Yep Asians who think they’ll benefit from sliding U.S. and European benchmark oil prices may have another thing coming. New York Mercantile Exchange and ICE crude-oil benchmarks have more or less steadily fallen for the past two months, and prices of current futures contracts are weakening relative to more distant months—evidence of weak prompt demand—but shipping data and price indicators show that demand remains strong in Asia’s physical crude markets. Storage tanks on Singapore’s Jurong island, the center of the city-state’s petroleum and petrochemical industry. Bloomberg News In a market that favors sellers, prices for the current month are higher than prices for subsequent months, a structure known as backwardation. The current Nymex benchmark contract, December, is trading around a 30-cent-a-barrel discount to the January contract, a contango structure, which is indicative of more of a buyers’ market. ICE Brent crude nearly moved into contango on Monday […]

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Chinese Leader’s Economic Plan Tests Goal to Fortify Party Power

HONG KONG — China’s president, Xi Jinping, is about to plunge the country and himself into a risky experiment: an attempt to carry out market-driven economic overhauls while reinforcing the Communist Party’s pillars of political and ideological control. This mixed agenda has magnified doubts about whether he can deliver on his promises of transformation. At a meeting, or plenum, of the party’s Central Committee that starts Saturday, Mr. Xi will enumerate his plans for an economic overhaul, and state-run news media has promoted the event as a turning point. Mr. Xi and Prime Minister Li Keqiang have indicated that they want to nurture healthy, sustained growth by encouraging more market competition, private business, financial liberalization and individual consumption, leaning away from the state-focused policies of the past decade. Yet, Mr. Xi wants to achieve this economic shift away from the state while strengthening the ruling party , which derives […]

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Fukushima nuclear plant set for risky operation

Fukushima Unit 4 More than 1,000 fuel rod assemblies need to be removed from a building that was badly damaged following the tsunami A task of extraordinary delicacy and danger is about to begin at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power station. Engineers are preparing to extract the first of more than 1,000 nuclear fuel rods from one of the wrecked reactor buildings. This is seen as an essential but risky step on the long road towards stabilising the site. The fuel rods are currently in a precarious state in a storage pool in Unit 4. This building was badly damaged by an explosion in March 2011 following the Great Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Moving the rods to safety is a high priority but has only become possible after months of repair work and planning. One senior official told me: “It’s going to be very difficult but it has to happen.” […]

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Senators question EPA’s estimated methane emissions from gas operations

Two Republican senators urged the US Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its methods of calculating methane emissions from natural gas operations and to also reconsider its earlier estimates. The comments came during a hearing of a subcommittee on oversight of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works on Nov. 5 in Washington, DC. Sens. David Vitter (R-La.) and James Inhofe (R-Okla.) both praised a report released in September that said some parts of the gas production process actually emit less methane than EPA has estimated. The study also noted the leaks from pneumatic controllers involved higher methane emissions than EPA estimates, saying more study is needed. The Environmental Defense Fund and nine gas operators funded the ongoing study, which measured actual emissions from 190 wells instead of relying on computer models as does the EPA. A report outlining first-phase results of the UT study concluded the methane emissions […]

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Shell moves to resume Arctic drilling

Arctic Shell Royal Dutch Shell on Wednesday filed a formal exploration plan for the Arctic waters north of Alaska, marking an important step forward for its ambition to drill next summer what will be the world’s most closely watched oil well. The plan for multiple wells in the Chukchi Sea off the northwest coast of Alaska was delivered to US federal regulators in Anchorage. Shell needs the interior department to approve the programme, a revision of its previous plan, to be able to drill when the ice clears next summer, which is expected to be in mid-July. In a statement, the company said it wanted to keep its “2014 exploration options viable”, and it would “only proceed if the programme meets the conditions necessary to proceed safely and responsibly”. Shell will be targeting the Burger prospect, seen as the most promising potential oilfield in an area in which the […]

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