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Jihadist Groups Gain in Turmoil Across Middle East

Intensifying sectarian and clan violence has presented new opportunities for jihadist groups across the Middle East and raised concerns among American intelligence and counterterrorism officials that militants aligned with Al Qaeda could establish a base in Syria capable of threatening Israel and Europe. The new signs of an energized but fragmented jihadist threat, stretching from Mali and Libya in the west to Yemen in the east, have complicated the narrative of a weakened Al Qaeda that President Obama offered in May in a landmark speech heralding the end of the war on terrorism. The leaders of the Senate and House intelligence committees, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California and Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan, raised warnings in an interview on CNN on Sunday when they said that Americans were “not safer” from terrorist attacks than in 2011. The concerns are based in part on messages relayed this year […]

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Iraq Close to Agreeing Cuts in Oil Output Targets

Iraq’s oil minister said Tuesday the country is close to agreeing to sharp cuts with major Western oil companies in production targets set out for them at some of its largest oil fields, casting doubts over Iraq’s ambitious oil output targets. When Iraq signed up a number of big Western companies to help it reverse declining output in some of the world’s most promising fields, government officials set lofty—many experts said unrealistic—production targets for these companies.

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Iraq Controls Kurdish Oil Exports Under New Accord, Luaibi Says

Iraq ’s self-ruling Kurds agreed to let the central government in Baghdad control the amount and quality of crude they export as well as manage revenue from its sale, Iraqi Oil Minister Abdul Kareem al-Luaibi said. The Kurdistan Regional Government will export oil using a metering system operated by the Oil Ministry in Baghdad, Luaibi told a news conference yesterday in Vienna. The Kurds also agreed to put money earned from the sale of oil from Kurdish fields into a UN-administered account for Iraq’s earnings from crude, he said. The agreement may herald an end to years of confrontation between Iraq’s Kurds and the central government. It may lead to a formal accord this month under which Kurdish authorities resume oil shipments via Iraq’s government-run export pipeline to neighboring Turkey , Luaibi said. The KRG halted the flow last December in a dispute with the central government over how […]

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Hezbollah chief: Saudis behind embassy bombings

The leader of Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group has accused Saudi Arabia of being behind last month’s two suicide bombings that targeted the Iranian Embassy in Beirut. Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah’s comments mark the first time Hezbollah has openly accused the kingdom, and marks a sharp escalation in the Shiite Muslim group’s rhetoric. An al-Qaida linked group has claimed responsibility for the Nov. 19 attack that killed 23 people, saying it was in response to Hezbollah and Iran’s involvement in Syria. Nasrallah said the claim was credible but accused Saudi intelligence of providing backing and support. He also said Saudi intelligence was behind daily terrorist attacks in Iraq. Nasrallah spoke in an interview Tuesday with Lebanon’s private OTV network. © 2013 The Associated Press . All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms […]

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UN: 250,000 besieged in Syria, beyond reach of aid

An estimated 250,000 people in besieged communities in Syria remain beyond the reach of aid, the U.N, humanitarian chief said Tuesday in a closed-door Security Council briefing that one member called “chilling.” Deep divisions in the council have kept it from taking more action on the 2 1/2-year-old civil war that activists say has killed more than 120,000 people. Valerie Amos’ task has been to tell the world body about the worsening conditions for millions of civilians in Syria – and how difficult it is to reach them. Amos was able to report “modest progress” in such basics as getting 50 more long-demanded visas for aid workers and opening three humanitarian hubs inside Syria, “only two of which are helpful to us.” But “We have not seen any progress” in the major issues of protecting civilians and demilitarizing schools and hospitals, Amos said. Last month, […]

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Hezbollah commander killed outside home in Lebanon

A senior commander for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah was gunned down Wednesday outside his home in southern Beirut, security officials said. The Iranian-backed group blamed its arch-enemy Israel for the killing, something officials there quickly denied. Hezbollah immediately announced the death of Hassan al-Laqis and described him as one of the founding members of the group, suggesting he was a high-level commander close to the Shiite party’s leadership. His shooting death comes as Lebanon faces increasing sectarian violence pouring over from the civil war in neighboring Syria, where Hezbollah forces fight alongside President Bashar Assad’s troops, angering the mainly Sunni rebels seeking to oust him. Hezbollah strongholds have been the target of car bomb attacks and suicide bombers attacked the Iranian Embassy in Beirut last month, killing 23 people. Sunni militant groups have claimed responsibility for those attacks, calling it retaliation for Hezbollah’s […]

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Syria Crisis Is Worsening, U.N. Relief Official Says

The top emergency relief official at the United Nations expressed new alarm on Tuesday at the humanitarian crisis caused by Syria’s civil war, telling the Security Council that despite some modest progress, both the government and insurgent sides were still impeding urgent deliveries of food and medicine to millions of desperate civilians. Speaking to reporters after a closed briefing for Security Council diplomats, the official — Valerie Amos, the under secretary general and emergency relief coordinator — said that the Syrian authorities had been permitting aid convoys from Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq, but had refused to allow any from Turkey, which the Syrian government has accused of abetting the insurgency. Ms. Amos said that nine aid convoys had entered Syria over the past month, three times as many as in earlier months, but “this is still far too few to meet the needs of the millions […]

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Big Oil to Get Brazil-Like Terms in Plan to End Mexico Monopoly

Global oil majors from Exxon Mobil Corp. to Chevron Corp . are about to get their clearest indication yet of how far Mexican lawmakers will go to lure them into the world’s second-largest unexplored crude-producing region. Senate committees will begin debating a bill to end a seven-decade state oil monopoly as soon as today. On the agenda is a proposal by members of President Enrique Pena Nieto ’s Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and the opposition National Action Party, or PAN, to extend a profit-sharing model unveiled in August by also allowing production sharing or a license model used in Brazil, according to two people with knowledge of the talks who asked not to be named as the plan is not yet public. The proposal seeks to offer companies more control over riskier fields and attract enough investment to halt a decade-long output slump in Mexico’s $95 billion industry, […]

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Brazil October Crude Oil Output Falls on Lower Pre-Salt Output

Brazil’s crude oil production fell slightly in October on reduced output from recently discovered offshore fields, the country’s National Petroleum Agency, or ANP, said Tuesday. Brazil produced an average 2.079 million barrels a day in October, down 0.7% from September but up 3.4% from October 2012, the ANP said. October’s output was undercut by operational troubles at a floating platform tapping oil deposits in Brazil’s pre-salt oil frontier, where billions of barrels of crude oil were discovered trapped under a thick layer of salt miles below the seabed, the ANP said. Pre-salt production fell to 308,400 barrels a day in October, down 6.5% from September, the ANP said. State-run energy giant Petroleo Brasileiro (PBR, PETR4.BR), or Petrobras, has boosted production in recent months as several new platforms were installed at offshore oil fields. The company has also completed renovations of several aging platforms in the Campos Basin, […]

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Shell floats hull for world’s largest FLNG facility

The 488-m hull of Royal Dutch Shell PLC’s Prelude floating LNG (FLNG) plant was floated from the dry dock at the Samsung Heavy Industries yard in Geoje, South Korea, where Prelude is being built. The company laid the keel for the vessel in May. Shell’s first deployment of FNLG technology, Prelude FLNG will be the largest floating facility in the world once it’s complete and is expected to produce 3.6 million tonnes/year of LNG. The facility will operate for 25 years in a remote basin 475 km northeast of Broome, Western Australia, developing the Prelude and nearby Concerto gas fields in permit WA-371-P with total reserves of 3 tcf of gas and about 120 million bbl of condensate. Prelude FLNG is designed to withstand a category 5 cyclone. Shell said the facility will enable the development of gas resources ranging from clusters of smaller more remote fields to potentially […]

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