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Brent Halts Longest Decline Since August Amid Iraq Clash

Brent halted its longest run of losses since August on concern that clashes between Iraq’s government and militants linked to Al-Qaeda may lead to a disruption in oil output. Futures climbed as much as 0.7 percent in London , snapping a five-day losing streak, amid fighting in the city of Fallujah and surrounding Anbar province in Iraq, the largest OPEC member after Saudi Arabia. West Texas Intermediate broke its longest run of losses since September amid the coldest U.S. weather in almost 20 years and forecasts that the nation’s crude inventories declined for a sixth week. “A lot depends on geopolitics,” said Hannes Loacker , an analyst at Raiffeisen Bank International AG in Vienna. “People shouldn’t ignore the tensions in Iraq. This may become much more serious than it already is.” Brent for February settlement rose as much as 79 cents to $107.52 a barrel on the ICE Futures […]

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Speculators Cut Natural Gas Wager on Fading Polar Blast: Energy

Hedge funds became less bullish on natural gas for the first time in six weeks as the coldest weather in almost 20 years gives way to higher temperatures. Money managers cut net-long positions, or wagers on rising prices, by 3 percent in the seven days ended Dec. 31, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission data show. Bullish bets, or long positions, fell from a six-month high. Gas slumped 4.2 percent during the report week as forecasts showed mild weather that would curb fuel consumption. The futures have surged 23 percent since Nov. 1 amid rising heating demand, which today may reach the highest level since 1996, as frigid air swept across the central U.S. toward the East Coast, according to MDA Weather Services. MDA has predicted mostly above-normal temperatures in the lower-48 states from Jan. 11 to Jan. 15. “Traders are hesitant to become more bullish since […]

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U.S. and Iran Face Common Enemies in Mideast Strife

Even as the United States and Iran pursue negotiations on Tehran’s nuclear program, they find themselves on the same side of a range of regional issues surrounding an insurgency raging across the Middle East. While the two governments quietly continue to pursue their often conflicting interests, they are being drawn together by their mutual opposition to an international movement of young Sunni fighters, who with their pickup trucks and Kalashnikovs are raising the black flag of Al Qaeda along sectarian fault lines in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen. The United States, reluctant to intervene in bloody, inconclusive conflicts, is seeing its regional influence decline, while Iraq, which cost the Americans $1 trillion and more than 4,000 lives, is growing increasingly unstable. At the same time, Shiite-dominated Iran, the magnetic pole for the Shiite minority in the region, has its own reasons to be nervous, with the […]

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UN decides to stop updating Syria death toll

The U.N.’s human rights office says it has stopped updating the death toll from Syria’s civil war since its last count of at least 100,000 in late July. Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, blamed the failure to provide new figures on the organization’s own lack of access on the ground in Syria and its inability to verify "source material" from others. Colville told reporters Tuesday in Geneva that the total number of dead the U.N. had estimated was based on an exhaustive effort to verify a combination of six different figures supplied by a variety of sources and "for the time being we’re not updating those figures." © 2014 The Associated Press . All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use […]

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Western Libya oil production resumes

Oil production resumed at Libya’s Sharara field after a shutdown and is now at 205,000 barrels per day, a Libyan National Oil Corp. official said Monday. Mustafa Sanalla, a boad member of the company, said operations at Sharara, closed by protests in October, resumed during the weekend, the Platts energy news service reported. Protesters who forced the shutdown had demanded more local authority, officials said. "Today production is 205,000 bpd from Sharara," Sanalla said. The field in western Libya has the capacity to produce 350,000 bpd. Libya has struggled to return to its pre-civil war level of 1.6 million bpd because of national security issues. Platts reports there were no indications crude oil from Sharara has reached the export market. In 2012, the International Energy Agency called on its member states to tap into their strategic reserves to compensate for supply disruptions in […]

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Success, but more tests, in Basra unrest turnaround

Success, but more tests, in Basra unrest turnaround In the final months of 2013, Basra’s security forces and oil industry faced a series of challenges unseen in their ferocity and succession since foreign oil companies returned to Iraq.Yet oil production is increasing and exports are on track to follow suit, as southern Iraq looks increasingly safe to operate multi-billion dollar oil development projects, in large part because Iraqi officials moved quickly to contain and quell incidents that could have derailed them.The arrest of police o…

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In Iraq, a Sunni revolt raises specter of new war

The Iraqi army, trained and equipped at great expense by the U.S. military before it pulled out of the country in 2011, is struggling to hold its own against what is at once a populist revolt and a militant insurgency. On Monday, Maliki urged the people of Fallujah to expel al-Qaeda-­affiliated militants to avert a full-on attack, echoing calls made by U.S. forces a decade ago when they warned residents to leave the city or suffer the consequences. “The prime minister appeals to the tribes and people of Fallujah to expel the terrorists from the city in order to spare themselves the risk of armed clashes,” Maliki said in a statement read on state television as convoys of military personnel, tanks and heavy equipment headed toward the city to reinforce troops who were surrounding it. Instead, most residents were trying to leave, packing their possessions into cars and fleeing […]

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Sunni Fighters in Anbar Defiant as Iraq Readies Attack

Al-Qaeda and allied fighters in Iraq vowed to resist government forces trying to retake towns Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki says are under the terrorist group’s sway. “They’ll only enter Fallujah over our dead bodies,” Khamis al-Issawi, who said he’s part of a 150-strong brigade in the city 40 miles (64 kilometers) west of Baghdad, said in a phone interview. “We are ready and prepared to fight Maliki forces if they decide to begin their offensive on the city.” Fighting in Fallujah and the surrounding Anbar province over the past few days is part of an escalating wave of sectarian violence in Iraq, where Maliki’s Shiite Muslim-led government is confronting Sunni Muslim militants. Some are affiliated with the al-Qaeda linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which has gained prominence through its role fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad in neighboring Syria. Sectarian tensions throughout the region have been […]

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Saudis’ Grant to Lebanon Is Seen as Message to U.S.

If a wealthy patron were all the Lebanese Army needed to counter the Shiite militant group Hezbollah as the dominant force in the country, the recent $3 billion grant from Saudi Arabia might make a decisive difference in the country’s complex political landscape. But the Saudi aid package — nearly twice Lebanon’s $1.7 billion annual defense budget — is earmarked to buy French arms and is unlikely to give the army what it needs most, say supporters and opponents of Hezbollah here. And even if it does, they say, it will take years to make an impact. And while the Saudis are clearly alarmed at Hezbollah’s staying power and its intervention in Syria’s civil war, analysts say the gift announced last week was intended as much to send a message to the United States as to shift the military balance. Yezid Sayigh, a scholar of Arab […]

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High Stakes for Sudan in the South’s Conflict

The United States has demanded negotiations. Uganda has threatened to intervene. China has called for an immediate cease-fire. The conflict in South Sudan has attracted attention from around the world, but nowhere are leaders watching the crisis with more interest — and more at stake — than here in the country’s longstanding rival, Sudan. Before South Sudan voted to break away from the north and form its own country in 2011, the two sides had been locked in decades of civil war that claimed the lives of more than two million people. But their division did not sever all ties. The oil that both rely on continues to flow northward from South Sudan’s fields to Sudan’s refineries, linking the two foes in a rocky but crucial economic marriage. The recent fighting in South Sudan has disrupted oil production, with foreign workers fleeing the violent clashes in […]

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