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Bakken Crude Strengthens After BNSF Derailment Delays Shipments

Bakken crude strengthened against West Texas Intermediate after BNSF Railway Co. said North Dakota shipments may be delayed after a train derailment and explosion. The rail company suspended transport on the line for three days after a crude train collided with another carrying soybeans on Dec. 30 near Casselton, North Dakota. The accident may delay shipments for 24 to 36 hours, according to a BNSF notice on the company’s website. They resumed today. The accident caused a fire that triggered an evacuation of the town. Winter weather also curbed state output in December. Bakken oil delivered by pipeline to Clearbrook, Minnesota , strengthened $4.50 a barrel to $3 below WTI, according to data compiled by Bloomberg at 2:02 p.m. New York time. Bakken’s discount is a quarter of the $16 level it reached Nov. 7 and Nov. 8, the widest discount of last year. The train was carrying 104 […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Natural-Gas Prices Climb Ahead of Inventory Report

Natural-gas prices firmed Thursday as traders bet that continued colder-than-average weather next week would prompt substantial demand for natural-gas-powered heating in homes and offices. Natural gas for February delivery settled up 9.1 cents at $4.321 a million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Thursday’s 2.2% price rise was a reversal from two days of losses earlier in the week. Market participants cashed in their profits in the final days of 2013 as natural gas posted its largest annual gain in eight years. Now, traders are refocusing on indications that the winter rally has further to run, said Gene McGillian, analyst and broker for Tradition Energy […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Kerry Quietly Makes Priority of Climate Pact

As a young naval officer in Vietnam, John Kerry commanded a Swift boat up the dangerous rivers of the Mekong Delta. But when he returned there last month as secretary of state for the first time since 1969, he spoke not of past firefights but of climate change. “Decades ago, on these very waters, I was one of many who witnessed the difficult period in our shared history,” Mr. Kerry told students gathered on the banks of the Cai Nuoc River. He drew a connection from the Mekong Delta’s troubled past to its imperiled future. “This is one of the two or three most potentially impacted areas in the world with respect to the effects of climate change,” he said. In his first year as secretary of state, Mr. Kerry joined with the Russians to push Syria to turn over its chemical weapons, persuaded the Israelis and […]

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Libya Hopes to Restart Oil Production at Major Field

Libya hopes it can restart production at one of its largest oil fields, El Sharara, operated by Repsol SA, in two to three days after protesters agreed to end their two-month stoppage of the facility, the spokesman of the state-owned National Oil Corp. said Thursday. "The protesters agreed to end their blockage of the field…so if they fulfill their promise and leave the field completely, we can restart operations again within two to three days," Mohamed al-Harari told The Wall Street Journal. "We are […]

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Kurdistan Oil Flow to Turkey Begins, Exports Await Iraqi Consent

Crude oil from Iraqi Kurdistan has started flowing via a new pipeline to the Turkish Mediterranean export hub of Ceyhan but will not be shipped to world markets without the consent of Baghdad, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said on Thursday. Yildiz hopes a deal can be reached this month for exports to begin, he told a news conference in Ankara. Flows through the pipeline would start at 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) and rise to 400,000, he said. Turkey signed a multi-billion-dollar energy package late last year with Iraqi Kurdistan (KRG) under which the semi-autonomous region plans independent energy exports via Turkey. Kurdistan could eventually export some 2 million bpd of oil to world markets and at least 10 billion cubic metres per year of gas to Turkey. Its bid to export oil and gas independently from Baghdad has infuriated officials […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Qaeda-Aligned Militants Threaten Key Iraqi Cities

Radical Sunni militants aligned with Al Qaeda threatened Thursday to seize control of Falluja and Ramadi, two of the most important cities in Iraq, setting fire to police stations, freeing prisoners from jail and occupying mosques, as the government rushed troop reinforcements to the areas. Dressed in black and waving the flag of Al Qaeda, the militants commandeered mosque loudspeakers to call for supporters to join their struggle in both cities in the western province of Anbar, which have increasingly become centers of Sunni extremism since American forces withdrew from the country at the end of 2011. For the United States, which asserted at the time that Iraq was on track to become a stable democracy, Anbar holds grave historical significance — as a place for America’s greatest losses, and perhaps its most significant success, of the eight-year war. Nearly one-third of the American soldiers killed in […]

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Iraqis Battle Al Qaeda-Linked Gunmen

Iraqi security forces and allied tribesmen on Thursday battled al Qaeda-linked gunmen who ran rampant in two main Sunni cities, emboldened by mounting sectarian tensions between minority Sunnis and the Shiite-led government. The al Qaeda branch, known as the Islamic State in Iraq and al Sham, appeared to be trying to exploit Sunni anger after Iraqi police broke up a Sunni protest camp in Ramadi on Monday, leaving at least 13 people dead, and authorities arrested a senior Sunni politician accused of terrorism. Those moves added new fuel to sectarian violence that has escalated since the American withdrawal. Tension has been running high in the Sunni-dominated province of Anbar since thousands of antigovernment tribal fighters took over local government buildings in Fallujah and Ramadi on Wednesday after the army pulled back in an attempt to calm the situation. Soon after the pullout, militants launched the simultaneous assaults in Ramadi, […]

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Hezbollah Upgrades Missile Threat to Israel

U.S. officials believe members of Hezbollah, the militant group backed by Iran, are smuggling advanced guided-missile systems into Lebanon from Syria piece by piece to evade a secretive Israeli air campaign designed to stop them. The moves illustrate how both Hezbollah and Israel are using Syria’s civil war as cover for what increasingly is seen as a complex and high-stakes race to prepare for another potential conflict—their own—in ways that could alter the region’s military balance. Some components of a powerful antiship missile system have already been moved to Lebanon, according to previously undisclosed intelligence, while other systems that could target Israeli aircraft, ships and bases are being stored in expanded weapons depots under Hezbollah control in Syria, say current and former U.S. officials. Such guided weapons would be a major step up from the "dumb" rockets and missiles Hezbollah now has stockpiled, and could sharply increase the group’s […]

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Beirut Bomb Hits Hezbollah Stronghold

A car bomb ripped through a Hezbollah stronghold in a crowded district of southern Beirut on Thursday, days after a blast in another part of the Lebanese capital killed a politician who opposed the Shiite political and militant group. Thursday’s bombing, which killed five people, drew warnings from officials across Lebanon’s divided political spectrum that the country was teetering on the edge of sectarian warfare, threatening the kind of tit-for-tat killings that marked the country’s 1975-90 civil war. Tensions and violence has surged in Lebanon as the country has been pulled into the civil war in neighboring Syria over the past three years. Three bombs have struck Beirut’s southern suburbs—knownbroadly as Dahyeh after the Arabic word for suburb—in the past year, apparently targeting Hezbollah and its supporters. Hezbollah has sent fighters to Syria to bolster regime troops in their fight against mostly Sunni rebels, a role that became public […]

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Hezbollah Moving Long-Range Missiles From Syria to Lebanon, an Analyst Says

Amid the chaos of Syria ’s civil war, Hezbollah has been moving long-range missiles to Lebanon from bases where it had stored them inside Syria, including long-range Scud D missiles that can strike deep into Israel , according to an Israeli national security analyst. The analyst, Ronen Bergman, who has close contacts with Israeli intelligence officials, said Thursday that despite Israel’s undeclared campaign of airstrikes in Syria to stop new deliveries, most of the long-range surface-to-surface missiles given to Hezbollah by its allies Iran and Syria have been disassembled and moved to Lebanon. American intelligence analysts have also concluded that members of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia, are smuggling components of advanced Russian-made antiship missile systems piecemeal into Lebanon from war-stricken Syria to avoid an Israeli air campaign, a United States official said Thursday. As many as 12 Russian-made antiship cruise missile systems may now be […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple