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Natural-Gas Prices Ease as Steady Weather Forecasts Stop Rally

Natural gas dropped slightly Friday as weather forecasts showed close-to-normal temperatures settling in throughout June. Prices for the front-month July contract settled down 2.3 cents, or 0.5%, at $4.739 a million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices had touched a one-month high midmorning as part of a seesaw trading pattern for the day. Weather forecasts are showing slightly above-normal temperatures, but nothing severe, which is key, said Gene McGillian, a broker and analyst at Tradition Energy. Prices on Thursday had their largest percentage gain since Feb. 19, and now that they are within 10 cents of their four-month high, it would take a severe weather forecast and expectations of a real demand spike to go higher, he said. "Until we get calls for really hot weather, the production levels are going to provide pretty strong resistance to (another) rally," Mr. McGillian […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Projected growth in natural gas-fired generation is influenced by resource availability

Graph of annual natural gas dry production and net generation by resource case, as explained in the article text Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Outlook 2014 Note: All generation values are for net generation. Different scenarios of natural gas resource availability in the Annual Energy Outlook 2014 (AEO2014) Reference case, High Oil and Gas Resource case, and Low Oil and Gas Resource case affect the growth of natural gas-fired electric generation. As increasing amounts of natural gas become economically available to power sector and onsite generators, gas-fired electric generation increases in all three cases. However, the cases differ in terms of whether growth in gas-fired generation is sufficient to overtake coal-fired generation by 2040. Growth in natural gas-fired generation comes from two sources: the power sector and the end-use sector. Growth in natural gas-fired generation in the power sector accounts for 78% of the overall increase in […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Oil prices aren’t coming down any time soon, and Iraq is just the latest reason

The upheaval in Iraq threatens to exacerbate a three-year-old trend in which unusual geopolitical disruptions have become the new normal. A key impact—high oil prices when analysts say bulging new supplies should be sending them far lower. + That is because much of the geopolitical turmoil has been in or involved oil-producing countries. “We are witnessing the failure of the petro-state,” Citigroup’s head of commodity research, Edward Morse, told Quartz. + Up until 2011, an average of 500,000 barrels of oil a day was off the market at any one time for maintenance and other reasons, a volume that triggered no perceptible price volatility. Temporary aberrations like Hurricane Katrina took 1.5 million barrels off the market in 2005, and the 2003 attack on Iraq removed 2.3 million barrels a day. + But starting in […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Medium-Term Oil Market Report 2013

Highlights of the latest OMR dated: 13th June 2014 Oil futures prices for Brent rose above $112/bbl on 12 June, the highest level this year, in the wake of a bold military campaign by Sunni insurgents in Iraq and continued supply outages in Libya.An apparent build in China’s crude strategic reserve in April and May, at an average 1.2 mb/d, is also strengthening markets. Global oil demand is forecast to rise by 1.3 mb/d in 2014, to 92.8 mb/d, a modest acceleration on 2013 as the macroeconomic backdrop improves. Global oil demand is set to increase sharply from a low of 91.4 mb/d in 1Q14 to a high of 94 mb/d in […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Seeing Their Gains at Risk, Shiites Flock to Join Militias

When he heard on Tuesday that Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, had fallen to Sunni militants, Abu Ali Alakabaie knew what he had to do. One of a number of Iraqi Shiite commanders who had been fighting on behalf of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria in recent years, he quickly packed his belongings and hit the road, racing to Baghdad, where he had heard that the militants were already reaching the northern suburbs. “After they occupied Mosul, we decided to come back from Syria to back the security forces here,” he said. He arrived in Baghdad later on Tuesday, joining a growing throng of Iraqi militia commanders and fighters eager to put to work here the finely honed skills they had accumulated in Syria in years of fighting some of the same Sunni militants who were now attacking Iraq. “We now have great experience in guerrilla fighting,” he […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Oil Industry in Iraq Faces Setback to Revival

After a long history of wars and sanctions, Iraq re-emerged as a critical source of oil in recent years. Mounting Iraqi production helped to ease world oil prices despite the tightening restrictions on Iran and tanking exports from Libya. And Western and Chinese oil companies rushed back, revitalizing long-neglected oil fields in the north and south. Now suddenly all that progress has been put in jeopardy with the intense military offensive by extremist insurgents. The stakes for the oil markets are high as the Iraqi government tries to gain control over the situation. An eventual decline in Iraqi exports would put pressure on China and India to increase their imports of Iranian oil again, weakening the United States government’s position in negotiations with Tehran over nuclear policies. Russian oil exports would become more crucial for global markets, potentially strengthening the Kremlin’s hand in Ukraine. And a major spike in […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric issues call to fight jihadist rebels

Iraq’s most senior Shi’ite Muslim cleric urged followers to take up arms against a full-blown Sunni militant insurgency to topple Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, escalating a conflict that threatens civil war and a possible break-up of the country. In Washington, U.S. President Barack Obama said he was reviewing military options, short of sending combat troops, to help Iraq fight the insurgency but warned any U.S. action must be accompanied by an Iraqi effort to bridge political divisions. He said it would several days to decide on the U.S. response. In a rare intervention at Friday prayers in the holy city of Kerbala, a message from Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who is the highest religious authority for Shi’ites in Iraq, said people should unite to fight back against a lightning advance by militants from the radical Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Fighters under […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Iraq’s top Shi’ite cleric issues call to fight jihadist rebels

Iraq’s most senior Shi’ite Muslim cleric urged followers to take up arms against a full-blown Sunni militant insurgency to topple Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, escalating a conflict that threatens civil war and a possible break-up of the country. In Washington, U.S. President Barack Obama said he was reviewing military options, short of sending combat troops, to help Iraq fight the insurgency but warned any U.S. action must be accompanied by an Iraqi effort to bridge political divisions. He said it would several days to decide on the U.S. response. In a rare intervention at Friday prayers in the holy city of Kerbala, a message from Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who is the highest religious authority for Shi’ites in Iraq, said people should unite to fight back against a lightning advance by militants from the radical Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Fighters under […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Loss of Mosul threatens Iraqi PM's hold on power

The disastrous loss of a large swath of the north to Islamic militants is threatening to cost Iraq’s prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, his job as even longtime Shiite backers turn against him and seek an alternative. During a meeting of Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish party leaders, one young up-and-coming Shiite politician angrily told al-Maliki that his "obsession with power" and botched policies were to blame for this week’s debacle. "Now, I must leave. I have a meeting to go to," a seething Ammar al-Hakim, leader of a key Shiite party, declared before storming out of the session Wednesday night, according to a politician who attended and shared the exchange with The Associated Press in return for anonymity. During his eight years in office, al-Maliki has touted himself as the only leader capable of safeguarding the Shiite […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Loss of Mosul threatens Iraqi PM’s hold on power

The disastrous loss of a large swath of the north to Islamic militants is threatening to cost Iraq’s prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, his job as even longtime Shiite backers turn against him and seek an alternative. During a meeting of Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish party leaders, one young up-and-coming Shiite politician angrily told al-Maliki that his "obsession with power" and botched policies were to blame for this week’s debacle. "Now, I must leave. I have a meeting to go to," a seething Ammar al-Hakim, leader of a key Shiite party, declared before storming out of the session Wednesday night, according to a politician who attended and shared the exchange with The Associated Press in return for anonymity. During his eight years in office, al-Maliki has touted himself as the only leader capable of safeguarding the Shiite […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple