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U.S. and Europe Are Struggling With Response to a Bold Russia

WASHINGTON — American and European officials are struggling to devise a response as Russia bears down on Ukraine, searching for new measures that will have more impact than the economic sanctions imposed so far, without risking major damage to their own industries or a military escalation that could spiral out of control. The officials are meeting this week to assemble a new package of sanctions targeting Russia’s banking, energy and defense sectors, but expressed skepticism that the measures would force Moscow to reverse course. President Obama faced rising calls from advisers and from Congress to move beyond economic actions to provide arms and more intelligence to Ukraine’s beleaguered military. The frustration at the inability to deter Moscow follows a shift on the battlefield, where Russian troops have turned the tide in favor of Ukrainian separatists. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who last week suggested “statehood” for parts of […]

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Why Peak Oil Refuses to Die

Pumpjacks image via shutterstock. Reproduced at Resilience.org with permission. Perhaps you’ve seen one of the recent barrage of articles claiming that fears of an imminent peak and decline in world oil production have either been dispelled (because we actually have plenty of oil) or are misplaced (because climate change is the only environmental problem we should be concerned with). I’m not buying either argument. Why? Let’s start with the common assertion that oil supplies are sufficiently abundant so that a peak in production is many years or decades away. Everyone agrees that planet Earth still holds plenty of petroleum or petroleum-like resources: that’s the kernel of truth at the heart of most attempted peak-oil debunkery. However, extracting and delivering those resources at an affordable price is becoming a bigger challenge year by year. For the oil industry, costs of production have rocketed; they’re currently soaring at a rate of […]

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WTI Drops as Global Manufacturing Misses Estimates; Brent Steady

West Texas Intermediate crude fell on speculation that weakening manufacturing from Germany to China will cap demand for oil. Brent was steady in London. Futures dropped as much as 0.5 percent in New York from the Aug. 29 close. Floor trading in the U.S. was closed for the Labor Day holiday and transactions will be booked with today’s for settlement purposes. Purchasing Manufacturing Indexes for Germany, Italy, the U.K. and China all came in below estimates for August. Brent slid yesterday as OPEC production rose to a one-year high last month. WTI for October delivery lost 20 cents to $95.76 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange at 10:04 a.m. Sydney time. Prices decreased 2.3 percent last month and are 2.7 percent lower this year. Brent for October settlement was down 7 cents at $102.72 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. The […]

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Libyan Militias Seize Control Of Capital As Chaos Rises

CAIRO — The government of Libya said Monday that it had lost control of its ministries to a coalition of militias that had taken over the capital, Tripoli, in another milestone in the disintegration of the state. “The government reiterates that these buildings and the public headquarters are not safe and inaccessible, because they are under the control of armed men,” the government said in a statement. It was issued from the eastern city of Tobruk, where the recently elected Parliament has convened in territory controlled by a renegade general who has tried to stage a coup d’état. The statement indicated the emergence of two rival centers of government — one in Tripoli and the other in Tobruk — each all but powerless. Over the last two months, the fractious militias that have dominated the country since the ouster of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi three years ago — variously local, […]

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Germany to Arm Kurds Battling ISIS

BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel told lawmakers on Monday that her government had decided to break with a taboo on delivering weapons to conflict zones because Germany and all of Europe faced a security threat from the extremists of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Ms. Merkel and top ministers decided Sunday to deliver thousands of machine guns, as well as antitank missiles and armored vehicles, to Kurdish forces battling ISIS in northern Iraq. The deliveries — from existing German Army stocks, and worth an estimated 70 million euros, or almost $92 million — will take place in stages in the coming weeks, the Defense Ministry said. On what was the 75th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland, Ms. Merkel went before Parliament on Monday to justify the arms decision. She evoked scenes of mass terrorism and killings in the Middle East, and said of ISIS, “Anything […]

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Better Technologies Needed for Emissions to Start Falling

What does this recent (possible) dip auger for future emissions and energy trends in China? I think it’s safe to say the answer is far more complicated than “clean energy is the future,” as Guay and Myllyvirta write at the end of their post. First things first: it’s far from agreed upon that coal consumption has peaked in China. The International Energy Agency does not expect Chinese demand to peak this decade. The US Energy Information Administration projects Chinese coal consumption rising through 2035. Wood Mackenzie expects coal consumption in China could double by 2030. And Bloomberg New Energy Finance , despite a bullish posture towards renewables, expects China to add between 340 and 450 gigawatts of coal-fired power plants over the next 15 years – an addition larger than all of America’s coal plants combined. And yet, there are signs that growth in Chinese coal consumption could be […]

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Ukraine Warns of Europe’s Worst Conflict Since World War II

Ukraine warned of an escalating conflict in its easternmost regions as a rebel leader said talks this week may include negotiations for a truce. The country’s military will take on Russia’s “full-scale invasion,” Defense Minister Valeriy Geletey said on Facebook today, a shift away from the government’s earlier communication that focused on an offensive against insurgents. Ukraine “must urgently build up defenses against Russia,” which is seeking “to advance to other areas in Ukraine,” Geletey said. Ukraine and its allies in the U.S. and Europe are accusing Russia of dispatching troops and backing militias to open a new front in the conflict that the United Nations estimates has claimed 2,600 lives. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied involvement in the unrest. Talks today between representatives from Russia, Ukraine, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the separatists will continue Sept. 5. “We can truly imagine some very dark […]

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Salmond Tells Cameron Support Gaining for Scots Breakaway

Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg Alex Salmond, First Minister of Scotland. Scottish nationalist leader Alex Salmond said U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron is right to be nervous ahead of this month’s independence referendumm, as support grows for the Yes campaign. With little more than two weeks before the Sept. 18 ballot and postal voting already under way, Salmond told Sky News in an interview yesterday that the pro-independence campaign is gaining momentum and “a huge number of Labour voters are supporting Yes.” “The Yes support is rising in this campaign,” Salmond said. “We’re still the underdogs, we’ve still got a distance to travel, but if we’re making the prime minister nervous, I suspect we’re doing something right.” Polls have narrowed since Salmond’s performance on Aug. 25 in the second televised debate against Alistair Darling , the former chancellor of the exchequer who heads the anti-independence Better Together campaign. While support for […]

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Brent Oil Extends Two-Month Slump Amid OPEC Expansion; WTI Falls

Brent crude dropped, extending a two-month slide, as OPEC’s oil production was seen increasing to the highest level in a year. West Texas Intermediate fell in New York . Futures slid as much as 0.4 percent in London, having retreated more than $9 in July and August. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries boosted output by 891,000 barrels a day to 31 million in August, estimates compiled by Bloomberg show. Iraqi forces entered the town of Amirli, ending a siege imposed by Islamic State militants that lasted for more than two months, a senior Shiite-Muslim cleric said. Floor trading in the U.S. is closed for the Labor Day holiday today. “Representatives of OPEC countries have been surprisingly quiet following the $10-per-barrel drop in oil prices over the last two months,” JBC Energy GmbH, Vienna-based analysts, said in a report today. The organization will contemplate output cuts in the coming […]

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Sources: Saudi Aramco Seeks Interest For Work On Unconventional Gas

KHOBAR, Saudi Arabia, Aug 29 (Reuters) – Four companies have expressed interest in bidding for work on unconventional gas in Saudi Arabia as the world’s top oil exporter pushes ahead with plans to develop challenging shale deposits, industry sources said. The companies are South Korea’s GS Engineering and Construction, Italy’s Maire Tecnimont, Japan’s JGC and Canada’s SNC-Lavalin, the sources told Reuters. State-run Saudi Aramco’s project will involve building processing facilities, wellheads and pipelines for the gas in Turaif in the northern part of Saudi Arabia where the big mining project Waad al-Shamal is under development, the sources said. Saudi Aramco, SNC-Lavalin, JGC and GS declined to comment, while Maire Tecnimont was not available for comment. The search for gas has been a priority for Saudi Arabia as it struggles to keep pace with rapidly rising domestic demand. Aramco plans to produce as much as 200 million cubic feet per […]

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U.S. and Iran Unlikely Allies in Iraq Battle

BAGHDAD — With American bombs raining down from the sky, Shiite militia fighters aligned with Iran battled Sunni extremists over the weekend, punching through their defenses to break the weekslong siege of Amerli, a cluster of farming villages whose Shiite residents faced possible slaughter. The fight in northern Iraq appeared to be the first time American warplanes and militias backed by Iran had worked with a common purpose on a battlefield against militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, even though the Obama administration said there was no direct coordination with the militias. Should such military actions continue, they could signal a dramatic shift for the United States and Iran, which have long vied for control in Iraq. They could also align the interests of the Americans with their longtime sworn enemies in the Shiite militias, whose fighters killed many United States soldiers during the long occupation […]

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Oil Futures Rangebound on Ukraine Tensions, China Data

By Eric Yep Crude-oil futures traded in a narrow price range in Asia Monday as markets weighed events in Ukraine and China’s manufacturing data that pointed to further slowing of the economy. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in October traded at $95.79 a barrel at 0424 GMT, down $0.17 in the Globex electronic session. October Brent crude on London’s ICE Futures exchange fell $0.02 to $103.17 a barrel. Nymex crude ended 2.25% lower in August and Brent crude lost 2.67% during the month. Both oil benchmarks are down for two consecutive months but recovered slightly in the final week of August on the back of positive U.S. economic data and Russia-Ukraine tensions. Amid reports of further incursions by Russian soldiers into Ukraine over the weekend, the European Union is considering further sanctions against Moscow unless it scales back its intervention in Ukraine. […]

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Kurd Rebels Fighting Islamic State Boost Hand for Turkey Talks

Photographer: Vianney Le Caer/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images Yezidi refugees from Sinjar live beneath a motorway underpass located at the entrance… Read More After fighting the Turkish army for decades, the Kurdistan Workers Party is now confronting a foe that’s shared by its erstwhile enemy, strengthening the group’s hand in talks on a political settlement. Fighters linked to the PKK, as the group is known, are battling the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, according to Turkish and Kurdish officials and media. The PKK, branded a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and European Union, is also in talks with the Ankara government to end a 30-year armed struggle for autonomy. Moves toward Kurdish self-rule elsewhere in the Middle East have accelerated during the crisis spurred by the Islamic State advance. The Kurds who rule a semi-autonomous region in northern Iraq, are receiving U.S. and European weapons to aid […]

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Iraqi Forces Free Besieged Shiite Town After U.S. Strikes

Related Iraqi forces entered the town of Amirli, breaking a siege imposed by Islamic State militants that lasted for more than two months, a senior Shiite-Muslim cleric said. “People are celebrating the arrival of the forces by firing in the air,” Sheikh Jaafar Jasim, representative of Iraq ’s top Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, said by phone from Amirli, 182 kilometers (114 miles) north of Baghdad . Seven Iraqi government troops and two members of the Kurdish forces known as the peshmerga were killed in the attack, according to the health office in the northern city of Kirkuk. The offensive to free the town was preceded by U.S. airstrikes at Islamic State positions. U.S., U.K., Australian and as well Iraqi forces also dropped aid to the residents of the Shiite-dominated town. Iraqi government forces and peshmerga fighters are pushing back against the al-Qaeda breakaway group with the help […]

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Fighting erupts between Syrian army, rebels on Golan Heights

EIN ZIVAN Golan Heights (Reuters) – Heavy fighting between the Syrian army and Islamist rebels erupted on Monday on the Golan Heights, where the militants have wrested control of a key frontier crossing which had been operated by the United Nations. It was not clear whether the forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had managed to retake control of the Quneitra crossing from the rebels of the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front. Persistent gunshots and explosions from mortar shells and other munitions could be heard on the Israeli-controlled side of the frontier and combatants could be clearly seen targeting each other with their weapons. At least one tank belonging to the Syrian army was also involved and some rebels could be seen a few meters (yards) away from the frontier fence. A large Syrian flag that had been flying for days between the Quneitra crossing and the abandoned town […]

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China manufacturing slowdown ripples through region

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Growth in China’s vast factory sector slackened in August as foreign and domestic demand slowed, stoking speculation that further policy easing would be needed to prevent the economy from stumbling once more. The surveys of purchasing managers (PMI) from across Asia told a tale of underwhelming new orders and faltering exports, overshadowing brighter spots such as India and Taiwan. That was a taster for a feast of euro zone PMIs due later Monday where any weakness would only add to pressure on the European Central Bank to at least open the door to more monetary stimulus at its policy meeting this week. ECONEUROPE The Chinese surveys come in both official and private sector flavors. The National Bureau of Statistic’s version fell from a 27-month high to 51.1 in August, as factories shed jobs for at least the 24th consecutive month. More worrying was the HSBC/Markit PMI, […]

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A Big Summer Story You Missed: Soaring Oil Debt

Over 100 of the world’s largest energy companies are running out of cash. Photo of Keystone pipeline in Nebraska by Shannon Ramos . Creative Commons licensed. Some of the summer’s biggest news stories took place in the bombed schools of Gaza, the abandoned hospitals of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the wheat fields of eastern Ukraine and the bloody mountains of northern Iraq. But one of the most important made virtually no headlines at all, and seemed to only appear on the website of the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Last July the government agency, which has collected mundane statistics on energy matters for decades, quietly revealed that 127 of the world’s largest oil and gas companies are running out of cash. They are now spending more than they are earning. Profits have lagged as expenditures have risen. Overburdened by debt, these firms are selling assets. The math is simple. […]

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Kemp: Why The Shale Revolution Is Not About To End

Hess To Form MLP For North Dakota Oil, Gas Transport Assets John Kemp is a Reuters market analyst. The views expressed are his own LONDON, Aug 29 (Reuters) – Doubts about the sustainability of the North American oil and gas boom centre on rapidly declining output from many shale wells after they are initially drilled. Shale sceptics point to the need to drill an ever-increasing number of new holes just to replace the declining output from existing wells, let alone expand production. At some point it will become impossible to keep up, they argue. The problem has been likened to the Red Queen’s Race in Lewis Carroll’s "Through the Looking-Glass" where the chess piece warns Alice that "it takes all the running you can do, just to keep in the same place". Geologists have worried about the problem of replacing declining output from old wells for more than a […]

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Putin Suggests Statehood for Southeast Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested “statehood” for battle-torn southeastern Ukraine as further European Union sanctions loom. “We must immediately commence substantive talks and not only on technical issues, but also on the political organization of society and the statehood status of southeast Ukraine in order to serve the interests of people living there,” Putin said in a television interview broadast yesterday. Ukrainian troops killed about 100 pro-Russian rebels in the last 24 hours, Defense Ministry spokesman Leonid Matyukhin said in a video statement on Facebook today. Government troops are fighting for control of Luhansk airport and they were shelled three times from the Russian side of the border, according to the statement. Members of a so-called contact group that may include representatives from Russia, Ukraine, the rebels and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe were expected to meet in the Belarus capital Minsk today in the latest […]

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Europe Set for Warm September After Coolest August Since ’06

Temperatures in Europe are forecast to be warmer than average this month after the coolest August in eight years, when Hurricane Bertha brought cold air. Five of seven meteorologists surveyed by Bloomberg predict above-normal temperatures for most of Europe. High pressure is forecast to build in the region’s west from early September, leading to warmer conditions, MetraWeather says. “September is always a tricky month as we transition from summer to fall, with a lot of pattern variability possible,” Mike Thomas, a meteorologist at Bethesda, Maryland-based Commodity Weather Group LLC, said by e-mail Aug. 28. “We generally favor a warm September.” September is the last month before the official start of the winter heating season, when demand for power and natural gas usually rises. Electricity consumption in Europe is set to decline 2.9 percent in 2014 because last winter was the region’s mildest in seven years and economies are in […]

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Russia Signals Hard Line on Ukraine Talks in Minsk

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday suggested Moscow would stick to a tough approach at talks. Reuters MOSCOW—Russia signaled it would take a hard line during Ukraine talks Monday, calling on Kiev to agree to an immediate and unconditional cease-fire as President Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine’s leaders of escalating the violence by refusing to negotiate in good faith. In Kiev, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko accused Russia of undertaking "undisguised aggression" that has "fundamentally changed the situation in the zone of military action" in the east, where Ukrainian forces have been fighting pro-Russia separatists for five months. Kiev, backed by Western leaders, has accused Moscow of sending more than 1,000 troops into its territory in the last few weeks to support the separatists, a charge Moscow denies even as Ukraine has suffered a dramatic reversal on the battlefield in recent days. The rebel representative to Monday’s talks with Russia […]

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Russia, Ukraine Trade Captured Soldiers

DNIPROPETROVSK, Ukraine—With its forces falling back before onslaughts in eastern Ukraine, Kiev agreed to the release of Russian paratroopers captured inside its borders last week in return for 63 Ukrainians who had crossed into Russian territory to flee fighting. The exchanges appeared to be a modest sign of a willingness to talk on the eve of cease-fire talks in Minsk, Belarus, on Monday that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said could be decisive. Kiev has taken a hard line in previous talks as it sought to regain territory taken by Moscow-backed rebels. But after Russian troops openly intervened, reversing Kiev’s gains and leaving hundreds of its soldiers surrounded, Mr. Poroshenko may be preparing to make concessions. Moscow appeared to be hardening its demands and to be ready to press Kiev to accept outright secession of its two eastern provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk. In remarks broadcast on Russia’s state television, […]

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Germany Steps Up Its Response to Global Security Crises

BERLIN — In an indication of Germany’s growing role on the world stage, the country’s top politicians on Sunday approved the delivery of thousands of machine guns and hand grenades, as well as hundreds of antitank missiles, to Kurdish forces battling Islamic militants in Iraq. Scarred by its militarism and two resounding defeats in the 20th century, Germany once shied away from conflict zones and limited its involvement to deliveries of humanitarian aid. But, although Chancellor Angela Merkel has yet to articulate a clear policy on intervention, she and her top ministers have dominated efforts to ease the Ukraine crisis. And on Sunday, they moved to approve the weapons for the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. A solid majority in Parliament backs sending weapons, while opinion polls indicate that up to two-thirds of Germans — weaned on decades of pacifism — oppose the move. Ms. […]

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EU to decide on more energy sanctions on Russia this week: Merkel

The EU is to decide on further energy and financial sanctions against Russia over its role in the Ukraine crisis within a week, German chancellor Angela Merkel said Sunday. "If nothing changes [in Ukraine] then these sanctions will be adopted," she told reporters after a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels. The move comes after reports of increased Russian military involvement in the conflict between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian government forces in eastern Ukraine. Merkel said the European Commission already has a list of further possible measures ready for EU governments to consider and decide on "within a week." These further measures are in the areas where the EU has already adopted sanctions, "so financial sanctions are possible, but also other areas in the energy sector for example," she said. In late July the EU targeted Russia’s oil sector with economic sanctions banning any new contracts with Russia that […]

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