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Ukraine Moves Reflect Moscow’s Long Shadow

FIERY POLITICS: Ukraine’s legislature ratified a pact with the EU and approved an autonomy plan for separatist regions, as supporters of an anticorruption law clashed with police outside parliament. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images Ukraine sought to draw a line under its confrontation with Moscow by ratifying a landmark trade-and-political deal with the European Union and approving limited autonomy for territories now controlled by Russia-backed separatists . But with full implementation of the EU deal postponed under Russian pressure, and the rebels insisting on independence, the developments illustrated Kiev’s weakened position—almost a year after Moscow began flexing its muscle to keep the ex-Soviet republic in its orbit. Many lawmakers in Kiev broke into the national anthem and cried "Glory to Ukraine" after the EU deal passed with 355 votes in the 450-seat legislature. President Petro Poroshenko hailed it as a first step toward eventual membership in the bloc. "No country has […]

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America: You’ve got three more years to drive normally!

Three more years? That’s pretty scary! Surely there must be a mistake in that headline. First in a series Is it possible that average Americans could have a hard time driving only three years from now? Preposterous, to say the very least! Three more years to drive would be awful scary if it were true. Fortunately, it can’t be true because the USA has been racing ahead, drilling like crazy, with the result that we are now the world’s third biggest oil producer, just behind Russia and Saudi Arabia. As everyone who follows the news has heard by now, an innovative drilling technology called “fracking” has added about three million barrels a day of new “tight oil” production, from areas of the U.S. like the Bakken in North Dakota, and the Eagle Ford shale in Texas. Obama used to tell us how we need to break our petroleum addiction, […]

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WTI Oil Falls From One-Week High Before Fed Meeting

West Texas Intermediate crude slipped from the highest closing price in more than a week before the Federal Reserve ’s review of interest rates. Brent was little changed in London . Futures lost as much as 0.4 percent in New York. Fed officials meet to review policy from today. Fed Chair Janet Yellen is set to increase interest rates gradually between 2015 and 2017, according to a Bloomberg survey of economists. Brent crude declined yesterday to the lowest level in more than two years on concern slower economic growth in China , the world’s second-biggest oil consumer, will reduce demand. “The main concern is whether the Fed will shift its policy and timing of interest rate hikes,” Michael Poulsen, an analyst at Global Risk Management Ltd. in Middelfart, Denmark , said in a report. “ Oil prices are capped by continued demand fears.” WTI for October delivery fell as […]

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Brent crude futures fall to fresh 26-month, front-month low on Chinese data

New York (Platts)–15Sep2014/502 pm EDT/2102 GMT ICE October Brent futures settled 46 cents lower at $96.65/barrel, a front-month close not seen since June 2012, as weaker-than-expected Chinese economic data stoked concerns about the global economy and sluggish oil demand growth. NYMEX October crude futures closed 65 cents higher at $92.92/b. In refined products action, NYMEX October ULSD was essentially flat, up 9 points at $2.7396/gal, while NYMEX October RBOB settled 1.20 cents higher at $2.5308/gal. It was the second trading session in a row that the front-month ICE Brent futures contract settled at a multi-year low. On Friday, ICE October Brent set its own record-low close since June 2012. The last time front-month ICE Brent settled lower than Monday’s close was on June 28, 2012, when it closed at $91.36/b. News of slowing Chinese industrial production pushed down prices even further Monday, with an intraday low of $96.10/b posted. […]

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Fight Against Climate Change Seen Driving Economic Growth

Government and industry leaders need not choose between fighting climate change or growing the world’s economy. They can do both, according to a new study. Countries can expand their economies through emissions reductions in cities, land use and energy, according to a report released today by the Global Commission on the Economy & Climate, a panel set up by seven nations including the U.K. to advise on the best ways to tackle global warming. The report, which found that about $90 trillion will be invested in city infrastructure over the next 15 years, comes a week before world leaders head to New York for a climate summit hosted by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Building better-connected cities relying on mass public transportation may save more than $3 trillion in investment costs over the next 15 years and would improve economic performance and quality of life, according to the […]

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Iranian gas pipeline to Iraq hurts security snag

TEHRAN, Sept. 15 (UPI) — Gas can’t be sent through a pipeline to a power plant in Iraq until next year because of the security situation there, an Iranian development official said. The 60-mile pipeline is designed to export 176 million cubic feet of natural gas per day from Iran’s offshore South Pars field. Iraq, for its part, has struggled to ensure around-the-clock electricity despite its vast natural resource wealth. Alireza Gharibi, managing director of the Iranian Gas Engineering and Development Co., said the pipeline was ready for full-scale testing, but couldn’t pinpoint a set date for normal operations . "Iran’s gas cannot be exported to Iraq under the current insecure conditions, hence it will be exported to Iraq early next year," he said Saturday. U.S. and international forces are coordinating a measured response to help Iraq contain militants with the Islamic State, a Sunni-led terrorist group in control […]

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Kerry Says U.S. Is Still Open to Talking to Iran About ISIS Threat

PARIS — Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday that the Obama administration would keep the door open to confidential communications with Iran on the security crisis in Iraq, despite sarcastic criticism from Iran’s supreme leader, who said the American plan for bombing Islamic militants, their common enemy, was absurd. Mr. Kerry acknowledged that the United States had opposed a role for Iran at the international conference here on strengthening a coalition to help the new government in Baghdad fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Both King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and top officials from the United Arab Emirates had informed the United States that they would not attend the meeting here if Iran was present, said Mr. Kerry, who also stressed that the United States would not coordinate militarily with the Iranians. But Mr. Kerry also said that American officials were still prepared to talk […]

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Kurds Fight Iraq’s Second Bid to Seize Tanker Off Texas

Sept. 16 (Bloomberg) –- The Kurdistan Regional Government asked a U.S. judge to reject the Iraqi Oil Ministry’s bid to use new legal theories to seek a second seizure order for $100 million of Kurdish crude waiting in a tanker off the Texas coast. U.S. District Judge Gray Miller ruled last month he had no authority to decide which government rightfully owns the cargo, which was pumped from wells in the autonomous Kurdistan region of northern Iraq and exported through a Turkish pipeline. He threw out a U.S. magistrate’s arrest warrant that would have allowed federal agents to seize the crude and store it ashore at the Iraqi government’s expense, if the ship enters U.S. territorial waters, until the ownership dispute can be resolved. The judge gave the Iraqis a chance to revise their suit, and the central government asked to add new legal theories to try for a […]

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Kurds in Europe take up arms against IS group

AP Photo AP Photo World Video Buy AP Photo Reprints KOEGE, Denmark (AP) — Shaho Pirani says he’s just a phone call away from leaving his quiet life in Denmark and joining Kurdish forces battling against Islamic State militants in Iraq. The 30-year-old Kurd, who fled from Iran with his older brother in 1991, says he feels a moral duty to help the Peshmerga, the armed forces of the Kurdistan Regional Government, to fight the "psychopaths" of the Islamic State group. "I feel so helpless here," Pirani told The Associated Press in an interview in his home in Koege, a tranquil Copenhagen suburb with neatly trimmed lawns and hedges. "I am ready to die for the Kurdish cause." While more than 2,000 Europeans are believed to have joined the Islamic State organization and other jihadist groups as foreign fighters, a smaller number has left Europe in recent months to […]

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Islamic State Funds Push Into Syria and Iraq With Labyrinthine Oil-Smuggling Operation

A group of men transporting diesel fuel from Syria into Turkey last year, an operation also used by jihadists to fund their operations. Reuters The Islamic State is funding its rapid push into Syria and Iraq with a labyrinthine oil-smuggling operation that starts at seized Syrian oil fields, goes through makeshift refineries and can end up in jerrycans carried by mules into the hilly borderland of Turkey. Amid Western pressure to squeeze the group’s finances, Turkey is expanding efforts to crack down on the increasingly organized business, which is now generating an estimated $2 million a day. A major route linking Syrian oil fields with the smuggling enclaves of southern Turkey offers a window onto the complexity of the oil network run by Islamic State, the militant group that controls large swaths of Syria and Iraq . It also demonstrates the challenges of shutting it down. "It clearly won’t […]

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