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Nigeria: Oil Theft – Messy Blame Game Continues As Nation Bleeds

Nigeria’s public treasury has continued to bleed as stakeholders trade blame over who is stealing oil in the country and what quantity is actually stolen. Oilprice.com, an online publication, reported last year that Nigeria was losing an estimated 400,000 barrels per day, citing figures attributed to Nigeria’s coordinating minister for the economy and finance minister, Mrs Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. The large volume of oil allegedly stolen on a daily basis last year was equivalent to a revenue loss of about $1.7 billion a month and $20.4 billion annually. This earned Africa’s largest economy the No. 1 position among countries most plagued by oil theft in the world ahead of Mexico, Iraq, Russia, and Indonesia. The amount lost by Nigeria annually was reported to be more than the country spent on education and healthcare combined. According to data provided by the chief of naval staff last week, daily oil theft in […]

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Egypt’s power outages continue to intensify

A huge power outage caused black-outs across Cairo on Thursday causing major disruption across the city of some 20 million people at the height of the morning rush hour. Services were completely suspended on one of the city’s three metro lines and heavily disrupted on a second, the state MENA news agency reported. The electricity outage brought subway services in Cairo to a complete halt, inconveniencing the roughly 3.5 million Egyptians who use it every day. Water supplies to households and businesses were also disrupted, while the power outage also affected numerous state institutions including state television channels and radio stations which could not air without electricity to run their facilities. Energy ministry spokesman Mohamed al-Yamani said that "power is gradually being restored" after a fault cut supply to "some Cairo neighbourhoods". But two hours later, the whole of the city centre and several outlying districts were still without […]

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India Minister Says Country Not on Verge of Electricity Crisis

NEW DELHI—India’s power minister said Sunday that the country isn’t on the verge of an electricity crisis even though many of its power plants are running low on coal.  Piyush Goyal —who concurrently heads the ministries for power, coal and renewable energy—told reporters Sunday that power plants are facing coal shortages because they are producing more electricity to make up for shortfalls in the yearly monsoon rains, which have crimped generation by hydroelectric power plants.  Generation by coal-powered stations between June and August was around 21% higher than in the same period last year, Mr. Goyal said. But domestic coal production and imports haven’t kept up , which has forced plants to use up their inventories. "You will appreciate that when you produce 20% more power whereas your supply has gone up by only 5% or 6%, the stocks are bound to fall," he said.  He said that stronger rains […]

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China is net exporter of oil products in August, fourth time in 2014

China’s crude oil imports in August recovered to 25.19 million mt or an average 5.96 million b/d, surging 17.5% year on year, according to preliminary data released Monday, September 8, by the country’s General Administration of Customs. The volume was 6% higher than the July volume of 5.62 million b/d, which had been the first year-on-year contraction in crude imports since October 2013. China resumed crude exports last month after a five-month hiatus since March, shipping out 110,000 mt, although this was a 47.6% slide from August 2013. This brought the country’s net crude imports in August to 25.08 million mt, or 5.93 million b/d, up 18.2% year on year. Article continues below… Oilgram News brings you fast-breaking global petroleum and gas news on and including: Industry players, upstream and downstream markets, refineries, midstream transportation and financial reports Supply and demand trends, government actions, exploration and technology Daily futures […]

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China Oil Data Show August Crude Imports Rise to 25.19 Mln Tons

By Wayne Ma China imported 25.19 million metric tons of crude oil in August, equivalent to 5.96 million barrels a day, preliminary data from the General Administration of Customs showed Monday. Imports were 17.5% higher than the 21.43 million tons of crude shipped in during the corresponding month last year, and up around 6.0% from 23.76 million tons in July, according to Wall Street Journal calculations. Refined oil product imports totaled 2.53 million tons, while exports totaled 2.73 million tons, the data showed. China exported 110,000 tons of crude oil in August, according to the preliminary data. Write to Wayne Ma at [email protected]

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China’s Copper Imports Slow Due to Probe

An employee unloads copper at a factory in Nantong, Jiangsu province. Reuters China’s commodity imports in August mostly softened, led by a 12% decline in the volume of copper shipments from a year earlier due to the fallout from a government probe into metal financing at Chinese ports. Copper imports fell to 340,000 metric tons, according to customs data Monday. Chinese authorities earlier this year launched investigations into alleged fraud involving aluminum and copper stocks used as collateral for loans in China. Commodity-backed financing has fueled imports of copper in recent years, but this appears to be ebbing due to the investigations. “Banks became much more cautious” after the probe, said OCBC economist Xie Dongming. “They don’t want to give financing with that sort of collateral anymore.” There were other factors at play. Local copper processing mills that had shut down for maintenance or due to breakdowns restarted operations […]

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China’s August imports fall unexpectedly but exports buoyant

BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s import growth unexpectedly fell for the second consecutive month in August, posting its worst performance in over a year and stoking speculation about whether authorities should loosen policy further to revive domestic demand. Imports by the world’s second-biggest economy fell 2.4 percent in August compared with a year ago, the General Administration of Customs said on Monday, missing a Reuters estimate for a 1.7 percent rise. It was the second straight month that China’s import growth was surprisingly weak, raising concerns that tepid domestic demand exacerbated by a cooling housing market is increasingly weighing on the economy. In contrast, China’s exports were surprisingly buoyant in August amid stronger global demand. They jumped 9.4 percent from a year earlier to beat a forecast rise of 8 percent, although the growth rate slowed from 14.5 percent in July. That pushed the trade surplus to an unexpected all-time […]

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Halcon’s Wilson Drills More Debt Than Oil in Shale Bet

Bloomberg Markets Magazine Floyd Wilson raps his fingertips against the polished conference table. He’s just been asked, for a second time, how he reacted when his Halcon Resources Corp. (HK) wrote off $1.2 billion last year after disappointing results in two key prospects. Wilson once told investors that the acreage might contain the equivalent of 1.2 billion barrels of oil. He fixes his interlocutor with a blue-eyed stare and leans forward. At 67, he bench-presses 250 pounds (110 kilograms) and looks it. Outside the expansive windows of his 67th-floor executive suite, downtown Houston steams in its July smog . He responds, unsmiling, with a one-syllable obscenity: “F—.” Wilson has reason to curse, Bloomberg Markets magazine will report in its October issue. On the wall behind him hang framed stock certificates of the four public energy companies he’s built in his 44-year career. The third, Petrohawk Energy Corp., discovered the […]

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In shadow of oil boom, North Dakota farmers fight contamination

North Dakota is in the midst of an oil boom. Farmers are coping with the environmental and financial costs of wastewater spills from the drilling. Dermot Tatlow / LAIF / Redux ANTLER, N.D. — Last summer, in a wet, remote section of farm country in Bottineau County, landowner Mike Artz and his two neighbors discovered that a ruptured pipeline was spewing contaminated wastewater into his crop fields. “We saw all this oil on the low area, and all this salt water spread out beyond it,” said his neighbor Larry Peterson, who works as a farmer and an oil-shale contractor. “The water ran out into the wetland.” It was August, and all across Artz’s farm the barley crop was just reaching maturity. But near the spill, the dead stalks had undeveloped kernels, which, the farmers knew, meant that the barley had been contaminated weeks earlier. Soon after, state testing of […]

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The West Without Water

The West Without Water Dr. B. Lynn Ingram is a professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Science at UC Berkeley, California. The primary goal of her research is to assess how climates and environments have changed over the past several thousand years based on the geochemical and sedimentologic analysis of aquatic sediments and archaeological deposits, with a particular focus on the US West. She is the co-author of “The West without Water: What Past Floods, Droughts, and Other Climatic Clues Tell Us about Tomorrow” together with Dr. Frances Malamud-Roam, which received great reviews. In this interview, Dr. Ingram shares her thoughts on the current drought in the US Southwest within the larger climate record and potential implications for the future. E. Tavares: Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us today. Your research focuses on long-range geoclimatic trends using a broad sample of historical records. In this […]

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