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Rich In Oil, Venezuela Is Now Poor In Most Everything Else

Shoppers queue outside the supermarket ‘Dia a Dia’ in Caracas, Venezuela, on Tuesday. The government took over stores of supermarket chain after alleging that it was hoarding food. According to many economists, government controls are making the economic crisis worse. (EPA/Landov) By John Otis, NPR Simon Nobile, 72, runs the Capri pasta factory in the capital Caracas, which was founded by his Italian-born father in 1940. Capri’s two plants crank out 11 million pounds of pasta per month. They could produce nearly twice that much. However, Nobile says a government policy designed to help the poor forces him to sell half of his inventory for just five cents a pound. "There is no incentive because price controls mean that you lose money. So the more you produce, the more money you lose," he says. Another headache is securing the grain to make pasta, says Angie Mendible who works in […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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6000% Increase in Cancer Rates at Fukushima Site

As reports from individuals like Chieko Shiina, a supporter of the Fukushima Collaborateive Clinic talk about exploding rates of thyroid cancer in children, as well as an epidemic of leukemia, heart attacks, and other health problems,  the Abe-led government and US continue to sweep the fall out of the Fukushima disaster under the rug. Cancer rates have exploded at an increase of almost 6000% in areas near the reactor meltdown. Aside from people-on-the-street interviews that a rare media outlet like “Hodo station” will report on, mainstream media stays completely silent. One Japanese resident,  Carol Hisasue, laments  that as the incident has disappeared from the media, it has also disappeared from people’s consciousness. So why does Fukushima continue to be a see no evil, hear no evil event? You can watch an over hour-long report that goes into detail, but to sum it up, people can’t even turn on their gas-stoves near Fukushima because […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Oil Companies May Keep Up Output to Repay Debt, BIS Report Says

Tumbling oil prices have increased borrowing costs among energy companies, with spreads on high-yield bonds issued by energy firms soaring to 800 basis points, or 8 percentage points, as of January, from 330 points in June, according to the BIS. Photographer: Susana Gonzalez/Bloomberg (Bloomberg) — Energy companies may be slow to cut oil production after a 50 percent price drop because they need to service debt that has risen fourfold since 2003, according to the Bank for International Settlements. “Debt-service requirements may induce continued physical production of oil to maintain cash flows, delaying the reduction in supply in the market,” the Basel, Switzerland-based institution said in a report Saturday. Energy companies’ outstanding debt rose to more than $800 billion this year from less than $200 billion in 2003, said BIS, which is owned by central banks. Sinking oil prices weakened the value of assets used as collateral by producers […]

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Pump Prices Rise for First Time Since June, Lundberg Says

The highest price for gasoline in the lower 48 states among the markets surveyed was in San Francisco at $2.59 a gallon, Lundberg Survey Inc. said. The lowest price was in Tucson, Arizona, where customers paid an average $1.82 a gallon. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg (Bloomberg) — The average price of regular gasoline at U.S. pumps rose for the first time since June, climbing 12.72 cents during the past two weeks to $2.1963 a gallon, according to Lundberg Survey Inc. The survey covers the period ended Feb. 6 and is based on information obtained at about 2,500 filling stations by the Camarillo, California-based company. Prices are $1.0981 lower than a year ago. Pump prices had fallen in every Lundberg survey following June 20. Retail gasoline increased as crude oil prices rebounded from the lowest level since 2009. “Crude oil rose in price and the full weight has not yet been […]

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US gas prices jump 13 cents a gallon; could go higher

CAMARILLO, Calif. (AP) — The average price of a regular gallon of gas jumped 13 cents in the past two weeks to $2.20, ending a sustained drop. Industry analyst Trilby Lundberg said Sunday that a rebound in the price of crude oil caused the run-up at the pump. However, the price is $1.10 below the mark a year ago, on Feb. 7, 2014. San Francisco continued to have the highest-priced gas in the Lower 48 states at $2.59 a gallon. The low average was in Tucson, Arizona, at $1.82. The average price in California is up 9 cents, to $2.53. Lundberg says pump prices could climb as much as a dime in the near future, unless oil prices show significant declines.

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Bigger Container Ships Pose Bigger Risks

ENLARGE As shipping lines seek to cut costs, new container ships larger than the CSCL Globe, one of the biggest such ships now in service, are in the offing or on the drawing board. Photo: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images The big container ships that ply the world’s trade routes are growing ever larger, holding down the cost of ocean shipping, but also raising concerns among vessel operators, insurers and regulators about the potential for catastrophic accidents. The ships, designed to carry freight stowed in large metal containers, transport much of the world’s seaborne cargo, including manufactured goods and, increasingly, farm products. Their increasing size already is straining the unloading resources at some port facilities and—along with labor troubles—has contributed to major traffic snarls at the nation’s West Coast ports. Since the economic downturn, shipping lines have sought to stay competitive by running larger, more fuel-efficient container ships in major shipping […]

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Oil ‘contango’ puts profit in storage

Price sensitive: oil storage facilities in Cushing Anyone seeking to understand oil’s fall should watch what is happening in Cushing, Oklahoma. The little city of 7,900 people is also home to tanks capacious enough to hold 70.8m barrels of crude, by the government’s latest reckoning . There, oil stocks have doubled since October to 41.3m barrels — a tenth of US commercial inventories. In a “few months it will be full”, Alan Swanson, chief financial officer at tank owner Plains All American Pipeline , told analysts last week. More On this topic IN Commodities Cushing’s rising occupancy rate shows how much supply exceeds demand even with US crude at $52 a barrel. With North American production still booming, it’s pouring into tanks in places like Cushing ; the Gulf coast of Texas; and Hardisty, Alberta. Cushing is watched most closely, as it is the delivery point for the benchmark […]

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How environmental activists turned a pipeline into a climate movement

WASHINGTON— In the summer of 2011, James Hansen, then the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, raised the alarm about an obscure oil pipeline project that appeared to be on track  for approval, just as hundreds of others like it had in the years prior.    The 1,179-mile proposed pipeline would transport crude oil extracted from Canada’s tar sands—a particularly intensive process that produces 17 percent more emissions than conventional extraction—to refineries on the Gulf Coast. “The U.S. Department of State seems likely to approve a huge pipeline to carry tar sands oil (about 830,000 barrels per day) to Texas refineries unless sufficient objections are raised,” Hansen, one of the world’s foremost climate scientists, wrote in an essay entitled “Silence is Deadly.” “An overwhelming objection is that exploitation of tar sands would make it implausible to stabilize climate and avoid disastrous global climate impacts.” Hansen argued constructing […]

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Russia Picks ‘Strategic’ Companies Eligible for State Support

By Andrey Ostroukh MOSCOW–Russia’s government has picked 199 "strategic" companies that will have state legal support and a greater crack at bailouts, the economy ministry said Sunday. Russia is preparing for its first economic recession since 2009, suffering from massive capital flight and double-digit inflation. The government, which has limited funds when global capital markets are closed to it because of Western sanctions, is looking for ways to save the economy from a deeper collapse. It has picked companies, including the country’s largest oil producer Rosneft and gas monopoly Gazprom, that collectively generate 70% of Russia’s national income and employ more than 20% of the working population across the country. This should steady the economy and mitigate the effects of the crisis, the economy ministry said in a statement. Inclusion on the list of strategic companies doesn’t guarantee a state-funded bailout, the ministry said. Late last month, the government […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple