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As Libya Crumbles, Calls Grow for Feuding Factions to Meet Halfway

Photo Pro-government forces during clashes with  rebels in Benghazi, Libya, this month. Credit Reuters MISURATA, Libya — Libyans have puzzled for four years over what might arrest their country’s disintegration. Feuding factions have consistently reached for guns instead of compromises in their battle to fill the vacuum left by the fall of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi , ultimately breaking the country into two warring coalitions of militias and city-states. Leaders on both sides vowed that Libya ’s only hope was their own military victory. But now a growing number of politicians on both sides of the conflict say that the dual threats from colonies of the Islamic State and a looming collapse of the economy may finally jolt Libya out of that spiral. In a series of interviews in five Libyan cities on both sides of the fight, political leaders were for the first time trying in earnest to reverse […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Combat in Yemen risks stirring sectarian hatred

ADEN/DUBAI (Reuters) – Three weeks of fighting across Yemen may be pushing a country where Sunnis and Shi’ites have prayed in the same mosques for centuries toward a sectarian war. Most combatants deny they are motivated by religion in the conflict. Iran-allied Shi’ite Houthi rebels say they are leading a just revolution and Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia contends it has been bombing the Houthis to protect the Yemeni state. Militiamen from the south cite defence of their homeland. But there are signs that the sectarian hatred that has engulfed the Middle East since the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011 is creeping into Yemen’s war, fueled by a rivalry between regional powers Saudi Arabia and Iran. Conflict and power struggles are not new to Yemen, one of the most heavily armed societies in the world. But the sectarian trend was captured on a video shared by Yemeni Facebook users. A teenager sits […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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IEA: Central Asia, Eastern Europe need to open energy doors

Energy-rich countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia need tie-ins to European market, IEA report from Paris finds. File Photo by Shutterstock/Kodda/UPI. PARIS, April 13 (UPI) — A more liberalized energy sector in Eastern Europe and Central Asia is necessary for regional energy security, a report Monday from the IEA said. The IEA published a 476-page report on the region’s energy sector, stating that, while countries like Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are emerging as oil and gas powerhouses, their reserves are under "rigid" and mostly government control. The European market relies in part on Russian natural reserves and many of those reserves run through Eastern European markets, where crises like Ukraine’s expose vulnerabilities. Apart from Norway, the European community has looked outside of the region for a diverse source of energy. "The EU’s energy security increasingly depends on the production in and safe transit of energy goods through our neighboring […]

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Sub-Saharan Africa’s Economic Growth Rate to Stall in 2015

ENLARGE A partial view of the commercial center in downtown Ikeja, Lagos, Nigeria. The fall in global oil prices has taken its toll on the Nigerian economy. Photo: European Pressphoto Agency NAIROBI—Plunging oil prices, sluggish growth in the developed world and a slowdown in China’s pace of industrialization will bring down sub-Saharan Africa’s growth rate this year to its lowest in two decades, the World Bank said Monday. Economic output is expected to grow by 4% across the region in 2015, the World Bank said in its biannual economy report “Africa Pulse,” significantly below the historic average of 4.4%. While that is still well above the global economy average, seen by the World Bank at 2.9% for 2015, the decline highlights how vulnerable the world’s second-fastest growing region is, both from trouble at home and abroad. Growth will pick up in sub-Saharan Africa in 2016 to reach 4.5%, but […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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China’s March coal imports down 32.7% on year: customs

China’s coal imports, including lignite, thermal and metallurgical coal, fell 32.7% year on year to 17.03 million mt in March, the ninth consecutive year-on-year decline, data from the General Administration of Customs (GAC) showed Monday. However, imports rose 11.6% from February, which was affected by the Lunar New Year holidays. The value of March imports was $1.67 billion, plunging 45.5% on the year but up 3.6% on the month. That translates to an average price of $62.65/mt, down $14.77/mt year on year and $4.84/mt lower on the month. The GAC will provide a breakdown of March imports later this month. Over January-March, the country imported 49.07 million mt of coal, down 41.5% year on year, the GAC said. Total value during the same period was $3.24 billion, a drop of 52.5% year on year. Meanwhile, China exported 320,000 mt of coal in March, dropping 56.8% on the year and […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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EIA’s April Drilling Productivity Report

The EIA just released its  Drilling Productivity Report  for April. In this report they have post what they expect the shale production data will look like through May 2015. DPR Total Shale The EIA is expecting a rounded top for shale production. They are expecting a big drop of total shale production in May to the tune of 56,673 barrels per day. In April they had total shale production down 2,098 bpd. The EIA has Bakken, Eagle Ford and Niobrara down but still has the Permian up by 10,647 bpd. DPR Change from Previous Month The EIA has total shale up over 100,000 bpd November thru February, dropping to up just66,000 bpd in March and not going negative until April and May. But that is not the way it will eventually turn out. DPR Total Shale Here I have the North Dakota Industrial Commission data for North Dakota through January and […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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China’s Texas Hold ’Em: Rick Perry and a Chinese plant on the Gulf

This is the first in a three-part investigative series on China’s inroads in Texas’ energy industry. It follows an  investigative series on another push by Chinese politician-investors and U.S. officials for a methanol plant in a predominantly black neighborhood of St. James Parish, Louisiana. TEXAS CITY, Texas — The administration of former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a likely 2016 GOP presidential contender, appears to have had a hand in helping two Chinese politician-cum-tycoons — who in recent years have come under public scrutiny on allegations of environmental abuses and corruption — park assets in a proposed methanol plant beside an underserved, predominantly black community in southern Texas. What would be one of the largest methanol plants in the world, valued at $4.5 billion and receiving hefty tax incentives from Texas City and the state, would send its product to China, according to promotional materials. But China has in recent […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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California’s Cycles of Drought

Photo Dry farmland being tilled near Corcoran, Calif., in August. California’s current drought is in its fourth year, but research indicates that the state and the rest of the West had ancient megadroughts that lasted decades and sometimes two centuries. Credit Matt Black When Gov. Jerry Brown of California imposed mandatory cutbacks in water use earlier this month in response to a severe drought, he warned that the state was facing an uncertain future. “This is the new normal,” he said, “and we’ll have to learn to cope with it.” The drought, now in its fourth year, is by many measures the worst since the state began keeping records of temperature and precipitation in the 1800s. And with a population now close to 39 million and a thirsty, $50 billion agricultural industry, California has been affected more by this drought than by any previous one. But scientists say that […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Disaster Plans for Oil Trains

ENLARGE Oil trains traverse Jersey City, N.J., where officials are concerned about the potential for a spill. Photo: Joe Jackson/The Wall Street Journal Imagine a mile-long train transporting crude oil derailing on an elevated track in Jersey City, N.J., across the street from senior citizen housing and 2 miles from the mouth of the Holland Tunnel to Manhattan. The oil ignites, creating an intense explosion and a 300-foot fireball. The blast kills 87 people right away, and sends 500 more to the hospital with serious injuries. More than a dozen buildings are destroyed. A plume of thick black smoke spreads north to New York’s Westchester County. This fictional—but, experts say, plausible—scenario was developed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in one of the first efforts by the U.S. government to map out what an oil-train accident might look like in an urban area. Agency officials unveiled it as part […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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The long, dirty trail of fake science

“ Doubt is our product ,” wrote executives for tobacco giant Brown & Williamson in a now infamous 1969 memo on industry communications strategy. The memo was revealed during discovery in class-action lawsuits against tobacco companies that would eventually yield a trove of 85 million pages. Among those pages are details about the public relations playbook of an industry that — as far back as 1958 — knew that smoking caused cancer and used public relations to fight regulation for decades. “ Merchants of Doubt ,” a brilliant new film from documentarian Robert Kenner (of “Food Inc.” fame), reveals this spin and tracks how other industries, from chemical manufacturers to pharmaceuticals, are ripping pages from Big Tobacco’s playbook to fight their own regulation and public scrutiny. Based on the book of the same name by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, the film reveals, in particular, Big Oil’s role in […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple