Category:

A Reckoning With Weak Oil Prices

Dow Jones Newswires By Sarah Kent The world’s big oil companies and their investors are bracing for some of the worst quarterly financial results in recent memory as the first three months of the year closed with oil trading at about half of its 2014 peak. The final quarter of 2014 was bad enough. British giant BP PLC announced its biggest quarterly loss since the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Exxon Mobil Corp’s. cash flow fell to its lowest level since the midst of the financial crisis in 2009. The year-end carnage was for a three-month period in which a barrel of oil traded at $77. In the latest quarter, the Brent international oil benchmark averaged $55.13 a barrel. "It’s going to be ugly," said Jason Gammel, an analyst at Jefferies. "It’s going to be a really bad quarter." Most of the world’s biggest […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Iran Top General Signals Supreme Leader Nuclear Deal Backing

An Iranian student shows the sign of victory while holding a portrait of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during a demonstration in Tehran, on Feb. 18, 2015. Photographer: Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images Iran’s military chief congratulated Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for negotiators’ success in reaching a nuclear agreement with six world powers, in an open backing of President Hassan Rouhani’s government. In praising the outcome of the talks, General Hassan Firouzabadi highlighted rifts between Rouhani and critics who say negotiations don’t serve Iran’s national interest. While Khamenei hasn’t commented publicly on the framework accord reached last week, the general’s warm words may indicate the political establishment’s official line in presenting the deal at home. Thanks to Khamenei’s leadership and efforts by Rouhani’s team of negotiators, “another step was taken to ensure Iran’s inalienable right” to produce peaceful nuclear energy, Firouzabadi said in a letter to Khamenei, […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

One of Libya’s Rival Governments Moves to Control Oil Revenue

CAIRO — One of the two factions battling for control of Libya took steps on Sunday to divert incoming oil revenue away from the central bank and into its own new account, a steep escalation in the contest over the country’s vast wealth. Libya’s oil and money are the prizes that have driven much of the competition among militias and factions in the nearly four years since the overthrow of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, and as the fighting on the ground has slashed oil revenues, the legal and political battle for control of Libya’s assets has become overt and intense. Over the past nine months, the many local militias that sprang up around Colonel Qaddafi have now broken into two warring coalitions, each with its own provisional government. Officials of the Central Bank of Libya, which holds the country’s roughly $90 billion in foreign reserves and receives the income of […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Pakistan says Saudi-led coalition in Yemen wants troops

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan’s defense minister says a Saudi-led coalition targeting Shiite rebels in Yemen wants it to contribute ground troops. The comments Monday by Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif come as Pakistan’s parliament debates whether to contribute militarily to the campaign against the rebels, known as Houthis. Pakistan has offered its verbal support for the mission. Days of airstrikes have yet to dislodge the Houthis from territory they hold across Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country. That’s led to speculation that there could be a ground operation launched in Yemen. Asif says Saudi Arabia also asked for aircraft and naval ships for the campaign. The Saudi-led campaign entered its 12th day Monday, targeting rebels who took over the capital, Sanaa, in September and eventually forced President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi to flee.

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Libya’s Biggest Oil Port May Reopen as Groups Vie for Buyers

Al-Thinni’s administration is preparing for the reopening of Es Sider and Ras Lanuf oil ports, even if the emergence of a militant armed group affiliated with Islamic State derails operations at the terminals, Al-Thinni said at a news conference in Al-Bayda on Saturday. Photographer: Gianluigi Guercia/AFP/Getty Images Libya’s biggest oil port may reopen in two weeks as fighting in the area recedes amid increasing competition between the divided North African nation’s rival governments for the control of crude exports. Al Mabrook Bu Seif, the chairman of state-run National Oil Corp. appointed by the elected government in the east of the country, said his team will start contacting existing clients to coordinate crude loadings at oil ports, replacing the company’s rival management in the capital, Tripoli, where a cabinet backed by Islamist militias is ruling over most of the western region. “Our management and marketing team are ready to deal […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Jihadist Cash Lures Syrian War Refugees as Aid Dwindles

Residents wait in line to receive food aid distributed in the Yarmouk refugee camp on January 31, 2014 in Damascus. This month, Islamic State and al-Nusra Front militants took over much of the camp. Source: United Nation Relief and Works Agency via Getty Images Mohammad Deen, a Syrian refugee and father of six, struggles to find the money to meet his children’s needs and worries who else might step in with an offer to help. “If Daesh approaches my son and gives him $300 to fight with them, he would do it,” he said, using Islamic State’s Arabic acronym. Deen lives in a dilapidated house in northern Lebanon, and has no access to the dwindling international aid available to millions of displaced Syrians. Three of his children are disabled, while the son he’s especially concerned about is 18, in the target age group for jihadist recruiters. As Syria’s war […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

India launches air quality index to give pollution information

Delhi was ranked the most polluted city on Earth in 2014 India has launched its first air quality index, to provide real time information about pollution levels. The index, announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, will initially monitor air quality in 10 cities. Last year the Environmental Preference Index ranked India 174 out of 178 countries for air quality. The rising and health-endangering pollution has been mainly blamed on a huge increase in vehicles, particularly diesel-driven cars, on Indian roads. Polluting industries, open burning of refuse and leaves, massive quantities of construction waste and substantial loss of forests have also led to high pollution levels in cities. A World Health Organization (WHO) survey last year found that 13 of the most polluted 20 cities in the world were in India. The capital, Delhi, was the most polluted city in the world , the survey said. It is a leading […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

California Drought Tests History of Endless Growth

LOS ANGELES — For more than a century, California has been the state where people flocked for a better life — 164,000 square miles of mountains, farmland and coastline, shimmering with ambition and dreams, money and beauty. It was the cutting-edge symbol of possibility: Hollywood, Silicon Valley, aerospace, agriculture and vineyards. But now a punishing drought — and the unprecedented measures the state announced last week to compel people to reduce water consumption — is forcing a reconsideration of whether the aspiration of untrammeled growth that has for so long been this state’s driving engine has run against the limits of nature. The 25 percent cut in water consumption ordered by Gov. Jerry Brown raises fundamental questions about what life in California will be like in the years ahead, and even whether this state faces the prospect of people leaving for wetter climates — assuming, as Mr. Brown and […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

President Obama Calls Preliminary Iran Nuclear Deal ‘Our Best Bet’

WASHINGTON — President Obama strongly defended last week’s preliminary agreement with Iran as a “once in a lifetime opportunity” to curb the spread of nuclear weapons in a dangerous region while reassuring critics that he would keep all options available if Tehran ultimately cheated. As he sought in an interview with The New York Times to sell the tentative deal to skeptics accusing him of giving away too much, Mr. Obama emphasized to Israel that “we’ve got their backs” in the face of Iranian hostility. And he suggested that he could accept some sort of vote in Congress if it did not block his ability to carry out the agreement. “This is our best bet by far to make sure Iran doesn’t get a nuclear weapon,” Mr. Obama said in an interview with Thomas L. Friedman , an Op-Ed columnist for The Times, published on Sunday. “What we will […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Obama defends ‘once in a lifetime’ Iranian nuclear deal

U.S. President Barack Obama delivers remarks about the agreement reached with Iran about a peaceful nuclear program in the Rose Garden at the White House April 2, 2015 in Washington, DC. The so-called P5+1 nations reached an agreement for an Iranian nuclear program and a process to lift sanctions against Iran after talks in Switzerland. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) President Barack Obama stepped up his efforts to sell a nuclear deal with Iran, saying it was a "once in a lifetime" opportunity to check Tehran’s nuclear ambitions while emphasising the US has other options if the framework falls apart.  In a lengthy, wide-ranging interview with the New York Times, Mr Obama sought to explicitly rebut criticism from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the deal threatens Israel’s existence, saying that it was "personally difficult" for him to hear suggestions his administration has not consistently supported Israel’s interests.  "I […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple