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Car-bombings Shatter Relative Lull in Baghdad

A shop damaged by a bomb blast in Baghdad’s Karrada area on Saturday night. ENLARGE Photo: ahmad al-rubaye/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images BAGHDAD—A surge in car bombings renewed security concerns in the Iraqi capital on Sunday, after Islamic State claimed seven attacks in the past week. The bombers struck locations across Baghdad, including an open-air market Saturday night in the commercial district of Karrada, where some people had gathered to distribute sweets for a Shiite holy celebration. At least 20 people were killed and 79 were injured in the string of bombings, according to a security official. Eleven died in Saturday night’s attack alone. Car-bombings, which were a hallmark of life in Baghdad nearly a decade ago when Islamic State’s predecessor, al Qaeda in Iraq, was ascendant, had become more sporadic in recent years, even as Islamic State took power in parts of the country. Intensified fighting last week in Ramadi, […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Iran Nuclear Talks Open a Tangled Path to Ending Syria’s War

Photo Staffan de Mistura, left, the United Nations envoy for Syria, meeting in Damascus in February with the Syrian deputy foreign minister, Faisal Mekdad, in an effort to halt fighting in Aleppo. Credit Louai Beshara/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images UNITED NATIONS — Wearing pinstripes and a pince-nez, Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations envoy for Syria , arrived at the Security Council one Tuesday afternoon in February and announced that President Bashar al-Assad had agreed to halt airstrikes over Aleppo. Would the rebels, Mr. de Mistura suggested, agree to halt their shelling? What he did not announce, but everyone knew by then, was that the Assad government had begun a military offensive to encircle opposition-held enclaves in Aleppo and that fierce fighting was underway. It would take only a few days for rebel leaders, having pushed back Syrian government forces, to outright reject Mr. de Mistura’s proposed freeze in […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Energy Secretary Moniz emerges as Obama’s secret weapon in Iran talks

The energy secretary’s job title has always been a bit of a misnomer. Nearly two-thirds of the department’s budget has nothing to do with energy. Instead, it is devoted to taking care of the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile — and cleaning up radioactive waste from old weapons development sites. That nuclear expertise has catapulted Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, a physicist from MIT, from a Cabinet backwater to center stage in the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. An unlikely breakout star, Moniz sports a long wavy mop of mostly white hair that has been compared to George Washington’s locks. The energy secretary is providing a knowledgable voice that the Obama administration hopes can reassure nervous members of Congress as they weigh the deal. Moniz is someone who “can take complex issues and make the lay person understand them,” said Carol Browner, who was the top White House adviser on energy […]

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Yemeni Fighters Trained in Persian Gulf Are Said to Join Saudi-Led Mission

MUKALLA, Yemen — Yemeni fighters who are believed to have received training and weapons in the Persian Gulf entered combat around the southern city of Aden on Sunday, joining with militiamen who are battling Houthi rebels, according to local militia fighters in Aden.   The new troops arrived by sea in the last few days, they said. They all appeared to be Yemenis from the south who had trained in Saudi Arabia and possibly other Persian Gulf states, according to a senior local commander, a fighter and an allied resident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss troop actions. Their claims could not be independently verified. If confirmed, the influx would represent one of the first major deployments of ground troops trained by the Saudi-led coalition, and would shift the makeup of a military operation that has largely relied on airstrikes through its first weeks. The reinforcements, […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Saudi Arabia Tapping Wealth Fund to Maintain Low Oil Prices

The low prices for crude are costing Saudi Arabia some serious cash. The Saudi central bank reported last week that its net foreign assets fell 4.7% year-over-year in March to about $691 billion, their lowest level since July 2013. The Saudis nicked their savings account to the tune of $36 billion in the last two months as the country’s new king has had to increase both withdrawals and borrowing to meet the kingdom’s public-sector salaries and large development projects according to a report in the Financial Times. One analyst firm has said that crude oil output from OPEC countries in April rose by 125,000 barrels a day month-over-month to 30.9 million barrels a day, with most of the increase due to higher Saudi production. OPEC production averaged 1.2 million barrels a day more year-over-year compared with the two-month March-April period in 2014. And that level of production is not […]

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Oil slump tempers Bakken drillers’ worries over new rail rules

NEW YORK (Reuters) – In the first part of 2014, U.S. shale drillers watched with growing alarm as rail regulators contemplated tough new oil-by-rail rules, fearing rapid changes might slow shipments from North Dakota’s Bakken fields and force them to curtail production due to a lack of new pipelines. What a difference a year makes. Now, with beat-down oil prices slamming the brakes on the shale industry’s breakneck growth, even tough new rules on phasing out older oil-tank cars and speed restrictions announced Friday are unlikely to thwart new production, experts say. The deceleration of growth in the shale plays has taken the pressure off rail operators to make up for a shortfall in pipeline capacity, particularly from North Dakota’s Bakken region, which relies on trains to ship as much as 60 percent of its output, according to state figures. "Oil producers have more to worry about than new […]

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California Crops raised with oil field water

Here in California’s thirsty farm belt, where pumpjacks nod amid neat rows of crops, it’s a proposition that seems to make sense: using treated oil field wastewater to irrigate crops. Oil giant Chevron recycles 21 million gallons of that water each day and sells it to farmers who use it on about 45,000 acres of crops, about 10% of Kern County’s farmland. State and local officials praise the 2-decade-old program as a national model for coping with the region’s water shortages. As California’s four-year drought lingers and authorities scramble to conserve every drop, agricultural officials have said that more companies are seeking permits to begin similar programs. The heightened interest in recycling oil field wastewater has raised concern over the adequacy of safety measures in place to prevent contamination from toxic oil production chemicals. Recycling oil field wastewater Until now, government authorities have only required limited testing of recycled […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Greece cites progress in talks with EU/IMF lenders, aims for May deal

ATHENS (Reuters) – Negotiations between Greece and its international lenders over reforms to unlock remaining bailout aid have made headway and an agreement could be closer this month, a government official said on Sunday. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s three-month-old government is under growing pressure at home and abroad to reach an agreement with European and IMF lenders over reforms to avert a national bankruptcy. Talks have been painfully slow as the leftist-led government is resisting cuts in pensions and labour reforms that would clash with its campaign pledges to end austerity. "There were very important steps made at the Brussels Group (talks) which bring an agreement nearer," the official said, declining to be named. "All sides aim for an agreement at a Brussels Group level within May." The talks between technical teams from Athens and EU/IMF/ECB lenders are expected to resume on Monday, the official said after the country’s […]

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Exclusive: European Union sees supplies of natural gas from Turkmenistan by 2019

ASHGABAT (Reuters) – The European Union, keen to lessen its dependence on Russia for energy supplies, expects to start receiving natural gas from Turkmenistan by 2019, European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic said in an interview. Russia currently supplies around a third of Europe’s gas needs, but Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and its involvement in the military conflict in eastern Ukraine has added urgency to the EU’s search for gas from alternative sources. "We have good mutual understanding. For Turkmenistan it is very important to diversify its export options, while for the EU it is very important to diversify its imports," Sefcovic told Reuters in the Turkmen capital Ashgabat. "Europe expects supplies of Turkmen gas to begin by 2019," he said, speaking in Russian. Turkmenistan, a Central Asian nation with the world’s fourth-largest reserves of natural gas, is keen to diversify exports of the fuel away from Russia which […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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The Great Oil Game: Resource Crisis in Russia?

Weekly pageviews of “Resource Crisis.” My blog seems to be having a remarkable success in Russia, but do the Russians understand the problem of resource depletion? Complex structures, such as states and empires, are always prone to collapse and they usually give little or no previous warnings. The collapse of the Soviet Union, indeed, had not been predicted by anyone and it came completely unexpected. In the present crisis, instead, Western analysts seem to have fallen in the opposite mistake, predicting the rapid demise of the Russian Federation. But that didn’t happen. On the contrary, the Russian economic system showed a remarkable resilience and it strongly rebounded after a bad moment, last year. (image below from Bloomberg). So, predicting collapses is always very difficult in a world’s situation that looks more and more like a Russian Roulette (an appropriate name in this context), but played with nuclear weapons. It […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple