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U.N. finds growing signs of Russian involvement in Ukraine war

GENEVA A separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine is revealing increasing evidence, but not yet conclusive legal proof, of Russian state involvement, senior United Nations human rights officials said on Monday. "We are speaking about increasing inflow of (unofficial) fighters and increasing evidence that there are also some (Russian) servicemen involved in fighting," Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic told a news conference in Geneva. Russia denies Western accusations that it is backing pro-Russian rebels with arms and troops. On May 21, U.N. officials interviewed two Russians captured in eastern Ukraine. The two men believe they should be treated as captured servicemen, but Russia says they are former soldiers who had left the military. The pair were charged with terrorism by Ukrainian authorities, putting them "between a rock and a hard place", Simonovic said. "It is very difficult to prove whether they are servicemen or not. That is why […]

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Is Peak Oil Behind Economic Disintegration?

Something is wrong with the economy. No kidding, you might reply, but what is the underlying cause? Is it Peak Oil? Or is capitalism just a system that doesn’t work and is destined to failure? Are we just stuck with inevitable deterioration in living standards for the majority, or is there at least theoretically something we can do about it? Would political decisions help or are we just doomed to watch the disintegration of civilization as the oil runs out? In an interview a few weeks back with Tom O’Brien of the From Alpha to Omega podcast , KMO asked him about the predictions of Peak Oil collapse and why they seem to have not come to pass the way some people thought they would: Tom O’Brien: “Think if we lived in Syria or Egypt. We might think [about] things slightly differently. I don’t know about yourself KMO, but […]

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4 reasons oil will stay this cheap for years

Producers around the world—from embattled drillers in war-torn Iraq, to shale concerns in the U.S.—aren’t being scared off by cheap prices. Leaders from some of the world’s most productive oil-exporting nations will meet this week in Vienna, just as oil prices have begun to stabilize at around $60 per barrel. As we near peak summer driving season, American consumers would have worried a generation ago that such a meeting would be an impetus for a pullback in production, with oil exporters aiming to raise prices by limiting supply. But the world has changed a great deal since the height of OPEC’s power in 1979, when member nations accounted for 50% of global oil production , compared with less than one-third today. When Fortune published its report on the collapse of oil prices in February, investors like Jeremy Grantham told us that oil would be heading back to a price […]

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Oil prices fall as OPEC output seen staying high

SINGAPORE Crude oil prices dropped on Monday on expectations that OPEC output would remain high after rising in May, stoking worries of oversupply despite declining U.S. rig operations. Crude oil prices jumped almost 5 percent on Friday, their biggest rally in over a month, as a bigger than expected fall in U.S. oil rigs in operation set off a renewed rush of bullish bets. But prices eased on Monday due to near-record production in most oil-producing regions, especially the Middle East. Front-month Brent crude futures LCOc1 had declined 35 cents to $65.21 per barrel at 1.23 a.m. ET on Monday. U.S. crude futures CLc1 were down 45 cents at $59.85 a barrel. Oil output by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) likely hit a two-and-a-half year high of 31.22 million barrels per day (bpd) in May and production is not expected to be cut during a meeting […]

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OPEC likely to keep output unchanged at June 5 meeting: delegates

VIENNA OPEC is likely to keep its output target unchanged when it meets on Friday because the global oil market appears to be in good shape and prices are expected to firm up from current levels, a senior Gulf OPEC delegate told Reuters. Two more OPEC delegates said they expect no change in policy on June 5 when oil ministers from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) are scheduled to meet in Vienna. Oil prices have rallied after falling to a near six-year low close to $45 a barrel in January due to a global glut. Brent crude settled at $65.56 on Friday, up $2.98, or 4.8 percent, on the day. [O/R] "It is unlikely that OPEC will make a decision regarding its production ceiling for two reasons: the first one that Russia and other non-OPEC producers have expressed their non-desire to cooperate in any idea of […]

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OPEC’s Pricing Leverage Is Weakening

This week’s meeting of the world’s oil cartel will show how much its power has diminished amid sweeping changes in the global energy market. Oil prices have plummeted in the past eight months because of a half-decade surge in U.S. production and weak international demand. Brent crude for July delivery ended Friday near $65 a barrel on London’s ICE Futures exchange, far below the $100 needed by several members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to balance their budgets. In the past, OPEC forced prices higher by cutting production , or it steadied them by flooding the market during crisis, war or when it wanted to make a point about its collective might. The 12-country group’s meeting in Vienna on Friday is likely to result in a very different response: doing nothing. OPEC delegates expect the group to keep its current production ceiling of 30 million barrels […]

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ISIS Gains Syrian Area Near Border

AMMAN, Jordan — The Islamic State advanced against rival insurgents in northern Syria on Sunday, capturing areas close to a border crossing with Turkey and threatening their supply route to the city of Aleppo, fighters and a group monitoring the war said. The Islamic State captured the town of Soran Azaz and two nearby villages, giving it the ability to move along a road leading north to the Bab al-Salam crossing between the Syrian province of Aleppo and the Turkish province of Kilis, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group based in Britain that tracks the war through a network of contacts in Syria. The loss of Soran Azaz is a blow to northern rebels in the Levant Front because it sits on an important weapons supply route, two alliance fighters said. “The main supply line between Turkey and Aleppo will be severely affected,” Abu […]

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Prices Are Down, but Saudis Keep Oil Flowing

Photo Construction in the King Abdullah Financial District in Riyadh. Oil production has surged in Saudi Arabia, which is trying to keep up with its own growing demand. Credit Tomas Munita for The New York Times HOUSTON — The international cartel of oil producers has long followed the same basic strategy. When the market was soft, the group slashed production to raise prices. But Saudi Arabia, the heavyweight of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, has a new agenda. It is now less concerned about the price of crude oil in the global markets and more concerned about delivering fuel to its growing economy. The shift is upending the traditional market dynamics that have influenced the direction of oil prices for decades. While American producers are pulling back in the face of the current weak prices, Saudi Arabia, the largest OPEC producer by far, has been pumping more […]

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Middle East funds negative on Saudi after oil slides: Reuters survey

DUBAI Middle East fund managers have on balance become bearish on the region’s biggest stock market, Saudi Arabia, after oil’s rally ran out of steam and the kingdom confirmed strict rules on foreign investment, a monthly Reuters survey shows. The survey of 15 leading investment firms, conducted over the past 10 days, shows none expects to raise its equity allocation to the Middle East in the next three months – the first time this has been recorded since the survey was launched in September 2013. Last month, 33 percent of respondents said they planned to increase their equity allocations. The proportion intending to cut equity allocations has risen to 20 percent from 7 percent. Oil prices, which are a major driver of economic performance in the region, are headed for a monthly loss after rebounding in April, and their longer-term outlook remains uncertain. Also, falling trading volumes and thin […]

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Saudis Turn Birthplace of Wahhabism Ideology Into Tourist Spot

Photo Visitors at the Diriyah complex, on the outskirts of Riyadh, the Saudi capital. The site will feature parks, restaurants, and a series of museums. Credit Tomas Munita for The New York Times DIRIYAH, Saudi Arabia — More than 250 years ago, in this sunbaked oasis of mud-brick houses and ramparts, the ancestors of the Saudi royal family and an outcast fundamentalist preacher formed an alliance that has shaped this land ever since. In return for political supremacy, the House of Saud endorsed the doctrine of Sheikh Muhammad ibn Abdul-Wahhab and followed it to wage jihad against anyone who rejected their creed, gaining control of much of the Arabian Peninsula. That alliance laid the foundations of the modern Saudi state, which has in more recent times used its oil wealth to make the cleric’s rigid doctrine — widely known as Wahhabism — a major force in the Muslim world. […]

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Nigeria’s Northeast Suffers String of Attacks by Boko Haram

ABUJA, Nigeria—Islamist terror group Boko Haram conducted a three-day spree of assaults that killed at least 42 people in northeast Nigeria, marking a grim beginning to the tenure of President Muhammadu Buhari. The attacks began on Friday, when a bomb killed 10 people at a wedding in the town of Hawul, two residents said. The blast took place around the time Mr. Buhari was reciting his oath of office in the capital , Abuja, about 400 miles away. “Some of us managed to escape,” said Haruna Musa, who was at the wedding. The next day, a suicide bomber struck a market in Maiduguri, the largest city in northeast Nigeria, killing 16 people, a member of an anti-Boko Haram militia said. Maiduguri has been the focus of Boko Haram’s terror campaign over the past six years, and Mr. Buhari on Friday said Nigeria’s top generals will be relocated there to […]

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Coal mining must continue, no matter what the human costs

This post was inspired by a recent article about coal mining in India by David Rose in the Guardian about coal mining. In India, people are dying in the streets because of excessive heat caused by global warming, but Rose reports that “ …across a broad range of Delhi politicians and policymakers there is near unanimity. There is, they say, simply no possibility that at this stage in its development India will agree to any form of emissions cap, let alone a cut. ” In other words, coal mining must continue in the name of economic growth, no matter what the human costs.I think it is hard to see a more evident example of the senility of the world’s elites. It is, unfortunately, not something that pertains only to India. Elites all over the world seem to be nearly totally blind to the desperate situation in which we all […]

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Faster than China? India’s road, rail drive could lay doubts to rest

NEW DELHI Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s reformist, but hard-up government has begun a splurge on road and rail building that analysts say could remove doubts over whether economic growth in India really is overtaking China. Having roughly doubled spending allocations for roads and bridges in fiscal 2015/16, and raised the rail budget by a third, Modi is banking on India going faster. "They have acknowledged that infrastructure is the big elephant in the room," said Vinayak Chatterjee, head of infrastructure services company Feedback Infra. "Once these measures are implemented, the elephant would start dancing, and with it the overall economy." Modi’s chief economic advisor, Arvind Subramanian, reckons growth could increase by more than one percentage point this year provided ministries don’t underspend, though the central bank saw it adding just half a point. Data released on Friday showed the economy grew 7.5 percent in the quarter ending in March, […]

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China’s factories slow to respond to stimulus, South Korea exports dive

China’s manufacturing sector showed scant signs of picking up in May as demand stayed stubbornly weak, while exports in South Korea suffered their biggest annual drop since the global financial crisis, grim readings which prompted calls for bolder stimulus measures. Japanese manufacturers, however, saw a rebound in new orders while Indian factories enjoyed solid domestic demand, offering a glimmer of hope for a region struggling to gain traction in the second quarter. The focus now shifts to the United States and parts of Europe, where hopes are pinned on stronger factory activity to offset the global downdraft from China. ECONEZECONUS China reported on Monday its official manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) edged up to 50.2 in May, from 50.1 in April and creeping back into expansion territory. But a private survey focusing on small and mid-sized firms showed their activity had contracted for a third straight month. The final […]

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China factories scrabble for growth in May, export demand shrinks

BEIJING Growth in China’s giant factory sector edged up to a six-month high in May but export demand shrank again, prompting companies to shed jobs and keeping alive worries about a protracted economic slowdown, a government survey showed on Monday. In a sign that China’s worst downturn in at least six years is hurting its services companies, too, a similar survey showed growth in that sector slipped to a low not seen in more than five years. Services have been one of the lone bright spots in the Chinese economy in the last year. The muted reports reinforced the view that authorities would have to roll out more stimulus in coming months, despite having cut interest rates three times in six months. "China’s economy still faces strong headwinds," economists at ANZ Bank said in a note to clients. "If capital outflow continues at the pace of the first quarter, […]

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Washington finds unlikely ally in OPEC as biofuels debate rages

NEW YORK The Obama administration has found an unlikely ally in its efforts to keep pushing more biofuel into the nation’s gasoline supply: OPEC. The lowest oil prices in over six years have fueled a resurgence in U.S. gasoline use in recent months as more Americans take to the road. Demand is expected to climb 1.5 percent this year to nearly 139 billion gallons (526 billion liters) according to the government’s most recent forecasts, enough to easily accommodate small increases in ethanol quotas without breaching the so-called "blend wall" that refiners say puts a cap on blending at around 10 percent of total gasoline and diesel supply. It may be even higher, based on data from the first quarter, when gasoline use surged by more than 3 percent, the fastest in over a decade. Those calculations help explain why biofuel backers are up in arms over the Environmental Protection […]

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The U.S. oil fracker’s dilemma: crouch or pounce?

HOUSTON U.S. shale oil producers, having weathered the worst price plunge in their industry’s brief history, now face a dilemma: whether to stay in a defensive crouch after slashing their rig fleets, or start drilling more wells to capture a partial recovery in prices. In a way, the conundrum is as old as the first oil well. If producers start pumping more crude, as some executives have said they might do if prices edge a bit higher, they risk contributing to another slump in a fragile global market; if they hold back, they forego regaining revenue lost during a price slide of 60 percent that started in June. Yet it is also a changed world. For decades the global industry has been dominated by a handful of mega-majors, which made shifts to the supply and demand balance less rapid and more predictable. Today, about 100 public firms and many […]

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Easy Access to Money Keeps U.S. Oil Pumping

Wall Street’s generous supply of funds to U.S. oil drillers helped create the American energy boom. Now that same access to easy money is keeping them going, despite oil prices that are languishing around $60 a barrel. The flow of money into oil has allowed U.S. companies to avoid liquidity problems and kept American crude production from falling sharply. Even though more than half of the rigs that were drilling new wells in September have been banished to storage yards, in mid-May nearly 9.6 million barrels of oil a day were pumped across the country, the highest level since 1970, according to the most recent federal data. Helped by a ready supply of money, the flow of oil from the U.S. could keep crude prices low for the remainder of 2015 and beyond. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. As crude prices began to plunge last year, many […]

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Circle Oil Swings to Net Loss On Writeoffs, Lower Oil Price

By Alex MacDonald LONDON–Circle Oil PLC (COP.LN) said Monday it swung to a net loss last year due to exploration writeoffs and a significantly lower oil price, which prompted the company to review its cost base and consider selling stakes in assets to fund operations. The U.K.-listed oil and gas explorer, which has interests in Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt, reported a net loss of $54 million for the year ending Dec 31, 2014 compared with a net profit of $29 million in the same period a year earlier. This reflected a 9% drop in revenue to $85 million largely due to lower oil prices and exploration write offs of $57 million largely focused in Oman and Tunsia. It also recorded a $14 million impairment charge on its NW Gemsa permit in Egypt. In Morocco, gross gas production was 6.46 million cubic feet per day, broadly similar to last year, […]

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US Oil Reserve Growth

This is a guest post by Dennis Coyne. The views expressed in this post are those of Dennis Coyne and do not necessarily represent those of Ron Patterson. How much oil can be extracted from known oil resources profitably? This depends on many factors, the price of oil and technological progress in oil extraction methods are the chief factors, but improved knowledge gained through the development wells drilled and the corresponding output and geological data as known reserves are developed is important as well. Oil reserves do not grow, they deplete as the oil is produced. With increasing knowledge, oil price, and improved technology and production methods, the estimate of oil reserves changes over time and on average these estimates tend to increase, this is what we mean by reserve growth. The United States Energy Information Administration (EIA) has detailed data on proven (1P) reserves and proven discoveries from […]

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A visit to the heart of Canada’s oil sands industry

Since 2007 when we published our article, ”A crash program scenario for the Canadian oil sands industry” a visit to Fort McMurray and the areas where oil sands are mined has always been high on my wish list. On my current trip I passed Calgary on the way to Toronto so I finally got an opportunity to visit the oil sands. The flight from Calgary became an interesting introduction to the industry. It was on a small aircraft with around 50 seats and about 40 of the passengers were presumably workers on their way back to Fort McMurray after a week’s leave. A three week session of work on the tar sands awaited them. This report is a description of my trip and does not take a position for or against the mining of oil sands. During the weekends from May until and including autumn the Oil Sands Community […]

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Death of Peak Oil? Not so fast.

From Earth Insight by Nafeez Ahmed, hosted by the Guardian, Former BP geologist: peak oil is here and it will ‘break economies’ : Dr. Richard G. Miller, who worked for BP from 1985 before retiring in 2008, said that official data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), US Energy Information Administration (EIA), International Monetary Fund (IMF), among other sources, showed that conventional oil had most likely peaked around 2008. Dr. Miller critiqued the official industry line that global reserves will last 53 years at current rates of consumption, pointing out that “peaking is the result of declining production rates, not declining reserves.” Despite new discoveries and increasing reliance on unconventional oil and gas, 37 countries are already post-peak, and global oil production is declining at about 4.1% per year, or 3.5 million barrels a day (b/d) per year: “We need new production equal to a new Saudi Arabia every […]

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Euro skids as Greece misses debt deal deadline

LONDON The euro tumbled on Monday after Greece missed a self-imposed Sunday deadline for reaching an agreement with its lenders to unlock aid, keeping alive fears of a debt default and potential exit from the euro zone. Athens and its euro zone and International Monetary Fund (IMF) creditors have been locked in talks for months, with the single currency reacting to any signs of deadlock or breakthrough. Without a deal, Athens risks default or bankruptcy in weeks. It faces a payment to the International Monetary Fund on Friday and the expiration of its bailout program on June 30. "It’s becoming increasingly unlikely that (Greece) will be able to get the funding without some kind of political disruption along the way," said Hamish Pepper, a currency strategist at Barclays bank in London. "The news over the weekend was consistent with that and the impact on the currency is also consistent […]

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The Unrealized Horrors of Population Explosion

The second half of the 1960s was a boom time for nightmarish visions of what lay ahead for humankind. In 1966, for example, a writer named Harry Harrison came out with a science fiction novel titled “Make Room! Make Room!” Sketching a dystopian world in which too many people scrambled for too few resources, the book became the basis for a 1973 film about a hellish future, “ Soylent Green .” In 1969, the pop duo Zager and Evans reached the top of the charts with a number called “ In the Year 2525 ,” which postulated that humans were on a clear path to doom. No one was more influential — or more terrifying, some would say — than Paul R. Ehrlich , a Stanford University biologist. His 1968 book, “The Population Bomb,” sold in the millions with a jeremiad that humankind stood on the brink of apocalypse […]

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The energy revolution will not be televised

Three recent news items remind us that energy transitions take time, a lot of time–far too much time to be shrunk down into a television special, a few talking points, or the next big energy idea. For example, the complex management task of putting together the international fusion research project called the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) has resulted in estimated final costs that have tripled since the 2006 launch . Fusion could theoretically offer clean and abundant energy almost indefinitely because it uses ubiquitous hydrogen* as fuel and creates helium in the process. (Water you’ll recall is two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom and is therefore the most abundant source of hydrogen.) Despite nine years of effort, ITER has yet to carry out a single experiment; and, the project is not expected to do so for another four years. The idea for such an international project was […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple