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Iraq aims to hold investor roadshow by end-July for $5 bln bond issue

DUBAI, June 22 Iraq hopes to meet investors by the end of July to present plans for a $5 billion bond issue, the country’s finance minister Hoshiyar Zebari told Reuters on Monday. The government has hired JP Morgan, Citibank and Deutsche Bank to arrange its first debt sale in nine years, to cover a budget deficit caused by low oil prices and its conflict with Islamic militants. Iraqi officials met with the three banks and credit rating agencies Fitch Ratings and Moody’s Investors Service on June 16, Zebari said by telephone. "We completed a very successful round of due diligence with the three banks and with the ratings agencies in Istanbul, and I think they are on board," he said. "We will start our roadshow I think end of July, or early August at the latest, and then we will issue them. So everything is on track." On April […]

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Karachi Heat Wave Death Toll Tops 650 During Ramadan Fast

KARACHI, Pakistan — Karachi’s poor learned long ago to cope with the many adversities that afflict Pakistan’s most crowded and chaotic city, including flooding, street violence and political crises. But since a suffocating heat wave descended on Karachi three days ago, killing at least 650 people, they have found no respite and no escape. “It’s so hot,” said a security guard, Shamim ur-Rehman, 34, as he sat on a cot, looking beleaguered. “There is no fan, there is nothing. I can’t sleep at night or during the day.” Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif declared an emergency on Tuesday as the death toll from the heat wave soared, with overwhelmed hospitals struggling to treat a surge of casualties and morgues filling to capacity. The army set up emergency treatment centers in the streets and the provincial government closed schools and city offices. The Edhi Foundation , which runs an ambulance service […]

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Asia’s Oil Consumption at Record High While Production Peaked in 2010

The annual BP Statistical Review has come out, as usual in June. In this post we focus on the Asia Pacific region. This is important because the Australian government has offered the help of “Team Australia” to build the “Asian Century ”. The question no one asks (or wants to ask) is how much oil there is to carry Asia through the decades to come. No one can give an answer of course but it is clear that if past oil consumption and production trends continue the region will slide into a huge oil crisis. Overview Oil production in the Asia Pacific peaked in 2010 ( China offshore!) at 8.4 mb/d while consumption continued to increase to 30.9 mb/d. Fig 1: Asia-Pacific oil production and consumption The difference between consumption and production (net imports) is now 73% of consumption, up from 68% ten years ago. Oil consumption changes Let’s […]

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Lawmakers mull stricter air pollution control law

BEIJING, June 24 (Xinhua) — Chinese legislators are deliberating regulating emissions from boats and ships as the country clamps down on air pollution. According to a draft amendment to the Air Pollution Law, tabled to the National People’s Congress (NPC) Standing Committee for a second reading on Wednesday, ships on inland or river-to-sea waterways must use standard diesel as fuel to cut emissions. Ocean-going vessels will also be required to use fuels that conform to China’s environmental protection standards after stopping at Chinese ports, the draft read. The shipping sector accounted for around 8.4 percent of China’s sulphur dioxide emissions and 11.3 percent of nitrogen oxide emissions in 2013. The country is also home to eight of the world’s ten largest ports in terms of cargo handling capacities. According to the draft, vessels at berth should operate on land-based power provided by the ports. Ports, both new and existing, […]

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China’s May Iran oil imports down 31.6 percent on year: customs

BEIJING China’s crude oil imports from Iran fell in May to their lowest levels in four months, official customs data showed on Tuesday, as overall crude imports dropped during the traditional maintenance season. China’s imports from Iran were 2.20 million tonnes last month, or 518,400 barrels per day (bpd), down 26.7 percent from April’s 707,400 bpd and down 31.6 percent on the year. An explosion in early April at Dragon Aromatics, an independent petrochemical producer in eastern China that handles condensate like that exported by Iran, could have contributed to the May drop. Thomson Reuters Oil Research & Forecasts had put its latest estimate of China’s imports from Iran in May at 593,400 bpd. The group expects volume from Iran to fall in June to 506,100 bpd. It appears likely that a deal will be clinched to restrict Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief some time around […]

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Canada files charges for Lac-Megantic disaster

Canadian government files federal charges in relation to the Lac-Megantic oil-train disaster, which in 2013 left more than 40 people dead. Photo by Steven Frame/Shutterstock OTTAWA, June 23 (UPI) — The Canadian transport authority said it filed legal charges in connection with the Lac-Megantic oil-train disaster in 2013 under two federal acts. The federal Transport Canada said charges filed for violations of the Fisheries Act relate to the release of crude oil in and around the site of the 2013 derailment into fish-bearing waters. Charges under the Railway Safety Act relate to insufficient application and testing of handbrakes on the locomotive. Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway, the train’s operator, blamed the air brakes on the locomotive holding the freight for the Lac-Megantic incident and later filed for bankruptcy protection. The disaster left more than 40 people dead. "The actions taken by the government of Canada in response to this […]

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DOE Study Finds Elevated Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Canadian Crude

A new peer-reviewed study funded by the U.S. Department of Energy says Canada’s oil sands greenhouse gas emissions are an average of 20% higher than U.S. conventional crude, adding ammunition to opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline and other critics of surging Canadian crude production. The study, conducted by DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory in collaboration with researchers at Stanford University and the University of California-Berkeley’s Institute of Transport Studies, calculated greenhouse gas emissions from oil field extraction to the tail pipe in a so-called well-to-wheel analysis. Noting oil sands output is projected to more than double in the next 15 years and that much of that crude could wind up in the U.S., the study said “higher [well-to-wheel] emissions for gasoline and diesel production in the U.S. are expected when oil sands products become a larger fraction of the U.S. fuel mix.” “All crudes are not created equally,” Hao […]

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Stanford team develops new low-voltage single-catalyst water splitter for hydrogen production

Researchers at Stanford University have developed a new low-voltage, single-catalyst water splitter that continuously generates hydrogen and oxygen. An open access paper describing the synthesis and functionality of the bi-functional non-noble metal oxide nanoparticle electrocatalysts appears in the journal Nature Communications . In the reported study, the new catalyst achieved 10 mA cm −2 water-splitting current at only 1.51 V for more than 200 h without degradation in a two-electrode configuration and 1 M KOH—better than the combination of iridium and platinum as benchmark catalysts. Electrochemical/photoelectrochemical water splitting is widely considered to be a critical step for efficient renewable energy production, storage and usage such as sustainable hydrogen production, rechargeable metal-air batteries and fuel cells. Currently, the state-of-the-art catalysts to split water are IrO 2 and Pt for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), respectively, with ~1.5 V to reach 10 mA cm −2 current (for […]

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North Dakota’s Oil Rig Count Appears To Have Hit Bottom

WILLISTON, N.D., June 23 (Reuters) – The drilling rig count in North Dakota’s oil patch, a closely watched metric through which many attempt to divine future crude production, appears to have hit a bottom. For the past three weeks the count has hovered between 76 and 79, after sliding only slightly from 80 at the end of May. On June 12, the count hit 76, the lowest level since 2009. The count bobbed slightly in the ensuing days, hitting 77 on Tuesday. It has, in short, been the longest period since oil prices started to slide last fall that the rig count has stayed in the same range, offering many in and near the No. 2 U.S. crude-producing state’s energy industry a bit of solace that a nadir has been reached. In early March, for example, the count was at 113. The apparent stabilization has produced a palpable sigh […]

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U.S. West Coast refiners snap up Russian crude cargoes

SINGAPORE Refiners on the U.S. West Coast and Hawaii have stepped up purchases of Russian crude, taking advantage of a narrow gap between U.S. and global prices as they look to guard against a seasonal shortage of Alaskan supply, trade and industry sources said. Up to four tankers were expected to carry nearly 3 million barrels of Russia’s ESPO crude from Kozmino near the city of Vladivostok to refineries in the United States this month and next, the sources said. That will help Russia diversify beyond key buyers in China, South Korea and Japan at a time when Asian markets are grappling with oversupply. Sanctions against Russia over its actions in Ukraine bar U.S. oil companies from drilling in the country, but purchases of oil are still allowed. But traders said the shipments marked only a temporary trend as refineries were buying amid uncertainty over the supply of Alaska […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple