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Stop using China as an excuse for inaction on climate change

China is the world’s excuse for cruelty and barbarism. If we don’t behave atrociously, politicians and columnists assure us, China will, so we had better do it first, before we are outcompeted. You want holidays, collective bargaining rights and fair conditions in the workplace? Forget it. When Chinese workers have none, such fripperies would “hamper British/US/Australian/Canadian industry”, making it uncompetitive. Columnists like Thomas Friedman at the New York Times, gleefully regaling us with tales of Chinese workers being turfed out of their dormitories at midnight , marched to a workstation and obliged to perform a 12-hour shift to meet a last-minute order from Apple, insist that we either compete on these terms or perish. France, he once claimed, is doomed if it seeks to preserve a 35-hour week, while people in Asia “ are ready to work a 35-hour day .” In fact French workers are doing fine : […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Oil Prices Fall on Global Glut of Crude

Oil prices fell Monday for a third straight session as the market’s focus shifted back to the global oversupply of crude. Light, sweet crude for July delivery, the U.S. benchmark, declined 44 cents, or 0.7%, to $59.52 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The global Brent contract for August ended down $1.26, or 2%, at $62.61 a barrel on the ICE Futures Europe exchange. The U.S. contract is now 3.1% below the high for the year set last week, and the Brent contract is 7.6% below its 2015 high set in May. Price-reporting agency Platts said Monday that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, led by Saudi Arabia, raised output in May to 31.1 million barrels a day, more than 1 million barrels above its quota and 1.8 million barrels above its daily demand forecast for its own oil. It was the highest level of output […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Oil prices fall for third straight day

Though U.S. operations in the Gulf of Mexico are in the cross hairs of tropical weather, European and Middle East concerns push crude oil prices lower in Monday trading. UPI/Maryam Rahmanian NEW YORK, June 15 (UPI) — Despite potential threats to U.S. oil production, European economic and Middle East security concerns sent oil prices lower for a third straight day. Brent crude oil prices fell more than 2.1 percent in early Monday trading to $62.50 per barrel. West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, lost 1.6 percent to $58.98 per barrel. Both indices are below the price at which they started the month. Oil prices were lifted by upbeat forecasts on global demand from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries last week. Optimism about the health of the world economy has helped oil prices recover from lows below the $50 per barrel mark in early 2015, though concerns about the […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Iran sees balanced oil markets

Global oil markets will remain balanced even after Iran returns to its full export potential, envoy to OPEC says. File Photo by William S. Stevens/U.S. Navy TEHRAN, June 15 (UPI) — The global market for oil will remain balanced when Iran reaches its full export potential even if that means cuts from OPEC members, an envoy said. Mehdi Assali, the Iranian envoy to the Organization of Exporting Countries, told the Oil Ministry’s news agency, Shana, equilibrium would prevail . "The market will continue to remain balanced [event] after Iran’s return," he said. "[Fellow OPEC members] will have to cut their production so that Iran’s return would not cause a drop in the prices." Iran holds the third-largest proven oil reserves among OPEC member states, behind Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, respectively. Under the terms of a joint deal reached in November 2013, oil exports are limited to around 1 million […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Iran’s 40 million barrels stored at sea hangs over oil market

LONDON Iran is storing as much as 40 million barrels of oil on supertankers at sea as it prepares for a sales drive if a nuclear deal can be sealed. Iran and six world powers are seeking to overcome remaining differences with a looming self-imposed June 30 deadline to reach a deal over Tehran’s disputed nuclear program. In the meantime, Iran has been parking oil off its coast, mainly on tankers belonging to its national carrier NITC. "The first thing they will try and do is offload quite a lot of that storage. (Oil Minister Bijan) Zanganeh has already warned OPEC: make room for us. In other words, we are going to sell this oil at any price," said Mehdi Varzi, a former official at the state-run National Iranian Oil Co. "Floating storage is there to be put onto the market as soon as possible after some sort of […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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UN-sponsored Yemen talks open in Geneva

United Nations-sponsored consultations on the Yemen crisis have started in Geneva, with the aim of ending the bloody conflict in the country. Representatives from Yemen’s exiled government, the Houthi rebels, former president Ali Abdullah Saleh’s General Peoples’ Congress and other opposition groups were expected to attend the talks in Switzerland, which began on Monday morning. It was not immediately clear, however, if all of the parties were in attendance when the talks started. Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary-general, was in attendance at the opening session of the talks, posing for photographs with a number of representatives of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Yemen faces humanitarian emergency Announcing the start of "preliminary inclusive consultations" in the Swiss city, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, the UN’s peace envoy for Yemen, issued a statement before the talks calling on "Yemen’s political actors to participate in these consultations in good faith and without preconditions, and in […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Kurds and Syrian Rebels Storm ISIS-Held Border Town

Photo An Islamic State flag flying on Monday in Tal Abyad, a Syrian town on the Turkish border. The town represents a strategic supply route for Islamic State militants. Credit Umit Bektas/Reuters ISTANBUL — A coalition of Kurdish militias and Arab rebels stormed into a strategic Syrian town on the Turkey border on Monday, seizing most of it from Islamic State fighters who had long used the area to smuggle supplies and fighters into their self-declared caliphate, according to Kurdish militia leaders and activists. The complete loss of the town, Tal Abyad, would deal a major blow to the jihadists by cutting the primary lifeline to the Syrian city of Raqqa, which the Islamic State has ruled for more than a year and has tried to turn into a model of strict Islamic governance. The advance was a boost to opposition fighters who have watched in dismay as the […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Saudi Arabia and China Drift Apart on Oil

One country looms over Saudi Arabia’s current pump-till-it-slumps oil strategy: China. Resurgent U.S. oil output has raised global supply. But China has long been the gorilla on the demand side, accounting for 48% of the increase in global oil consumption in the past decade. Now China is slowing—and even that earlier, rapid growth wasn’t an unalloyed boon for oil producers. The explanation lies in the changing relationship between China’s economic growth and the oil needed to support that. Plotting the annual growth in China’s inflation-adjusted gross domestic product against its growth in oil demand, the points for the 1980s and 1990s are as expected: As GDP rose, so did oil demand in a broadly linear way. Things changed in the 21st century: China added almost as much absolute GDP in the five years through 2005 as in the previous decade. Oil consumption increased every year on average by about […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Nigeria should sell stakes in joint ventures with foreign partners: auditor

The Nigerian government should start selling off its stakes in oil joint ventures with foreign partners to ease the funding issues and leakage of cash due to corruption and waste which have impeded the country’s bid to increase production, oil industry auditors said Monday. The government through state oil firm Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. holds an average 57% interest in joint ventures with Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Total and Eni, which account for about 90% of Nigeria’s 2 million b/d oil output. "This divestment will open the arrangement for private sector participation," auditor the Nigerian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) said. "Above all, it will reduce the corrupt practices, waste and other leakages associated with the management of the JVs over the years," the agency said, adding that the recommendation, following a review of the industry by stakeholders, aimed to assist the reform program of the new government. Article continues […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Guesswork, inconsistency nag U.S. shale oil accounting

HOUSTON/NEW YORK Steep downward revisions to oil and gas reserves at the end of this year are likely to increase scrutiny of how energy companies tally future barrels – a process that has become more opaque with the rise of shale drilling. The revisions due in December will reflect a deep plunge in crude prices and should not come as a surprise for investors who have been pouring billions of dollars into U.S. oil companies betting that crude prices will recover. But investors may not fully appreciate other risks stemming from the wide variety of methods companies use to estimate and vet their reserves, or economically-recoverable oil and gas. Reserves have long underpinned company stock prices. Reserve growth is used at companies, including ConocoPhillips as a component of the chief executive’s compensation. Yet there is plenty of uncertainty in the industry as measuring unconventional resources such as shale oil […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple