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Scant Relief From Beijing for Bruised Investors

Photo Stock investors playing cards at a brokerage in Beijing on Tuesday. Reassuring words from Premier Li Keqiang that China had the ability to deal with economic challenges had little calming effect. Credit Wu Hong/European Pressphoto Agency HONG KONG — For millions of ordinary Chinese who have borne the brunt as the mainland’s stock market has plummeted in recent weeks, government measures to bolster the market are offering little relief. Chinese shares fell on Tuesday, with the Shanghai composite index closing down 1.3 percent after a gain on Monday. The Shenzhen index, which covers smaller companies, had another steep drop, down 5.3 percent. The Hang Seng index in Hong Kong, which fell sharply on Monday, finished down a more moderate 1 percent on Tuesday. The state-run news media reported that an increasing number of companies, 200 on Tuesday alone, were filing for a suspension in trading to insulate themselves […]

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China stocks nosedive as regulator warns of ‘panic’

A floor trader reacts as he checks share prices during morning trading at the Hong Kong Exchanges in Hong Kong, China July 8, 2015. Chinese stocks dived on Wednesday, as the country’s securities regulator warned investors were in the grip of "panic sentiment" and the market showed signs of freezing up as companies scrambled to escape the rout by having their shares suspended. Beijing, which has struggled for more than a week to bend the market to its will, unveiled yet another battery of measures to arrest the sell-off, and the People’s Bank of China said it would step up support to brokerages enlisted to prop up shares. "I’ve never seen this kind of slump before. I don’t think anyone has. Liquidity is totally depleted," said Du Changchun, an analyst at Northeast Securities. "Originally, many wanted to hold blue chips. But since so many small caps are suspended from […]

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Market’s Dive Could Delay Economic Reforms in China

Photo The opening ceremony in November of the Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect program. Plans for a similar link with Shenzhen could be postponed. Credit Chen Fei/XinHua, via Associated Press HONG KONG — China ’s stock market tumble has presented the government of President Xi Jinping with a searing test of its commitment to overhaul the country’s financial system and open up the state-controlled economy. Building off the work of his predecessors in the last three decades, Mr. Xi has been introducing competition into the banking industry, overhauling state-owned companies and making it easier for foreign investors to buy Chinese stocks. But the pace of reform may slow if the stock market slump persists, or even accelerates. The stock market represents the swirl of social, political and economic forces at play in the reform efforts. Tens of millions of individual investors flocked to stocks in the last year, many of […]

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Shell Places Huge Bet on Arctic Oil Riches

Royal Dutch Shell RDS.A -0.29 % PLC is days away from drilling in the Arctic Ocean—betting it can find enough oil to justify the huge risks that keep almost every other competitor out of those icy waters. The company is hauling two massive rigs—the Polar Pioneer and the Noble Discoverer—more than 2,000 miles up and around the Alaska coast to the Chukchi Sea, where it plans to begin work the third week of July. Accompanying the rigs are 30 support vessels and seven aircraft, a large entourage even by big oil-company standards. The voyage represents Shell’s effort to mount a comeback in the Arctic three years after a different rig ran aground following an unsuccessful drilling season. This time, Shell executives say they have both costs and safety under control, but the project has already hit a snag. A federal agency said last week that Shell can’t drill wells […]

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Shell’s Ice Management Vessel Damaged In Alaska

July 7 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s icebreaker vessel Fennica returned to the Dutch Harbor in Alaska with a small breech in the hull, raising concerns about the company’s plan to resume drilling in the Arctic later this month. Shell said in June it plans to restart drilling for oil in the Arctic off Alaska as early as the third week of July after a conditional approval by the United States. "Any impact to our season will ultimately depend on the extent of the repair," spokeswoman Kelly op de Weegh said in an e-mail to Reuters. Fennica, owned by Arctia Offshore, is one of the primary ice management vessels in the Port of Helsinki during European winter. Shell was given a conditional approval by the U.S. Department of the Interior in May to return to the Arctic for the first time since its mishap-plagued 2012 drilling season. (Reporting […]

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ExxonMobil Selling Cook Inlet Assets, Remains Committed to Alaska

As part of its goal to become a dominant player in Alaska’s energy industry, Hilcorp Energy is reportedly buying the Cook Inlet assets owned by XTO Energy, an Exxon Mobil Corp. subsidiary. Suann Guthrie, a media advisory for XTO Energy in Fort Worth, confirmed to Rigzone that XTO has agreed to sell its interest in the Cook Inlet, which include 29 producing wells from two platforms and an onshore facility to Hilcorp Alaska. Altogether, the assets produced about 2,000 barrels of oil per day in 2014. The deal isn’t expected to run into regulatory hurdles from the state of Alaska. Guthrie said the divestment will impact some XTO employees, but all workers will receive job offers from Hilcorp or be reassigned within XTO’s other operations. “ExxonMobil remains committed to its operations in Alaska. This sale does not impact ExxonMobil’s other Alaska operations or early planning activities for a possible […]

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BioSolar extends agreement with UCSB for further development of novel polymer cathode; projecting up to 459 Wh/kg and $54/kWh for Li-ion cells

« Bosch offering sub-$10K 24 kW DC fast charger for North America; SAE J1772 DC Combo connector | Main Startup BioSolar, Inc. has signed an agreement to extend the funding of a sponsored research program at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), to further develop its “super battery” technology—a novel polymer cathode that leverages fast redox-reaction properties rather than conventional lithium-ion intercalation chemistry to enable rapid charge and discharge. The lead inventors of the technology are UCSB professor Dr. Alan Heeger, the recipient of a Nobel Prize in 2000 for the discovery and development of conductive polymers, and Dr. David Vonlanthen, a project scientist and expert in energy storage at UCSB. Both are scientific advisors to BioSolar. In a 2014 paper publishedin the journal Advanced Materials , Heeger, Vonlanthen and their colleagues reported the development of a polyaniline-supercapacitor with quinone electrolytes that remained stable over 50,000 galvanostatic charge-discharge […]

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Archbishop of Canterbury Concerned About Arctic Drilling

LONDON—Oil companies need to do more to tackle climate change, the Archbishop of Canterbury said Tuesday, noting he was particularly concerned about the recent push to drill in Arctic Ocean waters. Archbishop Justin Welby, the leader of more 85 million Anglicans and Episcopalians around the world, didn’t speak about the most immediate foray being made into the Alaskan Arctic by Royal Dutch Shell RDS.A -0.29 % PLC. But he mentioned some of the same arguments made by environmentalists who oppose Shell’s drilling campaign, which begins this month in the Chukchi Sea. In the Arctic, “the drilling window is very, very limited and if you have a blowout towards the end of the window it might be eight or nine months before you drill a relief well and cap the flow,” said Archbishop Welby, a former oil-company executive before he was ordained. A Shell spokesman said in an email that […]

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U.S. wades deeper into marine energy

Federal government testing early-stage wave energy technology at Navy site in Hawaii. File Photo by UPI Photo/Earl S. Cryer. HONOLULU, July 7 (UPI) — Testing a prototype wave energy device at a U.S. Navy site in Hawaii will provide information needed to determine commercial possibilities, the government said. The U.S. Energy Department deployed a wave energy prototype dubbed Azura at a test site at Kaneohe Bay off the coast of Oahu, Hawaii. Developer Northwest Energy Innovations, with help from a $5 million federal grant, tested an earlier prototype off the coast of Oregon in 2014. The government said the pilot project in Hawaii will give federal researchers the chance to monitor a wave energy converter for potential commercial deployment . With more than half the U.S. population living within 50 miles of a coastline, the government said marine and hydrokinetic technologies could provide an untapped renewable energy resource. "With […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple