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Angola to Ship Most Crude in Four Years to Meet Asian Demand

Angola will export the most crude in almost four years in October as the OPEC member satisfies Asian demand and offsets diminished revenue from lower oil prices. Africa’s second-largest producer plans to ship 1.83 million barrels a day in October, the most since November 2011, according to a preliminary loading program obtained by Bloomberg. This compares with 1.77 million barrels a day in September. Angola slashed its budget by a quarter in response to the slump in crude prices, which have lost more than 50 percent in the past year. The African nation’s bid to recapture revenues is supported by demand in China, the world’s second-biggest oil-consumer, which imported near-record levels of crude in July. “Angola continues to profit mainly from Chinese demand, in addition to some demand from India and Indonesia,” said Ehsan Ul-Haq, an analyst at KBC Economics in London. The single biggest increase will be in […]

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Oil is cheaper than it’s been in years. Why aren’t gas prices?

(Susana Gonzalez/Bloomberg) Oil prices have fallen this month to their lowest point in years, but fuel costs haven’t fallen nearly as quickly. While West Texas Intermediate crude, a U.S. benchmark, has dropped 15 percent in the last month, the cheapest it has been since 2009, prices at the pump have slipped just 3 percent. A barrel of crude cost $42.61 Tuesday afternoon. The national average for a gallon of regular-grade gasoline is now $2.66, according to AAA, still much cheaper than last year but well above what a gallon cost last winter. The gulf owes to a handful of factors — more people drive in the summer, for example, and the blend of gasoline produced this time of year is costlier to make — but gas prices have also been pushed up by trouble at a refinery in Indiana, industry followers say. Machinery issues at BP’s refinery in Whiting, […]

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Asia shares shaken as China stocks extend plunge

A man walks past a display showing stock prices in Tokyo August 12, 2015. Asian shares retreated to two-year lows on Wednesday after Chinese stocks extended their plunge, continuing to stoke fears about the stability of China’s economy. With Chinese stocks steepening their decline, spreadbetters forecast a lower open from Britain’s FTSE .FTSE , Germany’s DAX .GDAXI and France’s CAC .FCHI . The Shanghai Composite Index .SSEC retreated 2.8 percent, extending Tuesday’s 6 percent slide, amid growing worries that the government could be scaling back its rescue efforts. [.SS] "Market confidence was hit the most by signs that the ‘national team’ is starting to retreat," Zhou Lin, analyst at Huatai Securities said, referring to government funds that bought stocks in early summer to halt a market rout. China’s securities regulator said late last week that the market had normalized and the government would allow market forces to play a […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Pennsylvania’s governor issues crude-by-rail study he commissioned

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D) issued a study he commissioned in late April of issues stemming from the growing number of crude oil shipments by rail across the state. The report by Allan M. Zarembski, who directs the Railroad Engineering Program at the University of Delaware’s Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, made 27 recommendations including calls for more frequent track inspections and adoption of several voluntary safety measures. “Every week, roughly 60-70 trains carrying crude oil travel through Pennsylvania destined for Philadelphia or another East Coast refinery, and I have expressed grave concern regarding the transportation of this oil and have taken several steps to prevent potential oil train derailments,” Wolf said as he released the report on Aug. 17. “Protecting Pennsylvanians is my top priority and Dr. Zarembski’s report is important in helping my administration take the necessary steps,” he said. “I will also continue to work with […]

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US House leaders press BP for answers on Whiting refinery outage

Leaders in the US House of Representatives are demanding answers from BP PLC regarding the early August unplanned and still ongoing shutdown of a major processing unit at its 413,000-b/d refinery in Whiting, Ind. Reps. Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.) and Fred Upton (R-Ind.) have sent a letter to BP Chief Executive Robert Dudley asking for information pertaining to the sudden closing of the refinery unit on Aug. 8, which has caused a sharp spike in gas prices throughout the upper Midwest, Walorski and Upton said in a joint release. “Some areas of the Midwest have seen prices rise over $1/gal over a 24-hr period, disproportionately affecting the most vulnerable of our constituents and resulting in large unpredicted costs in getting goods to market across the region,” the House members wrote. In addition to noting the immediate hardship posed to constituents in their districts as a result of rising prices at […]

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Unplanned refinery outage leads to higher Midwest gasoline prices

graph of retail prices regular gasoline, as explained in the article text On August 8, the BP refinery in Whiting, Indiana, the largest petroleum refinery in the Midwest , experienced an unplanned outage and was forced to reduce production. The BP Whiting refinery has a crude oil distillation unit (CDU) capacity of 413,500 barrels per calendar day (b/d), and it is an important source of gasoline and distillate fuel oil supply to the region. Press reports indicate that the largest of three crude oil distillation units at the refinery was shut down because of leaking pipes, cutting the refinery’s total operable CDU capacity by roughly 50%. EIA estimates the loss of gasoline production from that unit to be between 120,000 b/d and 140,000 b/d, based on May 2015 refinery yield data for the region and press reports of the refinery running at 40% capacity. Initial estimates are that it […]

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Clinton splits from Obama over offshore oil drilling in Arctic

Sign up for quick access to a wealth of global business news, including: Clinton splits from Obama over offshore oil drilling in Arctic Newspaper + Premium online Newspaper + Premium online Premium Full FT.com subscription Premium Full FT.com subscription Standard Full news & archive Standard Full news & archive Trial Try Premium online Trial Try Premium online Price Monthly Annual $66.30 $11.77 per week $53.00 $9.25 per week $36.00 $6.45 per week $1.00 for 4 weeks $1.00 for 4 weeks FT Alphaville plus selected FT blogs yes yes yes yes Unlimited FT.com article access yes yes yes yes Unlimited mobile and tablet access yes yes yes yes Unlimited fast FT yes yes yes yes 5 year company financials archive yes yes yes yes The LEX column yes yes no yes ePaper access yes yes no yes Three exclusive weekly emails yes yes no yes Daily newspaper delivery yes no […]

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Rail fading from North Dakota oil transit

State data from North Dakota show rail transport of crude oil falling back after peaking in December 2014. Graph courtesy of the North Dakota Pipeline Authority BISMARCK, N.D., Aug. 18 (UPI) — New pipelines operating in North Dakota have pushed the volume of crude oil by rail lower during the first half of the year, a state official said. Rail broke away from pipelines as the main source of crude oil delivery in 2012. The boom in shale oil production from the so-called Williston basin, hosting the Bakken and Three Forks shale formations, had outpaced pipeline capacity, leaving companies with rail as the primary alternative transit option. After peaking in December 2014, when the state set its crude oil production record at 1.22 million barrels per day, transport by rail has been in a general decline and is now at parity with pipeline transport. Justin Kringstad, director of the […]

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Europe struggles to respond as migrants numbers rise threefold

More than three times as many migrants were tracked entering the European Union by irregular means last month than a year ago, official data showed on Tuesday, many of them landing on Greek islands after fleeing conflict in Syria. While the increase recorded by the European Union’s border control agency Frontex may be partly due to better monitoring, it highlighted the scale of a crisis that has led to more than 2,000 deaths this year as desperate migrants take to rickety boats. Italian police said they had arrested eight suspected human traffickers that they said had reportedly forced migrants to stay in the hold of a fishing boat in the Mediterranean as 49 of them suffocated on engine fumes. Some of those traffickers were accused of kicking the heads of the migrants when they tried to climb out of the hold as the air became unbreathable, prosecutor Michelangelo Patane […]

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Commerzbank Cutting Russia Debt Worsens Bond Rout as Ruble Falls

Russian bonds fell for a third day and the ruble retreated as Commerzbank AG recommended selling the nation’s local debt as sliding oil prices make it less likely that the central bank can press on with interest-rate cuts The decline in five-year OFZ bonds lifted the yield three basis points to 11.26 percent, set for the highest level in a month. The currency weakened 0.5 percent to 65.8560 per dollar by 6:08 p.m. in Moscow, a six-month low as President Vladimir Putin said he discussed the currency on Tuesday with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. Assets in the world’s biggest energy exporter are under pressure as oil trades in a bear market, diminishing the scope for deeper reductions in borrowing costs after the Bank of Russia lowered them by 600 basis points this year. Brent oil fell for a fourth day, dropping 0.4 percent to $48.53 a barrel, headed for […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple