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Senate rejects attempt to derail Iran deal in victory for Obama

Congressional Republicans are vowing to continue their efforts to combat the Iran nuclear deal even if Democrats successfully block a resolution disapproving of the agreement. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) Senate Democrats on Thursday blocked a Republican effort to scuttle the Iran nuclear deal, delivering a major victory to the Obama administration. It has become clear in recent days that the White House can prevent Congress from immediately rejecting the deal, but the successful filibuster of the resolution of disapproval ensures that President Obama won’t have to rely on his veto pen to preserve a major piece of his foreign policy agenda. The vote on the procedural motion was 58 to 42 and 60 votes were needed to consider the resolution attacking the agreement. The debate over the highly controversial agreement struck this summer between Tehran, the United States and other world powers is not over with House Republicans promising […]

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Honor ceiling, Iran tells OPEC

OPEC members, notably Iran, are ignoring production agreements to the detriment of oil prices, Iran’s Oil Ministry says. File photo by Maryam Rahmanian/UPI TEHRAN, Sept. 10 (UPI) — The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will have to review production levels to make room for Iran or face consequences, Iran’s Oil Ministry said. An opinion piece published by SHANA, the Oil Ministry’s official news website, said crude oil markets are skewed toward the supply side by 2 million barrels. Once all sanctions pressures ease, Iran could add another 1 million barrels of oil per day to the global marketplace almost immediately, it said. Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zangeneh said his country could become the second-largest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, after Saudi Arabia, within seven or eight months of sanctions relief. The minister said Iran will increase net oil production by more than 1.5 million bpd, bringing […]

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Saudi sees no need for oil summit, best leave market alone: sources

The logo of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is pictured at its headquarters in Vienna, Austria, August 21, 2015. Top oil exporter Saudi Arabia sees no need to hold a summit of producing countries’ heads of state if such discussions would fail to produce concrete action towards defending oil prices, sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday. The comments followed a meeting of Gulf Arab oil ministers with Qatar’s emir in Doha, at which a Venezuelan proposal for an OPEC and non-OPEC summit was discussed. Oil prices have more than halved since summer last year on an oversupplied market as well as a decision by OPEC to defend market share and discourage competing supply sources, rather than cut its output in the face of cheaper crude. Riyadh believes it is best not to interfere in the market at present, the sources told Reuters on condition […]

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Iraq’s forex reserves near $60 bln as oil prices fall – central bank governor

* Lower oil prices have hit reserves, budget * No threat seen to local currency peg * Banking reforms to include privatisation BAGHDAD, Sept 8 (Reuters) – Lower oil revenues have cut Iraq’s foreign currency reserves to about $60 billion, the central bank governor said on Tuesday, enough to cover about 18 months worth of imports for OPEC’s second-largest oil producer. The plunge in oil prices since last year and Iraq’s fight against Islamic State militants have put severe pressure on its finances. The government has projected a fiscal deficit of about $25 billion this year, in a budget of roughly $100 billion. Those factors have also chipped away at international reserves, which fell to $66 billion at the end of 2014 from $78 billion at the end of 2013, according to the International Monetary Fund. But Ali al-Alak told Reuters that a drop in dollar-denominated expenditures has also […]

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Israel’s 300 Days of Sun No Help as Offshore Gas Eclipses Solar

Yosef Abramowitz, the developer of the Ketura solar field. After struggling to grow citrus trees on a stretch of parched desert, Israel’s Kibbutz Ketura instead devoted the land to harvesting the country’s most abundant resource: sunshine. Yet as the kibbutzniks seek to expand their solar installations, the government is proving almost as formidable an obstacle as the scorched soil ever was. “Israel has the technology and plenty of sunshine, but the government is completely ignoring the renewables industry,” said Yosef Abramowitz, a solar energy advocate who helped found Arava Power Co., the developer of the Ketura field. With more than 300 days of sunshine per year and a world-class tech sector, Israel should be a hotbed of solar, but it has lagged behind places such as cloudy Germany and the rainy Netherlands. That’s because in recent years, geologists have discovered huge gas fields just off Israel’s coast, making the […]

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Italy’s Eni sees Cyprus role in Egyptian gas development

Eni Chief Executive Officer Claudio Descalzi met in the Cypriot capital, Nicosia, with President Nicos Anastasiades to discuss the potential for future cooperation. Photo courtesy of Eni. NICOSIA, Cyprus, Sept. 10 (UPI) — Italian energy company Eni said the republic of Cyprus could serve as a strategic energy hub and a possible conduit for future Egyptian natural gas supplies. Eni Chief Executive Officer Claudio Descalzi met in the Cypriot capital, Nicosia, with President Nicos Anastasiades to discuss the potential for future cooperation . The Italian company said Cyprus could play a role in the near future in a scenario involving the recent gas discovery made off the coast of Egypt. "Eni believes in the significant synergies of joint development in the entire area of the eastern Mediterranean," the company said in a statement. "This area could be of crucial strategic importance as a gas hub for the whole region […]

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As a Boom Fades, Brazilians Wonder How It All Went Wrong

Photo Applicants at a government-run job center in São Paulo on Thursday. Brazil’s unemployment rate reached a five-year high, 7.5 percent, in July. Credit Andre Penner/Associated Press BRASÍLIA — The president of Brazil should have been ecstatic. She had just won re-election after an intense campaign in which she fiercely defended her role in making Brazil , for a few fleeting years, a rising star on the global stage. But in the days after her victory last October, President Dilma Rousseff was worried, confronted in private deliberations with her closest advisers by signs that Brazil’s triumphs were at risk of coming undone. “We went too far,” Aloízio Mercadante, Ms. Rousseff’s chief of staff, acknowledged publicly this month, describing the sense of alarm as the dust settled after the election and Ms. Rousseff and her aides grappled with the weaknesses in Brazil’s economy. It was not just the drop in […]

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Venezuelan Opposition Leader Is Sentenced to Prison Over a Protest

Photo Leopoldo López in February. Credit Juan Barreto/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images CARACAS, Venezuela — A judge on Thursday found the Venezuelan opposition politician Leopoldo López guilty of inciting violence and other charges stemming from his leading role in a large antigovernment protest, according to government television reports. Mr. López, a Harvard-educated former mayor of a wealthy section of Caracas, was sentenced to more than 13 years in prison, the television reports said. Critics said the trial was politically motivated and lacked basic guarantees of due process. Lawyers for Mr. López said they were barred from presenting any witnesses or evidence at the trial. “This has been a farce,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director of Human Rights Watch , speaking by telephone from Washington. “It’s a kind of a caricature of a judicial procedure and in violation of fundamental principles of due process, of presumption of innocence.” The […]

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Like it or not, China’s crude oil futures will be a global benchmark

Labourers work under storage tanks at a refinery in Suining, Sichuan province October 22, 2009. China’s push to establish a crude derivatives contract has been met with early scepticism, but oil executives say the country’s growing economic influence means a third global crude benchmark is inevitable. A derivatives contract would give the Shanghai International Energy Exchange, known as INE, a slice of an oil futures market worth trillions of dollars, offering a rival to London’s Brent and U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI). And while others have tried and failed, China brings its might as the world’s biggest oil buyer, a strong dose of political will and the alignment of its financial and banking system for a yuan-denominated contract. "The energy industry is still manned, literally, by people from the West. But the world moves on, and there’s a change of guard," said a senior market executive, speaking on the […]

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China leading world towards global economic recession

A “hard landing” for the Chinese economy will likely lead the world into a recession in the next year, Citi’s global economics team has warned. Analysts at the Wall Street bank believe that a slowdown concentrated in emerging markets will drag down demand and see economic activity fall well below its potential across the world. They anticipate the global economy to slide into recessionary territory during next year, and remain there for most of 2017. The chance of such a global recession now stands at 55pc, staff estimated. Citi assigned a 15pc probability to the risk of a “severe recession”, in which the global economy enters a boom, overheats, and subsequently falters in dramatic fashion. Willem Buiter, global chief economist at Citi and a former Bank of England rate setter, said “that there is a high and rising likelihood of a Chinese, emerging market and global recession playing out”. […]

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