OPEC says ample oil supply to persist in 2013
LONDON (Reuters) - OPEC trimmed its forecast for world oil demand growth in 2013 due to a slowing global economy and said it expected a trend for ample supply to persist, reinforcing its message that producers are doing enough to tackle high prices.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, in a monthly report, trimmed its forecast for growth in world oil demand in 2013 by 30,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 780,000 bpd and said the risk remained skewed to the downside.
OPEC Raises Demand Forecast for Its Crude, Trims Other Suppliers
OPEC boosted estimates of the amount of crude it will need to supply next year after trimming forecasts for oil production from outside the group.
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries said in a monthly report that its 12 members will need to provide an average of 29.8 million barrels a day in 2013, about 200,000 more than estimated last month. The group reduced its forecast for output from outside the group for next year by the same amount, to 53.89 million barrels because of lower-than-expected growth in emerging nations. Still, world markets will remain “characterized by high volumes of crude supply and increasing production capacity,” the organization said.
Oil Declines From High as Crude Stocks Seen Rising
Oil traded near its highest in a week in New York as concern that political tension in the Middle East may curb crude exports countered signs that supplies are building up as the global recovery falters.
Futures were little changed, having surged 3.4 percent yesterday after the Turkish army fired on Syrian artillery units and tanks for a sixth day, and U.S. President Barack Obama signed an executive order approving a framework for tighter sanctions on Iran. U.S. crude inventories probably rose 1.5 million barrels last week, according to a Bloomberg News survey before an Energy Department report tomorrow. The American Petroleum Institute will release separate data later today.
California Gasoline Falls From Record as Refiners Switch Fuel
Gasoline at the pump in California fell from a record as Valero Energy Corp. began making a cheaper blend of fuel at refineries near San Francisco and Los Angeles.
California voters only have themselves to blame for soaring pump prices
For years, California's gasoline supply chain has been tighter than just about every state except Hawaii, leaving motorists vulnerable to even minor crimps in the supply chain. That, along with the second-highest gasoline tax in the country, is why it costs more to fill up in California than it does elsewhere in the U.S.
And the reasons are almost entirely the result of policies and regulations enacted at the behest of California's voters.
Russia's Gazprom Neft still interested in Kurdistan-source
(Reuters) - Gazprom Neft, the oil arm of Russia's top natural gas producer Gazprom, is still interested in Kurdistan's oil, a Gazprom Neft source said, rebutting reports it had frozen projects in the Iraqi province.
Gazprom to sell more LNG to South Korea's KOGAS
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Gazprom said on Tuesday it has signed an agreement to sell liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Korea Gas Corporation (KOGAS), as it strengthens its position in Asian markets.
Gazprom Marketing & Trading Singapore, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Gazprom, said it will supply up to eight cargoes of LNG a year to KOGAS in 2013 and 2014, totalling up to 1 million tonnes over the two years.
Nigeria parliament seeks to inflate budget oil price
ABUJA Oct 10 (Reuters) - Nigeria's parliament speaker Aminu Tambuwal said on Wednesday the house had proposed to inflate cabinet's oil price assumption in the 2013 budget to $80 barrel, from $75 a barrel proposed, signalling a likely showdown over the bill.
Iraq expects oil growth to nearly double govt spending
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's expansion of its oil
industry will let the government nearly double spending over the
next three years, the deputy prime minister for energy said on
Wednesday.
The Iraqi parliament approved a budget of $100 billion for
2012 in February, based on an average oil price of $85 per
barrel and 2.6 million bpd in exports.
Iraq Awards CH2M Water-Injection Oil Project, Replacing Exxon
Iraq awarded CH2M Hill a $170 million consultancy contract for a plan to inject water into southern oil fields to help further boost crude production, according to South Oil Co. Director General Dhia Jaafar.
Taqa all fired up over plan to power oilfields in southern Iraq
Abu Dhabi's power company plans to provide electricity to the oil sector in southern Iraq to help to fuel the nation's ambitious crude production targets.
Abu Dhabi National Energy (Taqa) hopes by next year to announce the details of a power project at one of the south's massive oilfields.
Iraq Predicts Higher Oil Output than IEA
Iraq has predicted a much higher figure for its crude oil production in 2020 than the International Energy Agency as the country has serious plans to address infrastructure bottlenecks and increase export capacity.
Hussein al-Shahristani, the country's Deputy Prime Minister for Energy Affairs, said Wednesday that Iraq is targeting to produce between 9 million and 10 million barrels a day by 2020, compared with IEA's prediction of 6.1 million barrels a day.
Chavez Election Victory Signals Accelerated Socialist Revolution
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s re-election and multiple cancer scares give the self-declared socialist momentum to accelerate state intervention in the economy after 14 years in power.
Chavez, who won 55 percent of the vote in yesterday’s election, has nationalized more than 1,000 companies or their assets since taking office in 1999. With voters giving the former paratrooper another six-year term, he’ll probably push policies, such as currency controls and takeovers, that have driven away investors, according to analysts at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the Eurasia Group and Bank of America Corp.
Chevron loses bid against $18bn Ecuador fine
Oil giant Chevron has lost a US Supreme Court bid to block an $18.2bn judgement against it in Ecuador in a case over pollution in the Amazon jungle.
The court did not give any explanation for Tuesday's decision, which rejected Chevron's appeal of a lower court ruling.
Europe rejects ban on Arctic oil drilling
The European parliament's industry committee has rejected attempts to introduce a moratorium on offshore oil and gas drilling in the Arctic, overruling a contrary vote by its environment committee last month.
Youngstown might OK ‘fracking’ for funds to raze houses
Youngstown needs money to demolish vacant buildings, so it’s turning to “fracking.”
The Youngstown City Council is debating a proposal to combat blight by leasing the rights for oil and gas drilling under public land. The city has enough money to raze only 260 houses, with more than 5,000 other structures vacant or ready for demolition, Mayor Charles P. Sammarone said.
Tenn. regulator calls fracking opposition 'stupid'
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Handwritten notes from the state worker who supervises Tennessee's regulation of oil and gas production derided opponents of the hydraulic fracturing method of gas drilling as "stupid."
The other side of the fracking fight
NEW YORK STATE has become the country’s most intense battleground in the fight over unconventional natural-gas drilling, known as fracking. Now anti-fracking activists in the Empire State are claiming a victory. They ought to think twice about what they are wishing for.
Those who would ban fracking or regulate it into oblivion ignore the exceptional benefits that inexpensive natural gas can provide in the biggest environmental fight of our time — against climate change.
German Day Ahead Electricity Falls on Weekly Solar Peak
German next-day power declined on rising supply as the week’s solar peak is forecast to occur tomorrow and cooler-than-average weather was predicted.
Baseload day-ahead electricity, for supplies delivered around the clock, lost as much as 1.8 percent as peak solar generation is expected to advance to 15 gigawatts tomorrow, according to MVV Trading GmbH. That’s more than the average level of 3 gigawatts, according to data from Leipzig, Germany- based European Energy Exchange AG on Bloomberg.
New Tool Makes Saving Electricity Easier
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Thirty-one million American homes will be getting computer-friendly data about their electricity use from their utility companies, thanks to the work of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and a nudge from the White House.
“There’s No Economy on a Dead Planet”: Reflections on a Missing Election Issue
Listening to Mitt Romney and Barack Obama wonk back and forth on how to spark economic growth (a doctrinally sacred goal of American presidential candidates) during their first televised debate last week, I was reminded of a handmade poster held by a young woman protesting outside the global climate meetings in Copenhagen in December of 2009. “There’s No Economy,” the poster read, “on a Dead Planet.”
Kenya islanders rehabilitate their environment, lives
To deal with the worsening problems, Odula now trains farmers in permaculture (permanent agriculture), a concept that originated in Australia.
Odula describes it as “a way of farming where people are able to provide food throughout the year while protecting the environment.”
Freezing temperatures prevent Alaska village from replenishing water tanks before winter
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Inupiat Eskimo villagers in a small Alaska community are facing six long months of melting ice and snow nearly every time they want to cook a meal or bathe, after freezing temperatures hit before workers could fill the village’s two large storage tanks with water.
Cash-strapped farmers feed candy to cows
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Cattle farmers struggling with record corn prices are feeding their cows candy instead.
That's right, candy. Cows are being fed chocolate bars, gummy worms, ice cream sprinkles, marshmallows, bits of hard candy and even powdered hot chocolate mix, according to cattle farmers, bovine nutritionists and commodities dealers.
ANALYSIS: Reducing world hunger - progress, need for more
LONDON (AlertNet) - There are fewer hungry people in the world than previously thought. That is one of the main messages from the latest assessment of global food insecurity published by U.N. agencies on Tuesday - which is good news but also a little confusing.
Hungry Africa's breadbasket needs to grow
Home-grown wheat could be the solution to a growing hunger problem in sub-Saharan Africa. The region is one of the few in which the number of undernourished people is rising, bucking a global trend. But a new analysis suggests wheat production there falls a long way short of what's possible.
Kashmiri farmers face drought losses without government support
CHAKOTHI, Pakistan (AlertNet) – The failure of Muhammad Saddique’s maize crop following a three-month drought has left him threatened with lack of food and economic ruin.
But the government of Pakistani-administered Kashmir, where Saddique lives, seems unprepared and unable to help farmers like him adapt to changing weather patterns that are linked to climate change, he and other farmers say.
Rising food prices are climate change's first tangible bite into UK lives
Are rising bills at the supermarket checkout turning out to be the first tangible impact of climate change on the daily lives of all Britons? It very much seems so.
The damage wreaked by the dismal summer of 2012 on UK harvests was revealed on Monday and will push food prices up. In these austere times, with food banks feeding the hungry, that is going to hurt.
‘Carbon markets on verge of collapse; require immediate rescue by nations’, suggests UN Panel
Carbon markets have proved instrumental for integrating the business community into the global effort to combat climate change through mitigation and in sensitizing the general public and nations alike about the issue. However, these markets are on the verge of collapse at present. The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), a flexibility instrument created by the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, has been a key victim of such disintegration. The carbon prices have fallen by 70% in the last one year and seem likely to fall further. Additionally, the world is moving away from multilateral market schemes to regional/national systems, without much thought of integration and harmonisation between them.
Dutch architect dreams of future floating cities
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - When Koen Olthuis finally landed his first job after graduating as an architect, his new firm wouldn't let him work on the most historic or prestigious accounts in Amsterdam's 17th century centre. He got houseboats. Floating boxes.
But the young Dutchman, who stems from boat building and architecture stock, dove right into his new job, and it wasn't long before he started making connections between the principles of a floating house, and the battle the Dutch have been waging against the sea to reclaim land and stay dry for 500 years.
Global warming could make washout UK summers the norm, study warns
A repeat of this year's washout summer is the last thing most people want from the English weather – but more of the same could be on the way, and could become the norm, a new study has warned, thanks to human activities warming the climate.
Supervisors back study of rising sea; Bay infrastructure threatened
The county is looking at ways to protect coastal communities on Humboldt Bay threatened by rising sea levels and aging dikes.
The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday voted unanimously to support a recent application for a $250,000 Coastal Conservancy grant that would allow nonprofit Coastal Ecosystems Institute of Northern California to adapt planning and technical studies associated with sea level rise in Humboldt Bay.
Most Americans link weather to global warming - survey
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nearly three-quarters of
Americans say global warming influences U.S. weather and made
this year's record-hot summer worse, a survey said on Tuesday.
Conducted by Yale and George Mason universities, the survey
found 74 percent of Americans believe that global warming is
affecting weather, up 5 percentage points since March 2012, the
last time the two organizations asked these questions.
Report: Climate change behind rise in weather disasters
The number of natural disasters per year has been rising dramatically on all continents since 1980, but the trend is steepest for North America where countries have been battered by hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, searing heat and drought, a new report says.
The study being released today by Munich Re, the world's largest reinsurance firm, sees climate change driving the increase and predicts those influences will continue in years ahead, though a number of experts question that conclusion.