Retail gasoline prices remain stable as the price of a barrel of oil neared $ 100 again after several reports were released last week that the positive acceleration for the U.S. economy showed. Detached house purchases rose in November to seven months as high as the U.S. unemployment claims fell by 4000 to 364,000 last week, the U.S. Labor Department reported. Read more
Oil on the way to its biggest weekly gain in almost two months in New York after U.S. economic reports indicated that growth in the world’s largest crude consumer will accelerate. Futures rose as much as 0.6 percent after advancing 0.9 percent yesterday as the first U.S. jobless claims fell to its lowest level since April 2008. The leading indicators rose more than expected in November, and consumer sentiment improved this month. Oil stocks fell the most in a decade last week, the Energy said on December 21. Read more
Nigerians in the oil-rich Niger Delta is asking a U.S. court to grant them $ 1 billion in compensation from Shell for damages from oil spills.The suit – for people from the Ogale community in Rivers State – requires a court in Michigan to award damages against Shell Oil Company for decades of pollution by oil. Ogale Okpabi Chief Godwin says the $ 1 billion claim is small compared to the profits of the Anglo-Dutch company is in the Niger Delta. Read more
At first glance, may seem wrong to TransCanada Corp. for the 1700-mile Keystone XL Pipeline to build in order to transport oil from Alberta, Canada, the U.S. Gulf Coast. Indeed, if such a pipeline leak ever, such as pipelines, there would be some risk to the Ogallala Aquifer pollution under Nebraska’s Sandhills, that 80 percent of drinking water that state. What’s more, a new channel seems to only encourage the further development of the Athabascan oil sands in Alberta. This is a dirty business, to be sure: huge spruce and fir trees are felled to make way for open-pit mines, which deposits of sticky black sand scooped out and then rinsed for viscous tar. For deeper deposits, steam shot hundreds of feet into the earth to melt the tar enough that it can be pumped to the surface. Then there are the emissions from mining Canadian oil sands: produces two and half times more carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases such as oil drilling in, say, Saudi Arabia and western Texas. Read more
The United States loaded the bulk of the blame for the country’s largest ever offshore oil spill at BP on Wednesday as the government issued its final assessment of the Gulf of last year’s disaster. A report can be crucial in the billions of dollars to get legal battle and could set the stage for criminal prosecution, the Coast Guard and the offshore oil regulator said BP is for 21 of the 35 contributing causes of the debt to the Macondo good blow – out which led to the leak, and shared eight more debt. Read more
BP Plc will boost its holdings in the former assets of Yukos Oil Co. through its share exchange with state-run oil producer in Russia, two weeks after the former chief of Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s sentence was extended by six years.
BP agreed on 14 January to $ 7.8 billion of stock exchange for 9.5 percent of OAO Rosneft, the largest Russian oil producer, after the acquisition of Yukos assets in 2007. The deal will provide access to untapped Arctic offshore oil and gas reserves as London-based BP sells assets to pay for oil spill last year in the Gulf of Mexico. (more…)
As the only consolation for the residents of the Gulf of Mexico, Tony Hayward, CEO of BP did not win the regatta this weekend, he lived. His 52-foot yacht, named “Bob”, finished fourth in his class. Nevertheless, the decision of Hayward to return to England for annual competition JP Morgan’s around the Isle of Wight to attend is the latest PR blunder “by the head of the oil giant to blame for the biggest ecological disaster in U.S. history. (more…)
In a word, bizarre. If you looked only at the main clues you might have suspected that not much happened. The metals index rose 1.2 per cent, all ordinaries rose 1.3 percent, and gold rose 1.5 percent. But when you try to adapt these modest increases in the pictures painted by the removal of individual companies, it just will not go, especially when we exclude mining majors BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto. The big boys crept up one per cent or more. But stocks lower in the area of iron ore sharply up, gold and copper stocks were stronger, improved nickel, zinc and even delivered a few pleasant surprises. (more…)
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