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STERLING RESOURCES ANNOUNCES FINALIZATION AND INITIAL DRAWDOWN OF SENIOR SECURED LOAN FACILITY
Published Date: 3 October 2011
http://www.sterling-resources.com/news/2011/03-oct-2011.html
Faroe Petroleum plc: New banking facilities secured
Published Date: 8 July 2011
http://www.fp.fo/get.file?ID=7043
Russia Ups Ante with Caspian Neighbors by Moving Offshore
On 16 November in Astrakhan Lukoil president, Vagit Alekperov told journalists that his company will spend over $16 billion over the next decade to develop the country's Caspian offshore Korchagin and Filanovskii oil and natural gas fields in the Caspian, at the signing of a cooperation agreement with the Astrakhan Region. An equitable division of the Caspian's offshore resources have bedeviled the region since the December 1991 implosion of the USSR, putting the Soviet Union's previous cozy arrangements with the Shah's Iran "into the dustbin of history," to quote Leon Trotsky.Before the collapse of the USSR, the Soviet Union and Iran effectively divided the inland sea amongst themselves, according to the terms of the 1940 Soviet-Iranian treaty, which replaced the 1921 Treaty of Friendship between the two countries, which awarded each signatory an "exclusive right of fishing in its coastal waters up to a limit of 10 nautical miles." The treaty further declared that the "parties hold the Caspian to belong to Iran and to the Soviet Union." Since 1991 three new nations have arisen in the Caspian basin to contest this bilateral arrangement - Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. For the past two decades the five nations have wrangled about how to divide the Caspian offshore waters, and little has been achieved. Amidst the disagreements Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan have tentatively moved cautiously to develop their offshore reserves in sectors that they believe would be indisputably within their future assignations under an eventual five-state agreement.Even within these cautious offshore margins, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have increased their output in the last 15 years by 70 percent. But at issue are the diametrically opposed positions of Iran and the Russian Federation about how to develop an international Caspian consensus beyond the now moribund 1921 and 1940 treaties. Iran insists that all Caspian nations should receive an equitable 20 percent of the Caspian, while the Russia Federation has consistently maintained that the five Caspian riverine nations should receive their portion based on the length of their coastline. Under the Russian formula, Iran's sector would consist of 12 percent to 14 percent of the Caspian's waters and seabed. The stakes are high - in 2009 the U.S. government's Energy Information Administration estimated that the Caspian could contain as much as 250 billion barrels of recoverable oil along with an additional 200 billion barrels of potential reserves, in addition to up to 9.2 trillion cubic meters of recoverable natural gas. Accordingly, all five Caspian nations have been delicately developing their offshore Caspian reserves in areas that will undoubtedly remain theirs whatever eventual agreement is hammered out between Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation and Turkmenistan. The Russian Federation and Iran are the last two nations to move "offshore." Alekperov said, "Five hundred billion rubles ($16 billion) will be invested in development. This huge amount will provide an opportunity for sustainable development in the region." Astrakhan Region Governor Aleksandr Zhilkin waxed lyrical on the importance of the agreement for the long-term development of Astrakhan's shipbuilding industry, situated on the lower Volga, the Russian Federation's major river emptying into the Caspian. Zhilkin commented, "All shipyards in Astrakhan Region will have work for the next ten years. Vagit Yusufovich (Alekperov) mentioned that Lukoil is investing more than 500 billion rubles ($16 billion) over the decade. Zhilkin's remarks to reporters are hardly an idle boast, as he stated that Lukoil had paid more than $16.1 million in taxes last year to Astrakhan's regional budget. So, the Russian Federation, like its four Caspian neighbors, is now beginning to tiptoe into its offshore waters, all the while insisting that its vision of divvying the inland sea prevails. The last two decades have seen an apparent pragmatism slowly evolve over the Caspian offshore resources, first in Baku, followed by Astana, Ashgabat and more recently and reluctantly, Tehran and Moscow. While the issue of a final disposition of the Caspian's offshore waters remains significant if for no other reason than the various proposed undersea pipelines such as Turkmenistan-Baku, which could be an influential element in the European Union's projected $15 billion Nabucco natural gas pipeline reverie, all five nations seem to be moving cautiously towards planting their offshore flags in areas unlikely to arouse their neighbors. It will be interesting to see if they meet in the middle.
Source: http://oilprice.com/Geo-Politics/International/Tensions-Increasing-Over-Caspian-Energy-Riches.html
By. John C. K. Daly of http://oilprice.com
Explorer Tullow boosted by South American oil strike
Published Date: 10 September 2011
http://business.scotsman.com/energyutilities/Explorer-Tullow-boosted-by-South.6833770.jp
Russia Claims New Arctic Hydrocarbon Finds Effectively Double Nations Reserves
Russia, currently vying for the title of world's top oil producer with Saudi Arabia, claimed that new findings in its offshore Arctic territories have effectively doubled the nation's energy reserves.
According to numerous Russian media reports, addressing a meeting of the sixth media forum of the United Russia Party on 25 September, Russian Natural Resources Minister Iury Trutnev said that the preliminary forecast is that resources in the Russian Arctic shelf are comparable to those in mainland Russia, adding, "Speaking of long-term planning, these reserves could last 100, may be 150 years, but longer is unlikely. Humanity will eventually have to look for new energy anyway. Recently, we completed 40-year talks with Norway, delineated the gray zone, and now obtained another 5 billion tons of fuel equivalent there."
Trutnev's new Arctic reserve claims are buttressed by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) 2008 survey, which estimated that 90 billion barrels of undiscovered oil and 1.668 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered natural gas lie beneath the Arctic's waters and ice, representing 13 percent of the world's undiscovered oil. Strong oil prices, more advanced offshore equipment and receding sea ice are leading to a growing interest in the Arctic.
Four years ago Russia's Arktika 2007 expedition took a team of Russian geologists on a six-week voyage aboard the 50 Let Pobedy ("50 Years of Victory") nuclear icebreaker to the underwater Lomonosov ridge in Russia's eastern Arctic Ocean, which they claimed was linked to Russian Federation territory and contained 10 billion tons of natural gas and oil deposits. The Russian Federation has been busily advancing its claims over its Arctic continental shelf ever since. Just to be on the safe side, Russia has prepared a justification for submitting in 2013 a new claim for the expansion of the borders of its Arctic shelf, according to Trutnev, who told media forum participants, "Important work was carried out this year: our vessels covered a distance of 22,000 kilometers and conducted activities to justify Russia's new claim in 2013."
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has also gotten into the act of national chest-thumping about Russia's new-found Arctic riches. According to information posted on the Prime Minister's website, Putin told participants at the second International Arctic Forum, "The Arctic - Territory of Dialogue" in Arkhangelsk on 22 September, "We have already installed one of the world's largest hydrocarbon platforms there. Russia is starting to develop the Arctic shelf and opening a new chapter in the history of Arctic exploration. Very soon it will contain pages on the commissioning of the Shtokman deposit in the Barents Sea and the development of resources in the Kara Sea and on the Yamal Peninsula."
Seeking to allay the not inconsiderable environmental concerns about the Arctic's fragile ecosystems Putin added, "All our plans will be carried out in compliance with the toughest environmental standards. A careful, civilized attitude to nature is a requirement of all development programs. Active economic development of the Arctic will be beneficial only if we maintain a rational balance between economic interests and environmental protection for the long term, not just for 10, 15 or 20 years. I mentioned the Prirazlomnoe deposit, where oil production is expected to last for at least 25 years and, hence, environmental support must be provided for this entire period. The Shtokman deposit is expected to last for 50 years."
Just coincidently, during the Forum Putin fielded a telephone call from Rosneft president Eduard Khudainatov, who just happened to be standing on its Prirazlomnoe offshore platform in the Pechora Sea. Via sat-phone hookup Khudainatov addressed environmental safety concerns by telling Putin, "We know absolutely how to do this. We have started this work and we are absolutely certain that the risk in Arctic shelf exploration will be ruled out."
Whether of not the Russians have either the expertise or the necessary cash to exploit the region's reserves is another matter, as Arctic oil and natural gas exploration is more technically and physically challenging than for any other environment. However, Putin added that Rosneft has a long strategic cooperation agreement with ExxonMobil, and no doubt there will be other international energy companies willing to brave Russia's tortuous bureaucratic maze for a piece of the action.
In the early 2012 Russia plans to start the first commercial offshore oil drilling in the Arctic on its Prirazlomnoe offshore platform, hailed in the Russian media as the world's first Arctic-class ice-resistant oil rig.
Oh, and if things do screw up in spite of Khudainatov's promises, well, according to Russian Transport Minister Igor Levitin, addressing the same forum as Putin, the Russian government has allocated 20 billion rubles ($623 million) to construct three new nuclear and three diesel-electric icebreakers.
By. John C.K. Daly of Oil Price
Daniel Yergin and Peak Oil - Prophet or Mere Historian?
On 17 September The Wall Street Journal published a fascinating article on "peak oil," "There Will Be Oil," written by Daniel Yergin, chairman of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates, an energy research and consulting firm and deserved recipient of Pulitzer Prize for his 1991 book, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power. According to The Wall Street Journal, "There Will Be Oil" "is adapted from his new book, The Quest: Energy, Security and the Remaking of the Modern World."
The essay will doubtless have widespread influence amongst prosperous The Wall Street Journal readers, but in his glib dismissal of "peak oil" theory advocates, Yergin glosses or ignores a number of issues fundamental to the larger picture, for whatever reason, and these oversights should be considered in any evaluation of the piece and the peak oil "specter." Yergin notes, "Just in the years 2007 to 2009, for every barrel of oil produced in the world, 1.6 barrels of new reserves were added."
But this fails to take into account the following points. First is that for oil producing nations reserves are like money in the bank and inflated reserve figures are common. Even with the newest technology oil reserve figures remain at best "guesstimates" and should not be taken as hard and fast figures.
Secondly, while the Middle East for the foreseeable future will remain the world's top producing area, it is unhappily also one of the most politically unstable regions of the world. The "Arab Spring's" impact is still playing out, much less potential impact of Palestine's incipient bid at the United Nation's for recognition, both of which could yet still throw a major spanner in the works. To recap briefly: Saudi Arabia, the world's first or second-largest producer, vying with the Russian Federation for top position, is not immune from either of the two aforementioned effects. Saudi Arabia does not allow foreign oil companies concessions and has adopted a strict conservation policy, so don't expect to see a massive rise in production there anytime soon. As for Palestine's impact, last week former head of Saudi Arabian intelligence and ex-ambassador to Washington, Prince Turki al-Faisal in an essay in the New York Times warned that an American veto of Palestinian U.N. membership would end the ''special relationship'' between the two countries, and make the US ''toxic'' in the Arab world. As for Iraq, eight years after the U.S.-led invasion, holder of massive amounts of untapped reserves, the country remains mired in a low-grade civil war and unresolved political issues between its oil-rich northern Kurdish region and Baghdad.
Further east, Iran is most unlikely to boost production significantly anytime soon because of U.S. sanctions imposed in 1979. Libya remains the wild card, with only 25 percent of the country's oil potential explored, but it has been wracked by six months of civil unrest, and the irredentist cadre of Gaddafi supporters could easily target the country's oil infrastructure in the future.
In the Western Hemisphere, OPEC recently announced that Venezuela's potential reserves could top those of Saudi Arabia, but the deteriorating relations between Caracas and Washington make an increase here unlikely anytime soon. Many optimists pin their hopes on increased offshore production, from Brazil through Western Africa, the Mediterranean and the Caspian to the South China Sea but these regions' output will suffer from the twin curses of both greatly increased "lifting costs" in the billions as well as political instability. West Africa is synonymous with corruption and civil war; Lebanon, the Republic of Cyprus, Israel and Turkey are sparring over eastern Mediterranean hydrocarbons; two decades after the collapse of the USSR Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation and Turkmenistan have yet to reach a definitive agreement on the division of the Caspian's offshore waters and tension is rising markedly in the South China Sea, where China, the Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei are all pursuing contesting claims.
Of the aforementioned areas only Brazil has uncontested national sovereignty claims over its offshore deposits, and the government is sufficiently concerned about their security that it is considering building a nuclear submarine to patrol its offshore oil platforms. As for the rest, it is difficult to see how the nations involved will be able to attract large-scale investment into potential conflict zones. Furthermore, quite aside from political wrangles, offshore drilling is both extremely expensive and comes with increased environmental risks. Interestingly, the word "environment" appears only once in Yergin's essay, in the sentence, "Environmental and climate policies can alter the timing and scale of development, as can geopolitics and politics within oil-producing countries." Given that the majority of the future's oil production increase will come from offshore developments, the term should have been given greater prominence. BP's Deepwater Horizon Macondo oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico began on 20 April and spewed crude for three months in 2010 and was the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry, dwarfing the 1979 Gulf of Mexico Ixtoc I oil spill. Since the Deepwater Horizon incident unleashed 4.9 million barrels of oil the Gulf of Mexico suffered another rig explosion and fire at the Vermilion Block 380 A Platform on 2 September 2010. Across the Atlantic, on 12 August a British subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell announced a leak at a platform flow line in its Gannet field concession in the North Sea.
As for the BP leak, on 12 May 2010 California Democrat Representative Henry Waxman said that the House Oversight and Investigations subcommittee investigation into the Gulf oil spill revealed that the Deepwater Horizon Macaondo oil platform's blowout preventer (BOP) did not pass a crucial pressure test just hours before the explosion. Waxman said, "This catastrophe appears to have been caused by a calamitous series of equipment and operational failures. If the largest oil and oil services companies in the world had been more careful, 11 lives might have been saved and our coastlines protected." The Deepwater Horizon Study Group of University of California's the Center for Catastrophic Risk concluded in its "Final Report on the Investigation of the Macondo Well Blowout," released 1 March 2011, "At the time of the Macondo blowout, BP's corporate culture remained one that was embedded in risk-taking and cost-cutting...". Tracking back the signs of incipient failure, on 28 February 2009 the Department of the Interior exempted BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling operation from a detailed environmental impact study after concluding that a massive oil spill was unlikely. Four months later, on 22 June 2009 BP engineers warned that the Deepwater Horizon BOP's metal casing might collapse under high pressure. Seeking to spread the blame, in April 2011 BP sued Cameron International Corp., the maker of the failed Type TL 18¾in 15K double blowout preventer on the Macondo well, Deepwater Horizon drilling rig operator Transocean and Halliburton, the well's cement contractor, saying they were largely to blame for the accident. There are 3,800 active oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico - how long until another major spill?
So, where does all this leave the world? Older producing fields and nations, such as Indonesia and Saudi Arabia's massive Ghawar superfield have seen their production decline. Indonesia, which had begun producing oil in the early 20th century, saw its production slide so much that it left OPEC in 2008, seemingly confirming Marion King Hubbert's "peak oil" theory. While it is true that Hubbert's predictions, made in the 1950s, took no account of future energy developments such as Africa, the Caspian and offshore, all of these regions and projects come with increased costs, which ultimately will undoubtedly be passed on to the consumers. Is the world then running out of oil then? No, but the increase in future global oil production will likely be modestly incremental and production could be thrown off course by any number of possible events, from an Israeli attack on Iran to (another, but successful this time) al Qaida attack on Saudi Arabia's Abqaiq oil refinery. Accordingly, it is inexpensive oil that is in terminal decline, a development viewed positively by Yergin, who writes, "Activity goes up when prices go up; activity goes down when prices go down. Higher prices stimulate innovation and encourage people to figure out ingenious new ways to increase supply." Many American motorists would disagree.
Source: http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Daniel-Yergin-and-Peak-Oil-Prophet-or-Mere-Historian.html
By. John C.K. Daly of Oil Price
Turkey, Egypt to Drill for Natural Gas in the Mediterranean, Threatening Israel's Energy Dreams
What a difference fifteen months makes. In May 2010 Israel's cold peace with Egypt was viable, the country was celebrating massive Mediterranean natural gas finds and Tel Aviv enjoyed a military alliance with Turkey, an overwhelmingly Muslim nation. Two events have changed that picture beyond all recognition - Israel's 31 May 2010 attack on the peaceful Gaza-bound "Freedom flotilla," during which Israeli Shayetet 13 Naval Special Forces commandos killed eight Turkish citizens and an American, Furkan Dogan. Outraged by the assault, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan demanded an apology and compensation for the unprovoked attack. He's still waiting.
The second regional game changer has been the startling events of the "Arab Spring," which following unprecedented massive public demonstrations, on 11 February led to the resignation of Egypt's President, Hosni Mubarak, who had been in power for 29 years. One of Israel's greatest benefits from the 1973 Camp David Accords was its ability to import Egyptian natural gas through Egypt's $500 million East Mediterranean Gas Company Ltd. (EMG) pipeline. EMG was established in 2000 and jointly owned by Egyptian General Petroleum Corp. owning 68.4 percent, the private Israeli company Merhav a 25 percent share and the Ampal-American Israel Corp. the remaining 6.6 percent. Following Mubarak's downfall a series of attacks were made on the EMG pipeline, which supplied about 40 percent of Israel's natural gas imports, until an assault on 12 July led to its shutdown. Switching gears, the Netanyahu government downplayed the importance of the pipeline shutdown, obviously looking forward to the swift development of its Mediterranean natural gas assets, the Tamar field, discovered in 2009 and Leviathan, discovered the following year.
In June an Israeli company announced the discovery of two new natural gas fields, Sarah and Mira, about 45 miles off the city of Hadera. Initial prospecting estimates of the Tamar and Leviathan fields, off Haifa, concluded that the two sites between them could hold as much as 688 billion cubic meters of extractable natural gas. In 2010 the U.S. Geological Survey estimated that the Levant Basin Province, covering parts of Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and Cyprus, could contain as much as 3.4 trillion cubic meters of gas and up to 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil. The energy assets have focused the Israeli government's attention - on 9 August The Jerusalem Post reported that the Israeli military had deployed drones to patrol its gas fields off its northern coast in water contested with Lebanon.
The sites have already raised tensions with Lebanon, which contests Israel's self-proclaimed maritime borders giving them possession. On 4 August Lebanese President Michel Sleiman said, "We will not allow anyone to lay his hand on our wealth, which our children and grandchildren deserve. We will not only pass debts to them but also a wealth that will guarantee them a better future so that they remain in Lebanon." It should be noted that the two countries remain technically at war and will not negotiate directly with one another.
Now the wheel has taken another turn, as Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yıldız said earlier this week during an official visit to Egypt that Turkey intends to cooperate with Egypt in searching for natural gas in the Mediterranean. It is one thing for Israel to take on Hezbollah, based in southern Lebanon and Lebanon's modest military forces - it would be quite another thing to mix it up with Turkey's military, the second largest in NATO, or Egypt's forces. A change that should give Israeli military planners pause are reports this week in the Turkish media that Turkey's Military Electronics Industry (ASELSAN) has produced a new identification friend or foe (IFF) system for Turkish jet fighters, warships and submarines and the new software, contrary to the older, U.S.-made version, does not automatically identify Israeli planes and ships automatically as "friendly." The new IFF has already been installed in Turkish F-16s and is expected to be installed shortly in all Turkish Navy ships and submarines. It's notable that that Turkey never participated in a single one of the Arab campaigns against Israel from 1948 to 1973.
Quite aside from the ominous regional implications, there is the possibility that the U.S. could become involved in the looming dispute, as Texas-based Noble Energy has partnered with Israel's Delek Group Ltd. to develop Israel's Leviathan, Tamar, Dalit, and Noa offshore natural gas fields, and also has a concession to Cyprus's Bloc 12 offshore Mediterranean field, located near Leviathan. All eyes are now turning towards next week's UN General Assembly meeting, where the Palestinian Authority is to press forward with a motion for recognition as an independent nation, though the final form of the petition is yet unclear. Up to 15 months ago, Tel Aviv could reliably assume that U.S. influence could prevail upon both Egypt and Turkey to shy away from supporting such a move - no longer. Some diplomatic flexibility is called for - surely 3.4 trillion cubic meters of gas and up to 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil could satisfy the energy and fiscal needs of all interested parties. The alternative is too dispiriting to contemplate. While predicting events in the Middle East is a clouded prospect at best, one thing is clear, from Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's scorched earth policy in withdrawing from Kuwait during in 1991 - oil and natural gas fields are flammable and Israel does not have enough drones to protect its offshore fields.
David and Goliath: Vietnam Confronts China Over South China Sea Energy Riches
An increasingly fractious maritime confrontation is developing in the South China Sea, with enormous implications for international companies interested in developing East Asia's offshore hydrocarbon resources. Far from the radars of city of London and Wall Street investors, the clash has seen Vietnam emerge as spear carrier for its fellow ASEAN members on the dispute.
Offshore drilling is the most capital-intensive form of exploiting hydrocarbons, but its expense and scarcity has also allowed technically advanced Western companies to drive hard bargains with third world countries over their offshore waters, as they don't have indigenous advanced technical resources nor finances to exploit their maritime wealth. Accordingly, most countries attempt to procure the best bilateral deals with foreign companies to get a taste of the offshore revenues that come from exploiting their Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs), which the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNLOS) recognized 12 nautical miles as normal for territorial seas and waters and provided international recognition of 200 mile EEZs.
On the vexed question of overlapping claims, When an overlap occurs, UNLOS deferred to the competing states to negotiate to delineate their final and actual maritime boundary, with the general principle that any point within an overlapping area defaults to the nearest state.
According to U.S. government statistics, Vietnam's oil and gas industry is currently the country's biggest foreign currency earner and a major procurer of imported technology. Since Vietnam's first oil export shipment in April 1987, crude oil has earned over $17 billion for Vietnam's economy, all of it from offshore production. Vietnam is currently Asian third largest oil producer behind Indonesia and Malaysia.
Over the past few years China has asserted its sovereign maritime claims and takeovers even as Beijing has settled most of its disputes over its land frontiers with post-Soviet Central Asian states since the early 1990s. China's expansive sovereignty claims on of South China Sea, including the Spratly (Nansha) and Paracel (Xisha) islets, putting Beijing directly in conflict with the sovereignty claims and security of five Southeast Asian states - Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia, not to mention China's irredentist claims on Taiwan. All, except Taiwan, are members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations or ASEAN. Vietnam has now emerged as the plucky David challenging Beijing's Goliath.
The confrontation began on 26 May when three Chinese patrol boats halted a seismic survey in Spratly waters claimed by Vietnam as part of its EEZ, 80 miles from Vietnam's coast and 375 miles south of China's Hainan Island. Following other incidents, on 13 June Vietnam's navy held live-firing exercises in an area 25 miles off central Quang Nam province after warning other vessels to steer clear. While China has the stronger navy, both sides can currently deploy only light maritime forces, and for the moment, regional rhetoric exceeds firepower. Besides the cover support of its ASEAN partners, China is in a dialectical trap of its own making. Asserting its unilateral sovereignty will weaken ASEAN dominated by China as a political organization and potentially drive a number of its members to closer relations with the U.S., the only significant non-Asian power in the western Pacific. Beyond the regional posturing, the issue seems tailor-made for international arbitration. UNCLOS provides for bilateral discussions, but given the diversity of claims, ASEAN would seem to be a better forum. In the meantime, the South China Sea hardly seems to best potential zone for foreign energy investment companies.
By. Dr. John C.K. Daly for OilPrice.com. For more information on oil prices and other commodity related topics please visit www.oilprice.com
U.S. - Venezuelan Relations - Just "Frozen" or Beyond Repair?
According to the U.S. Energy Administration, two months ago the United States total crude oil imports averaged 9,033 thousand barrels per day (tbpd), with the top five exporting countries being Canada (2,666 tbpd), Mexico (1,319 tbpd), Saudi Arabia (1,107 tbpd), Venezuela (930 tbpd) and Nigeria (918 tbpd.)
Notice anything odd about this list? First, three of the top five oil exporters to the U.S. are in the Western hemisphere, and two of them are neighbors. Secondly, only two of the five states can comfortably be described as stable. Mexico is slowly unraveling due to the drug war, Nigeria's militant regularly attack foreign oil concessions in the Niger delta and Saudi Arabia's geriatric monarchy is nervously watching events unfold in the Middle East, wondering if the "Arab spring" may impact their autocratic hold on power, a view no doubt made more nervous by the sudden arrival on 6 June of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment.
Of the remaining two, Canada is a stable, prosperous state, and its relations with Washington are excellent. Which leaves Venezuela - while a stable state, its policies under President Hugo Chávez have rattled Washington to the point that since 2010 neither state has had accredited ambassadors.
On 28 June 2010 President Obama nominated Palmer as U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela but three months later Chávez announced on his weekly TV program that he would not allow Larry Palmer to take up his post after Palmer told a US senator that morale in the Venezuelan army was low and that members of Chávez's government had ties to leftist FARC Colombian rebels. On 28 December Chávez flatly refused to accept Palmer because of his derogatory remarks and the following day the U.S. revoked the accreditation of Venezuelan ambassador, Bernardo Álvarez Herrera.
Worse, on Sunday Venezuelan Minister of Foreign Affairs Nicolás Maduro in an exclusive interview with private TV network Televen said, "The relation (with the U.S.) is frozen... It does not move and there is no indication that there could be positive elements of communication and respect in the near future."
What led to the impasse? Chávez's final sin in Washington's eyes was Venezuela's state-owned oil company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) supplying gasoline and other refined oil products to Iran, which led the Obama administration on 24 May to impose sanctions against PDVSA. In response, Venezuela's Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez, who is also the head of PDVSA, said the following day that as a sovereign nation Venezuela would continue to maintain relations with Iran and any other country it wanted, adding, "This is a right we are not going to renounce."
Washington's myopia leads it to treat Central and Latin America as if the Monroe Doctrine were still valid. In fact, the most underreported political story in the American press over the last decade is how Latin America has gradually moved out from under Washington's smothering "big brother" embrace as first the Bush administration and now President Obama's fixated on both on the war on terror and Iraqi oil reserves.
Most notable among the Latin American states rejecting Washington's dominance, along with its attendant financial institutions of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund has been Brazil, which now, along with Russia, China and India, is lumped under the sobriquet BRIC as a collective economic powerhouse of the 21st century. Can Washington really afford to antagonize a nation that exports nearly a million barrels per day to the U.S.? Should Venezuela turn off the taps, then the recent gasoline prices of nearly $4 a gallon will begin to look like a bargain.
And speaking of China, its economic interest in trade devoid of Washington's hectoring political lectures has found a warm reception in Caracas. China has agreed to provide more than $32 billion in assistance to Chávez's government, with the loans to be repaid in oil, in increasing amounts of it during the next decade. China is now Venezuela's biggest foreign lender, enabling Chávez's to boost social spending ahead of the country's 2012 presidential election, leading Chávez to exclaim "Viva China!" on national television. Venezuela is now exporting to China about 460,000 barrels a day, about 20 percent of its oil exports, according to official figures, which Caracas hopes to double soon. Chen Ping, political counselor at the Chinese Embassy in Caracas noted simply, "Venezuela has what we need." Pity that Washington, blinkered by outdated ideology, does not see its own interests as clearly as counselor Chen.
Source: Full article at: http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/U.S.-Venezuelan-Relations-Just-Frozen-or-Beyond-Repair.html
By. John Daly for OilPrice.com
Ithaca signs Facility Agreement for US$140 Million
Read More: http://www.ithacaenergy.com/uploads/IthacaPressRelease100712.pdf
RBS involved in £78m-plus refinancing of rig provider
Aberdeen banker says NOF well placed to weather the economic storm
By Ian Forsyth
Published: 05/05/2010
Read more: http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1720148#ixzz0n2mgnmin
Ithaca Mandates Bank of Scotland for US$140 Million Facility
Read more: http://www.ithacaenergy.com/uploads/IthacaPressRelease100422.pdf
