A national leader rarely faces a doubly threatened ouster—both by public pressure and a military coup—but that is the situation confronting Egyptian President Mohamad Morsi. The opposition has given him a day to step down or face a civil disobedience campaign, and the military has signaled a coup if Morsi cannot turn around his problems within 48 hours.
Russia has won a big round in an almost two-decade battle with the West over the flow of natural gas from the Caspian Sea. But the June 28 victory is a mixed one for Moscow, for it helps undermine the rationale for another Russian project—one that has been a key weapon in the country’s fight for energy dominance.
The British Geological Survey today doubled its estimate of shale gas contained within a northern English basin called Bowland. But, as has occurred in the US, much wishful thinking has gone into the after-the-fact analysis, almost certainly exaggerating how much can be ultimately extracted.
Billionaire Marc Rich, the trader who was controversially pardoned by former US president Bill Clinton, died today at 78. Rich, the founder of the Swiss-based trading firm Glencore, invented the role of swashbuckling commodities trader and went on to renounce his US citizenship rather than pay his taxes and face the courts on other charges.
President Barack Obama today unleashed a robust plan to rein in carbon pollution, and a stinging broadside against those who would oppose him.
The outlook for Gazprom, the Russian natural gas giant whose aggressive practices have intimidated neighbors for years, just hit a new low. In response to the global gas glut, the company has caved to lower price demands by small countries that it once threatened with a shutoff of winter heat, such as Lithuania and Bulgaria. Russian president Vladimir Putin, the company’s main patron, has turned his back on the company, allowing foreign producers to cut deals that challenge Gazprom’s powerful monopoly on Russia gas exports. And now, Gazprom is facing yet another indignity: the threat of wood pellets.
Daniel Horn, a fresh New York architecture graduate, has launched a global competition around a tricky design question—what is the most aesthetic way to raise the elevation of an entire neighborhood block by eight to 10 feet?
Over the past dozen years, there’s been a 23% surge per year in the number of natural gas-fueled vehicles on the road, according to a new report by the International Energy Agency. That suggests natural gas-fueled vehicles may catch on in a way that fuel cells, hydrogen and batteries have failed.
If you look solely at social media, Iranians seem to have a clear favorite in today’s presidential election—reformist-backed Hassan Rohani, a 64-year-old cleric and former nuclear negotiator. That is according to Ali Reza Manouchehri, an Iranian-American businessman who has a team running software that tracks the attention users in Iran pay to the candidates on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
In one of Africa’s most destabilizing conflicts, Sudan and South Sudan have been at economic war for most of the two years since they split into separate countries, resulting in financial havoc for both and a loss of hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil exports. Now they are threatening war again, but they appear to be engaging more in harsh rhetoric than any intention to actually fight, say two Africa analysts with Eurasia Group.
If you go by futures traders, global benchmark crude oil five years from now will sell for $90.77 a barrel, or 12% below the current price of about $104 a barrel. That view aligns with that of a large body of analysts who believe that the global oil boom, led by the US shale revolution, will deflate average oil prices for years to come.
Battery makers comprise one of the most distressed industries on the planet. One by one, US lithium-ion companies have filed for bankruptcy, among them A123, Ener1, and Valence Technology. Germany’s Daimler today said that it may sell (paywall) its unprofitable lithium-ion joint venture with Evonik Industries for $1.3 billion.
If Iran and the international community didn’t have the country’s nuclear program to fight about, would the two sides become friends?
With less than two weeks to go before Iran’s presidential election, the US today accused the country’s leaders of earning billions of dollars through front companies that also help the regime to circumvent international sanctions. The timing suggests an attempt to influence the election by tarnishing the reputation of Iran’s rulers.
Until a few days ago, there seemed to be an inexorable reordering of two major swaths of the Middle East. The region’s Kurds seemed on the cusp of achieving greater political autonomy, and Israel appeared to be at least potentially on its way to obtaining an export pipeline for its natural gas. But Turkey’s now five-day-old protests—which intensified today when unionized public workers called an anti-government strike—seem likely to disrupt both of these trends.
Former BP CEO John Browne was so private about his homosexuality that it emerged only when an estranged lover divulged their relationship to a tabloid. In his attempt to block publication, he lied to a judge about how he had met the man, and ended up being forced to resign. Today, however, Browne, now a member of Britain’s House of Lords, spoke out forcefully today in favor of a proposed law making gay marriage legal in the country.
Elegies for high-profile tech startups typically depict their failure as oh-so-predictable. So it is with Better Place, an electric-car venture on which some of Wall Street’s most seasoned hands lost a spectacular $812 million. But it is worth pausing over this Israeli company, which offered a devilishly practical remedy for the troubled electric industry, only to be hobbled by incomplete execution, tenacious incumbents and newer technology.
The $3 billion bid by Russian state oil giant Rosneft for the 49% it doesn’t already own of gas producer Itera seems, on the face of it, to be overpriced. A 49% stake in Itera’s natural gas assets is worth only $2.7 billion, says Sberbank. The discrepancy indicates that Rosneft is after bigger game: not merely some more gas assets, but the lucrative right to export natural gas from the country. And perhaps bigger game still: political power.
Environmental websites are buzzing that China, the world’s biggest emitter of carbon and other heat-trapping gases, is on the cusp of breaking the persistent logjam on global climate change policy by placing an absolute cap on its carbon emissions. Beijing’s impending move, writes Grist, would show that, compared with the US, “China is either the more mature of the pair, or just majorly sucking up to Mama Earth.”
China has big plans for mountainous Yunnan province, in the southwest of the country. They include a building boom, a new road and a petroleum industry centered on oil and chemical refineries. The raw materials will come via Myanmar, just across the border—440,000 barrels of oil a day, along with an annual flow of 12 billion cubic meters of natural gas.
Offshore from Syria, Russia’s navy is conducting probably its largest naval deployment outside its own waters since the Soviet breakup. The Chinese navy is in another potential confrontation today with Japan in the East China Sea, and raising questions about where it is headed next.
Tony Hayward’s appointment as interim chairman of Glencore Xstrata, the world’s fourth-largest mining company, completes his rehabilitation—the 56-year-old oilman, ousted and humiliated as head of BP three years ago, is back as one of the world’s major industrial executives.
A new model by the International Energy Agency suggests that we are moving into a five-year period of much lower oil and gasoline prices—no one can say how much lower, but they could plunge. The winners will be consumers, and blood may be on the floor of some big producers such as Russia and OPEC.
This story has been updated with a statement from Patton Boggs.
