Steve LeVine

Amid intense domestic political seasons in both Beijing and Washington, President Barack Obama issued a rare top-level order halting a Chinese investment in the US, and the Chinese company said it will challenge the US leader on constitutional grounds. Given the potent stakes, look for more mutual threats and vitriol over the coming couple of months before calm prevails, oh, around mid-November.

A five-year effort to create the world’s fourth-largest mining company reached a new stage when Australia’s Xstrata asked its shareholders to approve a revised $35 billion merger with global trading behemoth Glencore. But, if the deal goes forward, the new company will face a far different, far more challenging world than when it was conceived.

A link from Sydney Morning Herald

Chinese interest in American assets has been a touchy subject for a while, but today a new milestone was passed: for the first time in 22 years, an American president has invoked national security privileges to block a foreign commercial deal.

The fossil-fuel industry has long given more money to Republicans than Democrats, but in this presidential campaign it has skewed far further: from 2-to-1 or 4-to-1 in the past, the ratio of campaign donations is now at 8-to-1 in the Republicans’ favour (see chart above). Yet the industry has in fact fared better under recent Democratic than Republican presidents, according to a new investment bank report.

A link from Guardian

A link from Guardian

A link from Ghanaweb

A link from The Wall Street Journal

A link from The Wall Street Journal

When ordinary methods of persuasion fail, try hard cash, and lots of it. The four Russian oligarchs who own half of Russia’s third largest-oil company, BP-TNK, have been trying to buy the other half from their co-owner, BP. The British oil firm is eager to divest, after a rocky relationship with the oligarchs, but has spurned their (hitherto meagre) offers and has instead been wooing the state-owned firm Rosneft. BP’s boss, Robert Dudley, recently had an audience with Russian president Vladimir Putin, a key stamp of official approval.

For years, global economists have forecast a slowdown in China’s breakneck growth. Now that the deceleration is actually here, rich-world investors, companies and government officials, reliant on the Chinese juggernaut for their financial well-being, seem impatient for the revelry to resume, and are hoping that the Chinese government will follow up its stimulus of package of 2008-2009 with another generous injection of capital. (On Sept. 25, the medium-sized province of Sichuan became the latest to announce a ¥3.67 trillion ($582 billion) package of measures aimed at giving the regional economy a boost.)

For years, global economists have forecast a slowdown in China’s breakneck growth. Now that the deceleration is actually here, rich-world investors, companies and government officials, reliant on the Chinese juggernaut for their financial well-being, seem impatient for the revelry to resume, and are hoping that the Chinese government will follow up its stimulus of package of 2008-2009 with another generous injection of capital. (On Sept. 25, the medium-sized province of Sichuan became the latest to announce a ¥3.67 trillion ($582 billion) package of measures aimed at giving the regional economy a boost.)

Supercomputers may defeat chessmasters and crunch weather data, but the lesson of recent history is that they will never supersede human judgment, says Nate Silver, author of “The Signal and the Noise,” which hits bookstores Sept. 27.

Supercomputers may defeat chessmasters and crunch weather data, but the lesson of recent history is that they will never supersede human judgment, says Nate Silver, author of “The Signal and the Noise,” which hits bookstores Sept. 27.

From Russia to Alaska, big oil companies are girding to drill in the Arctic Circle, a frenzy ignited by the melting impact of global warming. Or are they?

From Russia to Alaska, big oil companies are girding to drill in the Arctic Circle, a frenzy ignited by the melting impact of global warming. Or are they?

Remember when oil was at $20 a barrel? For the past decade we’ve toiled up the slope of the so-called commodities super-cycle, a rise in metal and hydrocarbon prices steeper than even in the 1970s oil-shock days. It made consumer goods costly but drove torrid profits for traders, miners, investment bankers, and pension funds. But now prices are sinking again, companies are asking to escape debt covenants, countries are facing lower GDP growth, and pension funds are shifting their investments.

The century-and-a-half history of oil is filled with hard-knuckled politics and the propping up of disreputable rulers. Dictators have risen, elected leaders have fallen, all with the connivance of international oil companies. Yet there appears to be no case in which oil companies have been pivotal actors in creating an actual independent country. Until now.

Just a year ago, one of the few things the world could agree on was that we were running out of oil. We had to develop non-fossil-fuel energy sources, and fast, or else fall victim to resource war, economic collapse, and a breakdown in our way of life.

BP may be closing in on a deal in Russia that would solve two big problems for the embattled British oil company. The apparent cash-and-shares agreement with the Russian state oil champion, Rosneft, could give BP a perch in the hydrocarbon-rich Arctic, a prized territory where some of its big oil rivals have already won stakes. But it would also extract BP from a troublesome marriage with a group of four oligarchs whose company goes by the acronym AAR.

A link from Fuelfix

Japanese cars have been damaged in China, and Japanese businesses shuttered. A car carrying Gary Locke, US Ambassador to Beijing, was surrounded and attacked by demonstrators. Beijing protesters shouted (paywall), “Flatten Tokyo, destroy Japan!” Xi Jinping, China’s next national leader, today called Japan’s behavior a “farce.”

Oil broke to a four-month high of $117.95 a barrel Sep. 14, buoyed by the US Federal Reserve’s vow to inject cash into the financial system until further notice. But the first two days of this week, benchmark Brent crude futures plunged by 4%, to $112.03 a barrel. By Sep. 19, the price is falling again. Why the sharp turn?