Arab OPEC ministers to meet as oil price tops $91

OPEC Members 'Target $100'...
Oil consumers grow wary as some OPEC members target $100 crude. Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg Oil importers are growing wary of the impact of prices near two-year highs as some OPEC members foresee a further rally to the $100-a-barrel level and Arab oil ministers gather for a meeting in Cairo. Japan’s economy minister said today the government needs to keep an eye on climbing prices while the deputy Governor of the Chinese Central Bank said Inflation pressures are rising. Shok...

Gasoline Grinch arrives with pump prices above $3
Pump prices continue to rise in the Washington metropolitan area. Gasoline prices ticked up a penny over the past week. NEW YORK -- The national average for a gallon of regular gasoline topped $3 a gallon on Thursday, just in time for the holiday driving trips millions of Americans will take this week. The average pump price rose about a cent and a half a gallon overnight, to $3.01, according to AAA, Wright Express and Oil Price Information Service. That's 14 cents more than a month ago and 43 ...

Diesel, jet fuel made from natural gas
Image by philipbouchard via Flickr NY Times: Diesel and jet fuel are usually made from Crude Oil. But with Oil Prices rising even as a glut of Natural Gas keeps prices for that fuel extraordinarily cheap, a bit of expensive alchemy is suddenly starting to look financially appealing: turning Natural Gas into liquid fuels. A South African firm, Sasol, announced Monday that it would spend just over 1 billion Canadian Dollars to buy a half-interest in a Canadian Shale Gas field, so it can explore...

New Interest in Turning Gas to Diesel
By MATTHEW L. WALD NYT WASHINGTON — Diesel and jet fuel are usually made from Crude Oil. But with Oil Prices rising even as a glut of Natural Gas keeps prices for that fuel extraordinarily cheap, a bit of expensive alchemy is suddenly starting to look financially appealing: turning Natural Gas into liquid fuels. A South African firm, Sasol, announced Monday that it would spend just over 1 billion Canadian Dollars to buy a half-interest in a Canadian Shale Gas field, so it can explore turning...

Gas Prices Top $3 a Gallon As Drivers Hit the Road For Christmas, a 2 Year High
Remember how the Left Wing media used this news to hammer George W. Bush when he was President? Every single night on the news we were hit with 'pain at the pump' from reporters, and who was to blame? Bush and Cheney, their ties to the Oil Industry, Halliburton, the list goes on and on. In the report below, amazingly Reuters interviews people who just learn to accept high Gas Prices as a part of life. They don't even ask who is to blame Reuters video ...

Gasoline Grinch arrives with pump prices above $3
A recent study from business management firm PortiaGroup, using data from OSIP, says consumers will likely pay about $1.35 more a gallon during the 12 days of Christmas (from Dec. 25 to Jan. 6) than during the same period of 2008-2009. The rising price of Crude Oil has been pushing up the price of Gasoline for the past month, and the trend continued Thursday. Benchmark crude rose 78 cents to $91.26 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange in midday trading. That's the highest point in two...

Gas prices top $3 a gallon
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Gas Prices surpassed the milestone $3 mark Thursday for the first time since Oct. 17, 2008, as the national average compiled by motorist group AAA reached $3.013 a gallon. Gas prices have risen more than 4% from $2.872 a month ago and are nearly 16% higher than the $2.585 average a year ago, according to the AAA figures. Email Print Comment Prices have been climbing steadily since bottoming out at $1.616 in December 2008. However, the average price is down $1.101 -- ...

Global stocks steady despite strong US data
Stocks have shown little momentum in recent days due to the upcoming holidays and the fact that many major indexes have returned to levels last seen before Lehman Brothers collapsed in September 2008, which plunged the financial world into crisis and contributed to a global Recession. The best performance in Europe came from Britain's FTSE 100 index of leading shares, which moved above 6,000 for the first time since the summer of 2008. However, the last batch of trades pushed it below and it en...

Are we back to this already?
They’re talking about $100 a barrel oil again — only this time Unemployment isn’t 5% as it was at the beginning of 2008, it’s 10%. Bloomberg: Shokri Ghanem, chairman of Libya’s National Oil Corp., was the latest OPEC official to forecast $100. Iran and Venezuela have also said that represents a fair price while Saudi Arabia, the group’s biggest exporter, said it prefers prices centered on $75, a level that oil has traded above since September… Wall Street stra...

Iraqi oil output increases
BAGHDAD, Dec. 23 (UPI) -- Oil output in Iraq is up to 2.5 million barrels per day, the first increase since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, the country's new oil minister said. Abdul Karim al-Luaibi in his first statements since taking office Tuesday said increases in production from the Zubair and Rumaila Oil Fields pushed production up from just below 2.4 million bpd to 2.5 million bpd, the Platts news service reports. He added this was the first increase since 2003 and comes ahead of the sched...

Want to be Lord of War?
In March 2003 the stock price of Halliburton, an Oil and gas engineering company that also provided Military logistics support through its subsidiary, was roughly $10.50. Also in March 2003, the US invaded Iraq. According to corporate research site Crocodyl: Halliburton saw its revenue increase 30 percent to $16 billion in 2003, largely because of its Military contracts in the Middle East. Halliburton was the number-one U.S. Army contractor in 2003, with the total value of its Army contracts val...

St Petersburg's tower to the sky fails to get off the ground
Dreamed up in the heady days of ever-rising Oil Prices, before the Financial Crisis struck, it represented the optimism and swagger of the new cash-rich Russia. A twisting, 400m-high Skyscraper, to be built overlooking the historical centre of St Petersburg, the building was to house the headquarters of the state gas monopoly, Gazprom. Architectural preservationists howled that it would destroy the city forever, UNESCO said it would be a travesty, but the authorities insisted that the project wa...

Very Merry Christmas to You.
Ho. Ho. Ho. It’s almost here. …and to our Troops across the globe serving, fighting or standing a watch, we know you signed up for the duty, but we also know the sacrifices you make, including those of your families. We never forget… no matter where you are in the world, though why we’re still on duty in some spheres is a sobering example in just how mismanaged U.S. priorities remain. Combat zones * Iraq * Afghanistan Additionally, we have Troops serving in… * A...

Egyptian has 'revealed three Israeli spy cells'
Source: Agence France-Presse Egyptian has 'revealed three Israeli spy cells' – 35 mins ago Cairo (AFP) – The confessions of an Egyptian accused of spying for Israel have led to three Espionage cells being dismantled in Lebanon and Syria, where an agent was executed in November, Cairo Newspapers said Friday. Tareq Abdul Razzak, the 37-year-old owner of an import-export business, is accused of having spied for the Jewish State together with two wanted Israelis. Egypt, which has a 1979 peace treaty..

For Egypt, new Sudan state threat to Nile
CAIRO, Dec. 23 (UPI) -- The expected emergence of a new state in southern Sudan following a January independence Referendum is causing alarm in Cairo because the signs are the infant state will join other African countries battling Egypt for a greater share of the Nile River's waters. The southern Sudan leader, Salva Kiir, recently visited President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, one of the upstream states opposed to Egypt's control of the Nile waters, to discuss building hydroelectric power station...

Saudis buy landmark Paris hotel
The prestigious Hotel de Crillon in the heart of Paris has been sold to a member of the Saudi royal family. The 18th Century former palace, on the Place de la Concorde, is said to have been bought for around 250m euros (£212m, $328m). The Crillon is currently owned by US company Starwood Capital which acquired the hotel when it took over the Taittinger empire in 2005. An earlier attempt to sell the hotel to Saudi-backed JJW ended up in court. In April, the court ruled that JJW would have to...

63615
The enduring symbol of Christmas, spanning the world’s diverse Christian cultures and the history of two millennia, is the nativity scene inspired by the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Artistically synthesizing the two gospel stories, the nativity scene is infused with profound Christian meaning and symbolism. There’s a lot of interesting material in the Pew Foundation’s latest poll of the Middle East, a survey that focuses on attitudes toward Islamism and revolutionary Islami...

Two-headed baby born in India
A two-headed baby boy born in India survived only an hour, news reports say. According to AOL News, a TV9 news report said the boy was born Wednesday and people rushed to see him in the Hospital in Tirupati, located in the southeastern part of the country. The boy may have been part of a set of twins, and the second head may have formed after the second child stopped developing. The video shows the baby, who may or may not be alive, before he is wrapped up by one man and handed to another. In 20...

T. Boone Pickens: Our Ongoing Energy Crisis
One billion dollars every day. That's how much money we're sending overseas to fund our dangerous and growing Addiction to OPEC oil. This year, I've spent a lot of time talking about Natural Gas, and the need to tap into everything domestic--from nuclear to Natural Gas, from wind to Ethanol, from solar to domestic oil--to address our energy needs. Our dependence on OPEC oil is a national crisis. It threatens our economy, our National Security and our environment. How much of a concern is it?...

Let's Not Save the Euro or, For That Matter, The European Union
I am no fan of the European Union. It is an artificial contraption, run by the corporate and bureaucratic elites of the continent, without democratic sanction because the various peoples subsumed under its rule themselves see that it is without democratic values or ambitions. Had it at least energized the economies of Europe there might be some raison d'être for its intrusive rules which wreak havoc with every member nation's culture and identity. The fact is, however, that t...

Reserve Currency Roulette
Following up on our post from Friday, in which we illustrated the currency reserve and GDP market share of a number of different countries, a kind reader asked a question: “I wonder what percentage of the world’s foreign exchange reserves The Dollar had when it was redeemable among central banks in gold?” Our source for the graph, the IMF, only showed data going back to 1995, so we dug a little more and found the answer in a paper written by Barry Eichengreen of the University ...

The Year in Review: The euro
On 29 September, a cement lorry, with the words "toxic bank" and "Anglo" painted in red letters on its sides, was driven into the gates of Leinster House, Dublin – the home of the Irish parliament. A 41-year-old property developer, Joe McNamara from Blackrock, County Galway, reportedly owed Anglo Irish Bank €3.5m. Mr McNamara provided a wonderful metaphor for the Financial Crisis. In Ireland a property bubble had burst and pulled the vital construction sector dow...

It's Europe's crisis
John Bolton The recent riots in Athens, London and Rome signal rising insecurity and uncer tainty within the European Union. The most profound and widespread challenge is the growing sense that the EU's common currency, the Euro, may not survive in its present form, if at all. The obvious reason is that, as a matter of economics, the euro project gives surrealism a bad name: A currency without a government was always doomed to fail. Now, there are only two choices: 1) Abandon or dramatically ...

Is the SEC fighting last year's war?
Richard Bookstaber, adviser to the SEC on risk, discusses how to regulate it, how Wall Street ran amok, and what needs to happen to make markets work. Richard Bookstaber, Veteran Wall Street risk manager and Hedge Fund manager, made a splash on the eve of the Financial Meltdown with the publication of Demon of Our Own Design, a book that warned the markets had grown too complex and were headed for a crash. Last year, Bookstaber left Wall Street to join the Securities and Exchange Commission as ...

Fed throws euro banks a lifeline
Fed throws euro banks a lifeline Posted by Colin Barr December 21, 2010 4:19 pm For an outfit whose policies supposedly are plunging the world into unspeakable conflict, the Federal Reserve is doing an awful lot to avoid another meltdown. The Fed said Tuesday it would extend The Dollar swap lines it provides to Central Banks in Europe, Japan and Canada in a bid to avoid a cash crunch like the ones seen to such devastating effect in 2008. Your dollars, our problem? The swap lines, under which...