Headlines
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Uncertainty about U.S. auto makers weights on crude
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Gold aims at 1000$/oz level
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Base metals look for direction
Brent and Distillates
Crude was lower on Wednesday extending Tuesday's losses driven by a stronger greenback and amid uncertainty surrounding U.S. auto makers.
Today oil prices are steady ahead of U.S. data expected to show U.S. crude have hit an 11-year high amid the worsening recession.
The first phase of the long-awaited expansion of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium's (CPC) oil export line from Kazakhstan to the Black Sea should be ready for use in 2011, a senior official from project partner Chevron announced. The first phase will boost the CPC line's current capacity of 33 mln.t/y, i.e. 663 kb/d, by around 8 mln.t/year. After six years of on-off talks, the shareholders in the project signed an agreement in December to double capacity on the line, a key export route for crude from landlocked Kazakhstan, to 67 mln.t/y.
Canada's oil sands industry, battered by collapsing oil prices, also faces the prospect of ballooning costs as the U.S. and Canada prepare to discuss energy security and efforts to fight global warming. When U.S. President B.Obama visits Ottawa today, energy will be a key topic in his talks with Canada Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who often presents Canada as an emerging energy superpower due to its massive oil sands resources.
Calgary-based Imperial said its proved reserves stood at more than 2.3 bln.b of oil equivalent at the end of 2008, up nearly 50% from a year earlier. The increase followed the inclusion of around 800 mln. boe of new reserves from the first phase of the Canadian Kearl oil sands project being developed northeast of Fort McMurray. The Kearl project, which includes a total of three planned phases, should produce around 110 kb/d of bitumen from its first phase.
Petrobras' oil production in Brazil reached a monthly record in January, the company said on Tuesday, even as a global financial crisis hurt demand for commodities and knocked oil prices lower. Petrobras produced 1.923 mln.b/d in January, a 5.3 37 rise compared to January 2008 and up 2.5 % from volumes in December last year.
China has agreed to lend Russian oil companies 25mld.$ in return for supplies from huge new East Siberian oilfields that will power its economy for the next two decades. Russia's state oil Rosneft and pipeline monopoly Transneft signed a long-delayed deal to borrow the money from China Development Bank during talks in Beijing, sources close to the deal told Reuters.
The Iraqi oil ministry eased the terms of its first post-war bidding round to make them more palatable to international oil companies, including reducing the share of state-owned Iraqi oil companies in the joint ventures to 25% from 51%, sources close to the negotiations said Wednesday. The six oil fields on offer under 20-year service contracts are the major producing fields in the north, and the five fields in the south. The new fields are expected to add 1.5 mln.b/d to Iraq's oil production capacity. Iraq's sustainable production capacity is believed to be about 2.4 mln.b/d currently, although the country had achieved production levels as high as 3 mln.b/d in the months before Saddam Hussein's ousting in 2003.
