January, 2018

• 27 January

  Trump’s new tariffs are deeply misguided

  Invoking a 1974 law intended to safeguard companies from unfair competition, the Trump administration has announced new tariffs on foreign-made solar panels and washing machines. Both measures are deeply misguided. At best, they will raise prices, threaten jobs, antagonize allies, encourage retaliation, and impede clean-energy development, all without offering any real benefits. At worst, they may herald a perilous new ...

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• 27 January

  At Davos, Indian PM forgets what leadership looks like

  

  Whatever you might say about Prime Minister Narendra Modi—and plenty of people have had a lot to say in the past—not even his critics have called him an uninspiring speaker. He has held spectators at vast election rallies spellbound, even groups of overseas Indians in arenas like Wembley Stadium. He is a big room, big occasion speaker, always able to ...

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• 27 January

  Tech companies definitely remember outsourcing

  

  Despite the best labour market in a generation, Americans remain worried about the future of employment. Lately, the big worry is automation of jobs. Experiments like Amazon Go’s cashier-less store will perpetuate this anxiety. Americans perhaps should be more worried about an old-fashioned employment maneuver, however: outsourcing. The tech sector is already leading the way. Outsourcing tech jobs is nothing ...

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• 27 January

  Amazon sweepstakes can be great for the losers

  

  The saga of Amazon.com Inc.’s search for a home for its second headquarters continues. The online retail giant recently announced that it has narrowed the field down to 20 cities. I’m happy to see that Raleigh, North Carolina, my own top pick, made the list. But there’s a worry that the scramble to lure HQ2 will give rise to wasteful ...

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• 27 January

  Aramco swapping Saudi oil for fuel to tap new markets

  

  Bloomberg Saudi Aramco’s trading unit started swapping the kingdom’s crude oil for products refined in other countries, allowing the company to tap new markets, according to its chief executive officer. The company has supplied crude to refiners in the Mediterranean region and gotten fuel in return, Ibrahim Al-Buainain, chief executive officer of Saudi Aramco Products Trading Co., said by phone. ...

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• 27 January

  US: Shale won’t be oil market ‘spoiler’

  

  DAVOS / Reuters US Energy Secretary Rick Perry told oil super-powers Russia and Saudi Arabia he believed US shale oil boom would not become a spoiler for oil markets because new production would be absorbed by fast rising global demand. Perry, a former governor of Texas, the heartland of the US shale oil boom, was speaking at a rare joint ...

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• 27 January

  Russia remains China’s top oil supplier

  

  BEIJING / Reuters Russia held firm as China’s top crude oil supplier in December for the 10th month and racked up its second year as the largest supplier in 2017, customs data showed, leaving rival exporter Saudi Arabia in second place on both fronts. Exports from Russia hit 5.03 million tonnes in December, down 0.2 percent from a year earlier, ...

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• 27 January

  Weakening dollar helps propel oil to 3-year high

  Bloomberg Oil just got an extra tailwind from a weakening dollar as this month is shaping up to be the best January for black gold in 12 years. That’s because when the greenback is losing value, investors tend to flock to commodities as a store of value, and this is coming on the back of a record streak of declines ...

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• 27 January

  Kuwait cuts oil, gas output target

  

  Bloomberg Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Co. reduced its output target for oil and natural gas due to the drop in crude prices that started in 2014, Chief Executive Officer Sheikh Nawaf Saud Al-Sabah said. Kufpec, a unit of state-run Kuwait Petroleum Corp., revised its production goal for 2020 to 150,000 barrels a day of oil equivalent from 200,000 barrels a ...

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• 27 January

  Genel Energy expects drop in production for third year

  

  Bloomberg Iraqi Kurdistan-focussed Genel Energy expects oil and gas production to fall for a third year in 2018, it said, as it shifts its focus to two new gas fields. The decline in production is due to a continuing slide in output from the Taq Taq field, once considered Genel’s flagship field, after the well hit water in 2016. Genel’s ...

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