December, 2016

• 18 December

  OPEC threatened by Oklahoma town with surging supplies

  

    Bloomberg For OPEC, there are few enemies more fearsome than the tiny Oklahoma town of Cushing. With oil inventories at Cushing creeping near an all-time high, US benchmark futures prices are struggling to advance despite the promised production cuts agreed to by OPEC, Russia and other producers. And the storage tanks are likely to stay full as refiners park ...

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• 18 December

  Libya’s ‘Elephant,’ Sharara crude oil fields not operational yet

  

    Bloomberg Libyan oil-facility guards prevented two of the country’s biggest fields from resuming production, days after the National Oil Corp. reached an agreement to restart operations there to boost output in the politically divided OPEC state. The El Feel, or Elephant, and Sharara fields still aren’t operational after they were shut more than a year and a half ago, ...

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• 18 December

  De Beers to flood its subarctic diamond mine

  

    Bloomberg Anglo American Plc’s De Beers will flood a massive diamond mine located beneath a subarctic lake in Canada’s Northwest Territories after failing to find a buyer. De Beers will begin inundating tunnels at its Snap Lake mine in early January, it said in a statement distributed recently. In April, it put the site on care and maintenance, saying ...

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• 18 December

  World’s largest iron-ore project hailed as Brazil recovery sign

  

    Bloomberg Vale SA is betting on the world’s biggest iron-ore project as a way to become more competitive with its largest rivals. For Brazil, the $14 billion S11D mine is a rare bright spot amid the country’s longest recession on record. “This is a confident affirmation that yes, Brazil will return to growth,” Minister of Mines & Energy Fernando ...

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• 18 December

  Murdoch’s foes plan proposals to restrict Fox in Sky transaction

  

    Bloomberg Citizens who are campaigning against Rupert Murdoch’s plan to gain full control of Europe’s dominant pay-TV company are seeking to hamper the 11.7 billion-pound ($14.6 billion) deal through the UK Parliament. Hacked Off, a media accountability advocacy group formed during the phone-hacking scandal that thwarted Murdoch’s first takeover attempt for Sky Plc in 2011, is preparing to propose ...

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• 18 December

  Denmark is open to sell stakes in state assets

    Bloomberg Denmark’s government, which owns stakes in 27 companies including Dong Energy A/S and SAS AB, is prepared to sell off everything that doesn’t affect its ability to protect critical infrastructure. Though there are currently no concrete plans to move ahead with a specific divestment, the administration is “clearly open” to selling, Finance Minister Kristian Jensen said in an ...

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• 18 December

  UK clean energy sector shrinks after govt subsidy cuts

  

    Bloomberg The UK’s renewable and low-carbon energy sector shrank by 8.7 percent last year, partly because of cuts to subsidies. The sector, from wind farms to electric vehicles, turned over $52.5bn in 2015, provisional figures by Office for National Statistics showed. That’s lower than the 46.2 billion pound recorded in 2014. Acquisitions of capital assets fell by 39 percent ...

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• 18 December

  Buses enter rebel Aleppo to resume evacuations

  

    Aleppo / AFP Buses began entering the last rebel-held parts of Aleppo on Sunday to resume the evacuation of thousands of increasingly desperate Syrian civilians and rebels trapped in the besieged enclave. As international alarm grew over the plight of the residents including women, children, the sick and wounded, the UN Security Council was to vote on whether to send ...

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• 18 December

  NATO chief defends decision to stay out of Syrian war

    Berlin / AFP NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg on Sunday defended the alliance’s decision to refrain from stepping into the war in Syria, saying doing so would only make matters worse. All 28 NATO members belong to the US-led coalition battling the IS group but they are not directly involved in the Syrian conflict. “We are experiencing in Syria a horrible ...

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• 18 December

  Iraqi tribal paramilitaries executed prisoners: HRW

    Baghdad / AFP Iraqi pro-government tribal militiamen summarily executed four men suspected of being members of the IS group in the country’s north, Human Rights Watch said on Sunday. The rights group said that the killings took place on November 29 near the village of Shayalat al-Imam, located some 70 kilometres (40 miles) south of Mosul, the last IS-held Iraqi ...

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