Tullow Oil has sold the first output from its big new offshore development in Ghana, enabling it to begin paying down the $4.7bn debt that has strained its finances for the past two years.
Oil is due to begin flowing from the Tweneboa-Enyenra-Ntomme deepwater project next month and the first customer will be Royal Dutch Shell, which is due to ship 650,000 barrels from the field at the end of August.
The start of operations in the Ten field, 45km off the coast of Ghana, will mark a turning point for the UK-based Tullow, which has pressed ahead with the $4bn project in the teeth of falling oil prices and rising debts. The company launched a this month to increase financial headroom.
Aidan Heavey, chief executive, said the opening of the Ten field would lead to gradual deleveraging from the fourth quarter onward while freeing up resources for planned developments in Uganda and Kenya.
Net production from Ten is expected to be 80,000 barrels per day once it reaches full capacity around the end of this year, representing a 60 per cent increase in Tullow’s output.
The project was conceived during the boom era of $100-a-barrel oil and Mr Heavey admitted it would have been much harder to get off the ground today, with prices at around $45 a barrel. But with most of the capital expenditure out of the way, he said, Tullow would now reap the benefits of a large and productive field with expected operating costs of $8-9 a barrel — about half the level of mature UK fields.
“We’ve now got a business fit for the new oil price environment,” Mr Heavey added.
Shares in Tullow have fallen by 86 per cent since 2012 but they spiked by almost 6 per cent on Wednesday to 210.5p as the positive progress report on the Ten field was accompanied by stronger than expected.
The Africa-focused company reported a net profit of $30m in the six months to June 30, compared with a $68m loss in the same period last year, and much better than analysts’ consensus forecast for a $196m loss. The positive results were aided by aggressive cost-cuts and came in spite of a shutdown at Tullow’s Jubilee oilfield in Ghana in April.
Al Stanton, analyst at RBC Capital, said: “Tullow is turning a corner, albeit with a few bumps on the way, but the share price drop below 200p has provided investors with an opportunity to buy stock in a portfolio that includes sizeable stakes in world-class projects.”
The falling oil price is not yet delivering the hit to broader market sentiment that it did in the first few months of the year.
When was diving towards its 12-year low of about $27 a barrel in January, it was causing a right old kerfuffle in the stock market.
But Brent’s roughly 15 per cent retreat from its high of $52.80 last month coincides with Wall Street at a record high.
Why? What is the difference this time?
Well, first off, the latest dip — a few sharp up-and-down daily moves aside — has been fairly orderly.
Traders are not panicking because they have already been through a plunge to much lower levels and know the playbook.
They know, for example, that the market’s automatic stabiliser works quite well. If oil prices fall much lower, US rigs will start to be mothballed again and production will ease.
Billions of dollars worth of investments have already been shelved by oil companies.
Also, there should be less uncertainty about how lower oil prices transmit through the economy.
In particular, at the start of the year there was much fear that banks were badly exposed to energy-based credit.
It now seems those worries were overdone. The most vulnerable energy companies will have been culled.
Strategas Research notes that the latest pullback in oil prices has not led to any “meaningful deterioration” in spreads for the high-yield energy bond sector.
The Board of MRPL will meet on August 1 for approval options to raise public shareholding up to 25 per cent as per SEBI directive, a senior official said.
Statoil said the oil and gas industry must work harder to increase efficiency in an era of prolonged price weakness after the Norwegian group announced a surprise net loss for the second quarter of this year.
Eldar Saetre, chief executive, said there was “a lot more to be done” to cut costs as he shaved another $1bn off ’s capital expenditure budget for this year.
Statoil has reduced its operating expenses by 18 per cent in the past year but the measures were not enough to prevent a net loss of $28m in the three months to June 30 as low oil and gas prices continued to weigh on performance.
Mr Saetre said Statoil and its peers had come a long way in built up when oil was trading at over $100 a barrel before crashing in 2014.
“Operators have started to work together but it is a very long journey and it also needs to involve our suppliers,” he said. “The industry has built in a lot of complexity over many years and we need to go back and work out what is really necessary.”
More efficient ways of working had allowed Statoil to halve the time it takes to drill a well since 2013, he said. Measures such as these were allowing capital expenditure to be reduced without cancelling or delaying exploration.
Statoil said it expected to invest $12bn in capital projects this year, down from previous guidance for $13bn. This followed a on Tuesday.
A partial recovery in oil prices from a 13-year low in February has eased some pressure on the industry but prices have fallen back below $45 in recent days as supplies of crude oil and refined products continue to outweigh demand.
Mr Saetre said the over the past two years would eventually lead to a tightening of production capacity but it was impossible to predict when the cycle would turn. In the meantime, he expected the market to remain “nervous” and volatile.
In common with other big oil and gas producers, Statoil is battling to defend its dividend as profits come under pressure. The group introduced a scheme in February that allows shareholders to receive their payouts in shares — a move that helped keep the dividend stable at 22 cents in the second quarter while reducing its drain on cash.
Shares in Statoil were down 2.67 per cent on Wednesday morning at DKr138.70 in response to the worse than expected . The net operating loss of $28m was down from a profit of $122m in the same period last year and fell well short of analysts’ consensus forecast for a profit of $313m.
Michael Alsford at Citigroup attributed the “weak” results to increased tax charges and lower earnings from refining, crude trading and gas marketing. However, he was encouraged by a 6 per cent increase in upstream production to almost 2m barrels of oil equivalent a day, as well as progress in cutting costs.
Pre-tax operating profits were up from last year at $913m but missed analysts’ expectations for $1.37bn.
Kazakhstan’s state oil company has initiated legal proceedings against Romania after prosecutors froze its shares in the country’s largest oil refinery, disrupting plans to sell a controlling stake to a Chinese company.
Kazmunaigas submitted a “notice of investment dispute” — the first step in a legal process that could lead to international arbitration — to the Romanian government, according to a letter from the company’s lawyers seen by the FT.
The dispute is the latest obstacle for Kazakhstan’s ambitious , which was announced last year with much fanfare but has made little progress.
Kazmunaigas in late April agreed to sell a 51 per cent stake in Kazmunaigas International, the subsidiary that owns the Petromidia refinery in Romania, to CEFC, a private Chinese company, for $680m.
But only days later, Romania’s Directorate for the Investigation of Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT), a unit of the public prosecutor’s office, named Kazmunaigas as a party in a corruption probe into the privatisation of the refinery in the early 2000s and froze its assets.
“Romania is using its governmental power to undermine that transaction and re-nationalise the assets,” Kazmunaigas lawyers said in the letter to the Romanian government.
Kazakhstan is itself no stranger to , and Kazmunaigas has several times increased its stakes in major projects following pressure from the Kazakh government.
Kazmunaigas rejects the Romanian case against it, pointing out that it bought the refinery in 2007, several years after the privatisation took place and with the blessing of the Romanian authorities.
“This doesn’t have any relation to us,” said Daniyar Berlibayev, deputy chief executive of Kazmunaigas. He said that the Romanian action had already led to the deal with CEFC being delayed, with the completion date extended from October to the end of the year. “In these conditions it’s not possible for the deal to be completed,” he said.
Kazmunaigas’s troubles in Romania also highlight how the oil price slide is forcing the Kazakh state company to rethink its expansive international plans.
It bought the Romanian refinery in 2007 amid hopes that it would be part of a wider network of assets to handle the oil shipped from the massive Kashagan field. But nine years later, the Kashagan field has yet to start production and Kazmunaigas has invested about $4bn into its Romanian assets that are now being valued in the CEFC deal at $1.3bn.
Kazmunaigas and CEFC had pledged $3bn of future investment under the deal, but are now looking to Georgia and Bulgaria rather than Romania, according to Azamat Zhangulov, senior vice-president at Kazmunaigas International.
The probe comes as part of a broader clampdown on corruption in Romania, which has seen high-ranking officials, including former prime minister Adrian Nastase, jailed for graft.
Prosecutors said they had frozen KMG assets and stakes worth 3bn lei ($740m) — the estimated cost to the state budget of alleged illegal activities carried out by the refinery’s former owners, with the assistance of Romanian officials. Kazmunaigas claimed in its letter that the value of the seized assets was $2.1bn.
The revival of the investigation, which has been running since 2006, comes ahead of Romanian general elections expected in November. A former minister familiar with the case dismissed fears of politicisation of the investigation, noting that representatives from all major parties had been named as suspects.
The state oil firms currently have 188 LPG bottling plants with a bottling capacity of around 15.2 million metric tonne per annum.
Natural gas hydrates are ice-like combinations of natural gas and water found in oceans and polar regions.
In today’s Russia, privatisation can mean one state company buying another.
So it is that state oil group Rosneft, Russia’s largest oil producer, has emerged as a leading contender in the sale of a controlling stake in Bashneft, the country’s sixth-largest oil company. The move is counterintuitive: Rosneft is 69.5 per cent owned by the Russian state and itself on the list of assets due for imminent privatisation.
If successful, an acquisition of Bashneft would further consolidate the Russian oil sector under the control of Igor Sechin, Rosneft’s powerful chief executive. Mr Sechin has already transformed Rosneft from a bit player to the world’s largest listed oil company by output in the past decade, buying up assets that had previously been owned by Yukos and spending $55bn to buy TNK-BP in 2013.
“With scale comes power,” said Ildar Davletshin, energy analyst at Renaissance Capital. “With Bashneft, I think Rosneft will control almost half of Russian output which will make it super powerful in terms of setting the framework for the industry.”
Rosneft, which had previously disavowed interest in Bashneft, earlier this month said it would consider bidding and several people familiar with the discussions confirmed its interest. On Tuesday, Russian news agencies Interfax and Tass reported that it had submitted a preliminary bid, along with several other suitors including privately owned Lukoil, the second largest Russia oil company by output. Several Rosneft spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment.
Bashneft’s current market value is Rbs570bn ($8.6bn), meaning a controlling stake would be worth $4.3bn.
The potential deal marks the latest twist in the company’s convoluted history. It was privatised in the early 2000s, only to be renationalised in 2014 after its oligarch owner, Vladimir Yevtushenkov, was placed under house arrest.
Some in Moscow’s business circles suspect the proceedings against Mr Yevtushenkov were orchestrated by Mr Sechin, who had first raised the possibility of buying Bashneft a year earlier. Mr Sechin has rejected this, telling Bloomberg his supposed involvement was “a red herring.”
“They’ve had their eye on Bashneft since 2013. It’s not a shock to hear they’re interested,” said James Henderson, Russian oil specialist at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.
Rosneft’s renewed interest in Bashneft has stirred controversy in Moscow. Last week, Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for president Vladimir Putin, said that “an understanding” had been reached within the government and the Kremlin that state-owned companies should not participate in the privatisation programme.
But on Tuesday Mr Peskov said that Rosneft “formally speaking, is not a state company” since it is owned indirectly via a holding company. “Of course, there are different opinions on this,” he added. In private, other government officials have been more critical.
Bashneft is one of the most attractive assets put up for sale under a privatisation programme announced by Mr Putin earlier this year amid tumbling oil prices. It is one of the few Russian oil companies that has succeeded in significantly increasing output in recent years, with production rising 55 per cent from 2010 to 424,000 barrels a day this year.
The potential sale of a controlling stake in the company has attracted a wide range of interested buyers, including a group set up by a former chief executive of Rosneft and a refinery part-owned by a former classmate of Mr Putin’s.
“There’s a line from here to the Kremlin to buy Bashneft,” said a person familiar with the privatisation process.
Analysts at Otkritie, a bank, argued that Rosneft would be the best buyer for Bashneft. “Integrating Bashneft would be yet another mark in the already impressive list of M&A deals for the state champion,” they said in a note that was circulated to journalists by Rosneft representatives.
Additional reporting by Max Seddon and Kathrin Hille
The state oil firms currently have 188 LPG bottling plants with a bottling capacity of around 15.2 million metric tonne per annum.
ONGC paid Rs 4,500 per tonne cess on crude oil it produced from almost all its fields including prime Mumbai High, till February 2016.
USGS said this discovery was the result of the most comprehensive gas hydrate field venture in the world to date, made up of scientists from India, Japan and the US.
State-owned oil marketing companies have since May distributed 1.8 million liquefied petroleum gas connections under a new program targeting the extremely poor.
Discovery also comes as countries like India and China seek to slash their dependence on higher polluting energy sources like coal.
Oil companies have tens of thousands of employees, tens of billions of dollars in reserves, and decades of experience in running large investment projects.
Yet time and again big oil companies prove themselves incapable of completing their projects on time and on budget.
In 2009 ’s Gorgon, a liquefied natural gas project in north-west Australia, was expected to cost $37bn and start production in 2014. It has ended up costing about $54bn and came on stream this year. Soon after it started, it suffered a gas leak that meant production had to be .
, a $50bn oil development in the Caspian Sea in Kazakhstan, took nine years to move into production after it was given the go-ahead in 2004.
Within weeks of celebrating first oil, the international consortium running the project was forced to shut it down after corrosive gas was discovered to be leaking from pipelines. Production is expected to restart next year.
Those are far from isolated occurrences. A study of 365 oil and gas “megaprojects” by Ernst & Young, the professional services firm, found 64 per cent faced cost overruns and 73 per cent were behind schedule.
Of the 20 largest, only seven were being delivered in line with the budget approved when the final investment decision was taken. Three were running 75-100 per cent over their initial budget, and the average cost overrun was 23 per cent.
Analysis published in June by McKinsey, the management consultancy, showed eight recent large oil and gas projects had ended up costing more than twice as much as originally estimated.
“The industry has got a real problem,” says Chris Pateman-Jones of Ernst & Young. “Projects are becoming larger and more complex and more challenging . . . Even if they were to hit their targets, they could still be uneconomic.”
Such analysis illustrates the quandary facing the oil majors such as and Chevron, challenged by the boom in shale oil and gas production from their smaller, nimbler rivals in North America and by state-controlled rivals in resource-rich countries. Their fortunes are also threatened by policies to that are curbing demand for fossil fuels.
Yet with oil prices low and capital spending plans slashed, the prices of oil services and equipment are falling. So, this could be a good time to start spending on projects that will come into production as oil prices recover.
But such a strategy will only pay off if those projects are completed efficiently. “To reap the benefits of investing in these large projects at the bottom of the cycle, it’s critical that the operators deliver them on time and on budget,” says Angus Rodger of Wood Mackenzie, the research company. “The industry’s recent record at delivering major projects has been dismal, so that needs to improve.”
Even before the oil price crash of 2014, large developments were falling out of favour because of rising costs and declining profits across the sector. In 2007-13 there were about 40 large projects approved by the oil and gas industry worldwide each year, Mr Rodger says. Last year there were just eight, and this year there are likely to be about 10.
Chevron has signalled a shift away from large projects towards smaller investments, including in in North America.
But even those that do have shale reserves find it hard to compete with their smaller, more agile rivals such Devon Energy and EOG Resources, which have made all the running in the industry. In shale, bigger is not better.
For big oil companies, projects such as deepwater oilfields or liquefied natural gas plants will continue to be critical to their future.
There are steps that they can take to improve the economics of those investments, some of them learned from other industries.
One is to use new technologies to cut costs. 3D printing, for example, can reduce the need for large inventories of parts to be kept or delivered to projects that are often in remote locations. Another is better contract design that gives suppliers an incentive to hold down costs.
“The history of the industry is that there has been an adversarial relationship between operators and contractors not because they are bad people, but because the business incentives set it up that way,” Mr Pateman-Jones says. “I think we will move to much more effective ways of delivering projects.”
If projects cannot be made more efficient, he adds, then they may never get off the ground. “If I were investing in some of these really big projects, I would be questioning whether they really made sense over a long period of time.”
The extent to which fossil fuels and renewable energy sources enjoy public support through subsidy has become a highly charged subject in continuing discussions about how to curb .
Statistical analysis by the International Energy Agency shows there are large transfers from the public purse that encourage the consumption of polluting fuels.
The IEA calculates that the global subsidy bill for fossil fuels stood at about $490bn in 2014, although reductions in the market price of oil, gas and coal since then will have lessened that total. Recent could help governments attempting to reform or scrap this level of taxpayer support, the IEA argues.
Subsidies to aid the deployment of renewable energy technologies were $112bn in 2014, with another $23bn spent on supporting biofuels. So, while many developed countries are increasing financial backing for the expansion of green energy supplies, total subsidy support for “dirty” fuels across the world still exceeds that for renewables by a considerable margin.
China stands out among leading countries by spending billions of dollars a year in subsidising the production and consumption of both fossil fuels and renewables.
Yet most countries can be divided into those that put taxpayers’ money into subsidies for carbon-intensive forms of energy and those favouring greener alternatives.
Although richer OECD countries are big producers of CO2 emissions, they also dominate the list of leading backers of green energy. It is non-OECD countries that lead the list of carbon subsidisers.
Data show that in some oil-producing states, large-scale subsidies of public consumption of fossil fuels represent between 15 per cent and 20 per cent of GDP. Iran, Libya, Venezuela and Turkmenistan fall into this band.
Optimism on currency benefits helped to lift to its highest level since 2008 as it claimed the largest riser spot on the FTSE 100.
Analysts at Barclays raised the private equity company’s price target to 680p, up from 595p.
They expect the stock to benefit from weakness in sterling compared with the dollar and euro after the UK’s decision to leave the EU. The stock rose 3.3 per cent to 610.5p.
3i’s largest asset is Action, the discount retailer, which the company recently revalued.
Analysts suggest that Action stands to benefit from the possible risk of recession in Europe and point out its other large assets are defensively positioned. 3i stock has risen by 29.4 per cent so far this year compared with 7.5 per cent for the FTSE 100.
Gold miner was the biggest faller on the FTSE 100 after indicating that issues at the Tongon mine in the Côte d’Ivoire will hit production. The stock lost 3.4 per cent to £85.50.
Randgold has gained 106.4 per cent this year and has benefited from strong appetite for gold against a volatile market backdrop. The gold price edged down against the dollar and other precious metal stocks weakened on Monday.
FTSE 250 gold miner was one of the worst performing stocks on the index and lost 2.6 to 544.5p. , which mines silver and gold, lost 1.6 per cent to £18.01.
Despite the day’s losses, miners such as Acacia have over recent weeks helped to boost the FTSE 250 index following its initial slump in response to June’s Brexit vote. The index is now within 2 per cent of its level before the vote.
The London benchmark FTSE 100 index slipped 0.3 per cent, or 20.45 points, to 6,710.13 on Monday.
Other energy companies were some of the biggest fallers on the FTSE 100 on Monday. Brent crude sank to its lowest level since May. fell 2.6 per cent to £20.39 while fell by 2.6 per cent to 440.4p.
Wealth manager s’s Place rose sharply after Deutsche Bank raised its price target to 885p from 825p. Its share price was up 2 per cent to 888p.
The company’s share price has outperformed competitors since the vote to leave the EU, which sparked market volatility and the risk of retail outflows across the industry.
“Notwithstanding a potential slowdown in the wider economy post-Brexit, we continue to see SJP as strongly positioned; indeed, Brexit arguably provides extra opportunity for the group’s advisers to engage with their clients, and in a world of even lower bond yields the demand and need for advice is likely to have further increased,” analysts at Deutsche Bank wrote.
was another major riser on the FTSE 250, rising 4.9 per cent to 328.8p after merger interest from and .
The company has recently parted company with its chief executive. Rank Group lost 0.5 per cent to 235.9p while 888 jumped 3.4 per cent to 229.5p.
LONDON — As energy prices start to rebound, a group of workers in the North Sea are gearing up for a strike, saying the industrywide cuts have been too deep.
The labor action, by unions representing about 400 maintenance workers on seven oil production platforms operated by , is part of the broad struggle to find a new equilibrium.
“Pressure is mounting not just in the North Sea but in many different regions for producers to start spending as oil prices rise,” said Richard Mallinson, an analyst at Energy Aspects, a London-based research firm.
When oil prices soared to more than $100 a barrel, costs followed. Oil companies spent heavily to ramp up production and invested heavily in big, expensive projects.
The drop in prices naturally prompted a sharp pull back. Oswald Clint, an analyst at Bernstein Research in London, estimates that the industry has cut operating costs by about 45 percent in the United States, and 20 percent elsewhere.
So far, contract workers like the ones threatening the strike have borne the brunt of the pain, in terms of layoffs and pay cuts. Their employers, largely service providers, have seen a significant reduction in what they can charge the operators like Shell for drilling, laying pipe, painting platforms, and just about everything else.
The looming strike in the North Sea — along with the other recent signs of strife among oil service companies — may mean that it will be hard to squeeze out further savings. And rising prices, now around $45 a barrel, give producers less cover for passing on the pain.
The labor unions in the North Sea have said their members won’t work overtime on Monday, and will begin a full-fledged 24-hour stoppage on Tuesday. The job actions, which the unions plan to continue over the coming weeks, are not expected to lead to reduced production, at least in the early stages.
“We understand there is a downturn in the North Sea,” said John Boland, an official of Unite, which is helping to organize the strike. “But the level of cuts being proposed are too much.”
Signs of labor unrest have been bubbling up in recent months.
In late June, oil workers in Argentina took action, demanding higher pay. A strike by Norwegian oil workers over pay and more flexible work practices was narrowly averted this month. In April, a brief work stoppage by Kuwaiti oil workers sharply cut the country’s production.
Oil service providers are also hoping for some relief.
Paal Kibsgaard, the chief executive of , one of the world’s largest oilfield services companies, told analysts on Friday that prices had reached the “bottom of the cycle.” He said that Schlumberger was now “looking to recover the temporary pricing concessions we have made or to renegotiate those contracts which at present show no promise of becoming financially viable.”
As a high cost, mature region, Britain’s North Sea has been hit particularly hard by the slowdown. Over the last two years, the work force directly employed by the industry has fallen by nearly 8,000 to 34,000, while another 50,000 indirect jobs have been lost.
Some of the remaining workers have already been forced to accept reduced pay or changes to their rotations. For instance, they may be required to stay at sea for three consecutive weeks, instead of two, a shift that saves money in helicopter flights and other costs.
“It is clear that in order for the North Sea oil and gas industry to remain competitive in the lower oil price environment, structural change is needed,” Shell said in a statement, calling the planned strike “highly regrettable.”
The workers planning to strike on Tuesday are employed by Wood Group, a large oil services company based in Aberdeen, Scotland. Wood Group then contracts them to Shell, which has considerable leverage over the people employed.
The unions say that a new contract proposal will, in effect, cut pay as much as 30 percent. Wood Group puts the average at 3 percent.
But the job actions may not hurt Shell much, at least in the short term. The people involved, Shell says, are maintenance workers, not crucial operating personnel.
Shell has already said that it has its entire portfolio under review for potential sale. Analysts say the platforms threatened by the strike, which are relatively old, might be candidates. And Mr. Clint of Bernstein Research estimates that Shell’s share of production from the seven platforms is just 14,000 barrels a day, a tiny fraction of its overall 3.6 million barrels.
“It will have no impact on us,” said Philip Robinson, a Shell spokesman. “We have prepared.”
Debt-laden Vedanta Ltd, previously known as Sesa Sterlite Ltd, had on Friday upped its offer to buy out the minority shareholders in its cash-rich subsidiary, Cairn India.
The Minister said government was planning to implement the Direct Benefit Transfer scheme in kerosene after its successful implementation in LPG.
The price mismatch is injecting tensions into long-term LNG agreements, driving a wedge between buyers and sellers such as GAIL and Gazprom.
WASHINGTON — Entrepreneurs and corrupt officials across Africa have used shell companies to hide profits from the sale of natural resources and the bribes paid to gain access to them, according to records leaked from a Panamanian law firm.
Owners of the hidden companies include, from Nigeria alone, three ministers, several senior employees of the national oil company and two former state governors who were convicted of laundering ill-gotten money from the oil industry, new reports about Africa based on the show. The owners of diamond mines in Sierra Leone and safari companies in Kenya and Zimbabwe also created shell companies.
Some of the assets cycled through the shell companies were used to buy yachts, private jets, Manhattan penthouses and luxury homes in Beverly Hills, Calif., the law firm documents show.
Articles posted on Monday by the , and reports being published this week by news media organizations in 17 African countries, underscore the critical role that secret shell companies can play in facilitating tax evasion, bribery and other crimes. In Africa, offshore finance often underlies the exploitation of mineral wealth, with the benefits bypassing the public and going largely to wealthy executives and the government officials they pay off.
The 11.5 million documents taken from the Panamanian law firm, , by a source who has not been identified have been the subject of news coverage around the world since April, shedding new light on the murky world of offshore finance. The Panama Papers project, organized by the international journalists’ consortium, has involved more than 400 reporters around the world and has set off criminal investigations in many countries.
Mossack Fonseca has said it should not be blamed for wrongdoing by its customers. “We merely help incorporate companies, and before we agree to work with a client in any way, we conduct a thorough due-diligence process,” the firm said in a statement. The statement noted that the firm had not been charged with criminal wrongdoing in nearly 40 years of operation.
But the journalists found that Mossack Fonseca had sometimes missed or ignored evidence of criminal investigations or charges against its clients. Though the records show that the law firm did scrutinize many of those who sought its services, its reviews were often belated or incomplete, according to the articles’ main author, , who works at the consortium’s office in Washington.
Several major figures examined in the new Papers reports have previously been accused of wrongdoing, and some are under criminal investigation or have been charged. But the details of their use of shell companies had not previously been disclosed.
The consortium identified 37 companies created by the law firm that had been named in court actions or government investigations involving natural resources in Africa. All told, Mossack Fonseca’s files revealed offshore companies that were established to own or do business with oil, natural gas and mining operations in 44 of Africa’s 54 countries.
In one major criminal case, Farid Bedjaoui, a nephew of a former Algerian foreign minister, has been accused by Italian prosecutors of arranging $275 million in bribes to help Saipem, an Italian oil and gas services company, win pipeline contracts in Algeria worth $10 billion. Mr. Bedjaoui, called “Mr. Three Percent” in news media reports for his purported share of the payoffs, has denied the charges.
The journalists’ consortium found that Mossack Fonseca had created 12 of the 17 shell companies linked to Mr. Bedjaoui that Italian prosecutors are investigating as possible conduits for bribes from 2007 to 2010. One of them, Collingdale Consultants Inc., was used to divert as much as $15 million to associates and the family of Chakib Khelil, Algeria’s energy minister from 1999 to 2010, according to the charges.
Mr. Bedjaoui, who has Algerian, French and Canadian citizenship, is accused of spinning a complex web to hide his money, with 16 bank accounts in Algeria, Dubai, Hong Kong, Lebanon, London, Singapore and Switzerland. His assets have been seized in Canada and France, where the police reportedly took a 140-foot yacht and paintings by Warhol, Miró and Dalí. United States officials are examining three New York properties bought by Mr. Bedjaoui, including a $28.5 million Fifth Avenue condominium, records show.
Though the investigation of Mr. Bedjaoui first made headlines in February 2013, internal emails at Mossack Fonseca suggest that the law firm did not notice the trouble until seven months later, while conducting an internet search on another client.
Pressed by officials in the British Virgin Islands, where most of the shell companies were registered, Mossack Fonseca said it was unable to provide contact details for employees at the law firm who had served as nominal directors for some of the companies under investigation.
The law firm’s managing director in the British Virgin Islands wrote in an internal email that not having “the basic information on employees is totally embarrassing,” and might result in a fine.
While Mossack Fonseca reported Mr. Bedjaoui’s activities to the authorities in the British Virgin Islands in 2013, the law firm continued working with one of his companies, Rayan Asset Management, until at least November 2015.
Offshore middlemen have incentives “not to know what the companies they are forming are going to be used for,” said Heather Lowe, a lawyer at Global Financial Integrity, an anticorruption group in Washington. “If they know too much, they might have to turn away business.”
As a result, she said, “there’s often no gatekeeper to prevent illicit money from entering the financial system.”
Kola Aluko, an oil and aviation mogul and one of four defendants accused of helping to cheat the Nigerian government out of $1.8 billion in proceeds from oil sales, was another jet-setting user of Mossack Fonseca’s services who was examined by the consortium.
The New York Times last year that Mr. Aluko had used shell companies to buy two Beverly Hills mansions for $39 million and two others in Santa Barbara, Calif., for $33 million. In May, shortly after one of the Beverly Hills homes was sold for $21 million, a Nigerian court froze Mr. Aluko’s assets, including a yacht once rented by Beyoncé and Jay Z, two Manhattan penthouses, 132 houses and apartments in Nigeria, $67 million in bank accounts, 58 cars and three airplanes.
Mr. Aluko told the journalists’ consortium that he had never been convicted of a crime and that speculation about wrongdoing on his part was “misguided.”
“As a private citizen, I organize my business and family matters to maximize convenience, as well as operational and administrative efficiency,” he said in a statement.
In another case, the consortium found 131 companies set up by Mossack Fonseca for the Israeli mining magnate Benjamin Steinmetz and his holding company. (The holding company, BSG Resources, told the journalists’ consortium that it had “no familiarity” with many of the companies.) One company, Koidu Limited, mines diamonds in Sierra Leone and is the target of protests and complaints from local residents and environmental advocates.
More surprising, perhaps, is the use of shell companies by safari operators in several African countries — at least 30 offshore companies set up by Mossack Fonseca, the consortium found. As in other African ventures, the offshore operations make it possible to conceal money earned in developing countries but moved elsewhere from the tax authorities or the public.
The journalists’ consortium posted with its articles an to test knowledge about Africa, its natural resources and offshore finance.
The new rule applies to outlets affiliated to public sector oil marketing companies. The circular does not say anything about the retail outlets of private brands.
Here’s a look at what’s coming this week.
TECHNOLOGY
This is a big week for tech company earnings, as Twitter, Facebook, Apple and Alphabet — Google’s parent company — are expected to report their quarterly financials. The theme remains the same for all four companies: to describe how well they are monetizing their mobile customers, whether it is iPhone sales for Apple or the performance of mobile advertising for Facebook, Twitter and Google. Mike Isaac
BANKING
Shareholders of the German exchange operator Deutsche Börse have until Tuesday to approve with the London Stock Exchange Group. Nearly two weeks ago, the exchange agreed to for investors in Deutsche Börse to exchange their stock for shares in a new holding company for the combined entity. The vote by Britons to leave the European Union has raised questions about whether the merger could be completed under its current terms and, in particular, whether the combined entity’s holding company should be based in Britain, as planned. Chad Bray
Second-quarter earnings reports are expected from BP, Shell, Exxon and Chevron.
Ben Stansall / Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Major oil companies are planning to report their second-quarter earnings this week. BP will lead off on Tuesday, and Royal Dutch Shell and Total, of France, will report on Thursday. Exxon, Chevron and Eni, of Italy, will follow on Friday. Shares of most of these companies have performed well this year as investors bet that the industry’s heavy cost-cutting combined with stabilizing oil prices would improve results. In a sign of the pressures on the industry’s work force, maintenance crews on seven Shell platforms in the British North Sea plan to strike for 24 hours on Tuesday to protest reduced pay. Stanley Reed
ECONOMY
The Federal Reserve is unlikely to raise its benchmark interest rate when its policy-making committee meets on Tuesday and Wednesday. The domestic economy continues to expand, and have eased, but Fed officials see little downside in waiting a bit longer. The Fed’s postmeeting statement, however, could indicate the first step toward rate increases later this year. Binyamin Appelbaum
On Wednesday, at 8:30 a.m., the Commerce Department will release its estimate of the change in durable goods orders in June. Economists expect to see an overall drop of 1.1 percent, because of a fall in demand for aircraft. Core activity, which does not include the volatile aviation category, probably rebounded slightly after weakness in the spring. Nelson D. Schwartz
BANKING
Several of Europe’s biggest banks are reporting their second-quarter results this week, among them Deutsche Bank; the British lenders Barclays and Lloyds Banking Group; Santander, of Spain; and the Swiss banks Credit Suisse and UBS. It will be the first time the region’s largest lenders will update the investing public on their financial outlooks since Britain voted to leave the European Union last month. European bank stocks have been hit hard since the June 23 referendum because of uncertainty about the economic impact of the vote.
At the same time, the European Banking Authority is expected on Friday to announce the results of its latest aimed at measuring the ability of European lenders to survive a financial crisis or severe economic downturn. The tests this year will not have a minimum capital threshold for banks, so no institution can fail, or pass, the exercise. Instead, the information will be passed on to local banking supervisors, like the Bank of England, to determine if further actions are needed. Chad Bray
AUTOMOBILES
Volkswagen will on Thursday report its second-quarter earnings, which will be weighed down by the cost of the company’s emissions scandal. The company said in a last week that it would show an operating profit of 5.3 billion euros for the first half of 2016 after subtracting €2.2 billion for fines and legal settlements. That sum brings the total set aside for emissions wrongdoing to €18.4 billion. Investors are hoping the carmaker will show progress in improving the profitability of its core Volkswagen brand. Jack Ewing
The Bugey nuclear power plant in Saint-Vulbas. The French utility EDF said it would decide on Thursday on whether to go ahead with the first nuclear power station to be built in Britain since the 1990s.
Philippe Desmazes / Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
UTILITIES
After years of preparatory work, the French utility Électricité de France — better known as EDF — says it will make a decision on Thursday on whether to go ahead with the first nuclear power station to be built in Britain since the 1990s. The plant, at Hinkley Point in southwest England, has become of whether nuclear plants can be built in industrialized countries in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan. Despite the huge cost, about 18 billion pounds, the British government wants the power from the plant to replace aging generating facilities. Stanley Reed
ECONOMY
On Friday, at 8:30 a.m., the Commerce Department will offer its initial estimate of economic growth in the United States in the second quarter. Wall Street economists think growth picked up during April, May and June, and the consensus is predicting an annualized growth rate of 2.6 percent for the period. That represents a considerable increase from the anemic 1.1 percent annual growth rate recorded in the first quarter. Consumer spending provided much of the tailwind, even as businesses remain cautious about new investments. Nelson D. Schwartz
The European Union statistics agency will issue a preliminary estimate on Friday for second-quarter growth in the eurozone as well as the latest inflation and unemployment figures. The data will provide only a hint of the economic impact of Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, which took place near the end of the quarter. Still, growth is expected to slow, from an in the first three months of the year, as eurozone residents became more cautious about spending. Jack Ewing
Japan’s central bank, led by Haruhiko Kuroda, is expected to adopt new measures in its fight against deflation when it meets on Friday.
Toru Hanai / Reuters
The Bank of Japan is widely expected on Friday to take new measures in its fight against deflation. The Japanese central bank pushed its benchmark interest rate this year and has been buying trillions of yen of government debt in an effort to shore up consumer prices and stimulate economic growth. But so far, the policy has not yielded the results it hoped for. Analysts are looking for the bank to reduce rates further below zero or perhaps expand purchases of other kinds of assets, like exchange-traded equity funds. Jonathan Soble
Following this, the oil ministry has begun the process of evaluating the prospects of creating the conglomerate, which will have a huge market value.
For an industry that has a reputation for being safe and steady — and that has made predictability a central component of its pitch to investors — the US oil and gas pipelines sector has had an exciting couple of years.
, the industry’s largest group, reconfigured its corporate structure radically in a $70bn deal in 2014, then cut its dividend 75 per cent last December.
Energy Transfer Equity, another of the leaders in the sector, spent months , agreed a $38bn takeover in September last year, then quickly changed its mind and spent months trying to get out of the deal, finally succeeding in June after a court battle.
While these events were playing out, the market valuations of companies in the sector plunged. , for example, dropped 50 per cent between September 2014 and February of this year.
This year, valuations have been bouncing back. Kinder Morgan’s shares are up 69 per cent from their low point in January.
The past two years, however, have highlighted some fundamental issues with the pipeline companies’ standard business model that remain largely the same as before the crash. The potential for future volatility, depending on oil and gas prices and interest rates, is still there.
The traditional investment case for pipeline businesses presented them as analogous to toll road operators, charging production and trading companies to use their pipes. As a result, they face very little commodity price risk, it was argued, and can pay out a high proportion of their earnings in dividends.
The appeal of those high dividends, particularly compelling at a time of low interest rates, was reinforced for many investors by the use of a tax advantaged structure called a Master Limited Partnership.
The US shale oil and gas production boom of the past decade also created a need for additional pipeline infrastructure, meaning the pipeline operators could offer the prospect of growth as well as income.
The crash in oil prices that began two years ago has punctured those assumptions.
Matt Sallee, a portfolio manager at Tortoise Capital Advisors, a fund management company that specialises in energy and invests in pipeline MLPs, says the slump in pipeline companies’ shares was in part a result of generalist portfolio managers selling all energy stocks indiscriminately.
He acknowledges, though, that there are reasons why pipeline operators are affected by oil and gas prices, including credit risk in their customers. Oil and gas production companies that have gone bankrupt have attempted to drop some of their , and in one landmark case in New York succeeded.
Some pipeline companies have other sources of commodity price exposure, such as processing plants that sell the natural gas liquids they collect. Kinder Morgan sells carbon dioxide, used to squeeze extra production out of oilfields, which has become less valuable as the crude price has fallen.
Net income for 2015 fell 10 per cent at Enterprise Products Partners and 70 per cent at Kinder Morgan, while Williams went from a $2.1bn profit to a $571m loss.
Those weak results have called attention to a longer-term problem: the rate at which pipeline companies have been distributing cash.
Kevin Kaiser, an analyst at Hedgeye Risk Management who has been raising concerns about MLPs since before the crash, argues that it is a widespread issue across the sector: dividends are unsustainably high.
“There is this misunderstanding around that these companies are great cash cows,” he says. “If you look into the numbers, they aren’t.”
Many pipeline companies have capital spending that is higher than the cash they generate from operations. They have to sell shares and borrow money to finance their dividend payments. Energy Transfer Partners, for example, had capital spending of $9.1bn last year and paid dividends of $3.7bn, but earned cash from operations of just $2.7bn. The gap was filled by share issues and borrowing.
The equity issuance is typically linked to acquisitions that are expected to generate growth. As dealmaking for oil and gas assets overall has slowed since 2014, the US pipeline industry has remained active.
Borrowings, too, are presented to investors as ways to finance growth. Launching two issues of senior notes to raise a total of $5.5bn last year, Energy Transfer Partners said that one of the purposes was “to fund growth capital expenditures”.
If the companies are no longer growing, however, those justifications for increased debt and equity issuance become harder to maintain. Kinder Morgan’s dividend cut last year showed that expectations can be self-fulfilling. Investors’ fears that the dividend might be cut drove down the share price, which made raising equity financing more expensive, which meant the dividend had to be cut.
High yields in the sector, including 6.8 per cent for Energy Transfer Equity and 10.4 per cent for Williams, suggest the market sees a significant risk that other companies will follow Kinder Morgan’s example.
For now, the inflows of capital are still coming. US pipeline companies have raised $9bn from share sales so far in 2016, compared with $13.5bn in the whole of last year, according to Dealogic. Low interest rates continue to make the high-yielding shares and units look attractive to some investors.
If they lose their access to financing, though, many companies would face difficulties maintaining their investment programmes, let alone paying their dividends. The supposedly staid pipeline industry could see yet more interesting times.
The pelican is an adaptable bird: built for diving for fish, it will happily consume any other flesh it can cram into its long bill. One caused a sensation in St James’s Park a decade ago by .
The bird is an appropriate symbol for , the 165-year-old maritime services company. Born as a shipping business, to survive it has evolved over the past 15 years into a seller of services to the oil and gas, energy and maritime industries.
Its most recent buy is Return to Scene, a 3D imaging company that played a role in the that determined 96 Liverpool football fans were unlawfully killed. Its software was used to recreate Hillsborough stadium as it was in 1989 so jurors could understand the police mistakes that allowed hundreds to be crushed in terrace pens at an FA Cup semi-final.
Fisher paid £1.9m for the business after its parent, SeaEnergy, went into administration, a victim of the low oil price that has devastated the oil and gas sector.
Nick Henry, chief executive, says is always on the search for such tasty titbits, which build up expertise in profitable niches. Return to Scene’s main work is modelling oil rigs so maintenance engineers can see what job needs doing before they arrive in order to minimise expensive time spent offshore.
Fisher’s share price took a plunge with the oil price last year, falling a third between June and November after profits dropped.
It has had to lay off a third of its oil and gas workforce, 200 people, in Aberdeen and Norway.
But the City has finally given Fisher credit for the spread of its business, Mr Henry says. First it was seen as a shipping company, and took a pasting in 2008 when world trade slumped. Then it was seen as an oil and gas group.
The shares are back above the January 2015 high of £13.99 and also above their level on June 23, pre-Brexit. Revenue and profits slipped slightly in the full year to £438m and £46m respectively (£449m and £48m).
Fisher now has four divisions. It diversified under first who retired in 2012, and then Mr Henry, both former P&O executives.
As well as shipping and maritime support, it has a defence arm and a specialist technical division, which works in the nuclear and other industries. A recent contract was checking that the repair to the crack in the Forth Road Bridge was robust enough to reopen it.
“We are doers. We are not lobbyists. We don’t influence government decisions. Our IP is in people’s brains,” Mr Henry says.
Take the nuclear industry. Fisher, based in Barrow-in-Furness, where , does not have a view on how quickly old reactors should be decommissioned and waste treated.
But it has some clever ideas on how to do it. It sent a robot to Japan to help with the Fukushima nuclear accident clean up as it is a world leader in remote handling, allowing irradiated parts of plants to be reached.
Fisher has also come up with a novel way to dismantle reactor cores, which has won it a four-year, £60m contract with Magnox Limited to decommission the largest of the reactor cores constructed on the site in Winfrith, Dorset.
The challenge is how to do so while maintaining the protective casing around them. It has pioneered a “salami slice” method, where slices are taken off the top by a robot as it is pushed gradually through the top of the casing.
The parts are then cut up again and buried in concrete.
There are 20 more UK reactors to dismantle. “We go for those niche areas where the margins are big,” Mr Henry says.
Another neat line is in James Bond-style miniature submarines. These are used to monitor underground oil and gas infrastructure or to rescue sailors from submarines. Its latest job is a £193m contract for the long-term provision of submarine escape and rescue for the Indian Navy. The two craft will cost £83m while the rest is a 25-year maintenance contract.
Two-thirds of revenues come from outside the UK, but Mr Henry does not believe Brexit is a problem. Its customers are in places such as Australia, Azerbaijan and Angola. “We do not do a lot of business with the EU so we don’t anticipate much impact.”
The money it makes does flow back to the UK. There have been 21 years of rising dividends. About 25 per cent of the shares are held by the original Fisher family trust, which distributes its dividends to seafaring charities.
Fisher is that rare British company that combines technical and financial engineering successfully.
American voters will be following on a television, laptop, phone or Twitter stream as party leaders and delegates meet for the four-day Democratic convention in Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center on Monday, which is expected to nominate Hillary Clinton as presidential candidate.
The convention is the party’s chance to officially nominate the former secretary of state and will also be an opportunity to rally the party for a general election fight, uniting Democrats after a drawn-out primary battle.
First lady Michelle Obama speaks on the opening night, along with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. On Tuesday, when the nominee is chosen, former president Bill Clinton will take to the stage, as will the Mothers of the Movement, an organisation of black women whose children were killed by gun violence.
Then, President Barack Obama and vice-president Joe Biden will speak on Wednesday about “how high the stakes are in this election.” On the last day, presumptive nominee Mrs Clinton and her daughter Chelsea Clinton will address the gathering.
Mr Obama and Mr Biden will argue Mrs Clinton has the experience and steadiness to bring people together to tackle the country’s domestic and geopolitical challenges and get lasting results.
Republican Donald Trump announced his running mate, Indiana governor Mike Pence, just ahead of the GOP meeting in Cleveland. Mrs Clinton and Tim Kaine made their debut as the Democratic presidential ticket in Florida on Saturday. Mr Kaine, a Virginia senator and former governor of the swing state, was announced as Mrs Clinton’s chosen Democratic running mate on Friday.
Leaders of 22 Arab countries are due to meet in their annual Arab League Summit on Monday which will be for the first time in Nouakchott, the Mauritanian capital. The gathering was due to be hosted by Morocco in April, but the kingdom decided to cancel the event saying it wanted to avoid giving a false impression of unity in the Arab world.
“Amid the lack of important decisions and concrete initiatives to submit to the heads of states, this summit will be just another occasion to approve ordinary resolutions and to pronounce speeches that give a false impression of unity,” said the Moroccan foreign ministry in February.
Arab summits have usually showcased Arab disunity, sometimes with drama provided in the shape of public disputes between leaders. In recent years, however, since the seismic Arab uprisings of 2011, the gatherings have become more muted and low-key, garnering little public interest and even less public expectation.
Four countries — Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen — remain in the grip of civil strife with no end in sight. Regional power brokers, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar have interfered by backing their preferred factions in some of these conflicts or, in the case of Yemen, by conducting their own military campaign against a local rebel group.
The rise of Isis is also a challenge, and the region’s authoritarian governments have found it hard to counter the threat by offering reforms to disaffected youths attracted by the group.
Sunni-Shia tensions pitting Saudi Arabia against Iran in wars played out through proxies in Syria and Yemen have further undermined any prospect for regional coherence. Religious discourse fans the sectarian hatred increasing the polarisation and the violence.
With the Middle East in the grip of so many complicated conflicts, there is no expectation of the emergence of any consensus at the gathering on how to restore stability to the region. Against this backdrop, the summit is likely to produce its usual pro forma resolutions which are forgotten when leaders step back on their planes to fly home.
The Philippines’ new president Rodrigo Duterte delivers his first state of the nation address on Monday. It comes after Manila this month won for its territorial claim on islands disputed with China.
His call for peaceful talks echoed across Southeast Asia, highlighting the region’s difficult position following the international tribunal ruling at The Hague. Several countries in the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations have territorial quarrels with Beijing.
Many, especially territorial claimants, face a version of Mr Duterte’s challenge, needing to avoid provoking domestic nationalists and Beijing. Chinese trade, investment and immigration have been an essential force in the rise of a region filled with ambitious emerging economies.
Against the backdrop of the disputed islands ruling, Mr Duterte will deliver his address during a joint session of Congress at the Batasang Pambansa in Quezon City. Some 6,400 policemen will be deployed to secure the Batasan complex, with 4,600 reserve personnel on standby.
Pope Francis visits the former Nazi death camp at Auschwitz on Friday during a visit to Poland. Both his immediate predecessors, Pope Benedict, a German, and Pope John Paul, a Pole, visited the site during their pontificates.
Nazi occupying forces established the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp during the second world war in the southern Polish town of Oswiecim, around 70km (43 miles) from Poland’s second city, Krakow. Between 1940-45 at Auschwitz about 1.5m people, most of them Jews, died before Soviet Red Army troops liberated the camp on January 27 1945.
The visit will take place during Pope Francis’s pre-planned trip to Krakow for an international gathering of Catholic youth.
During a visit to Rome’s synagogue in January, Pope Francis appealed to Catholics to reject anti-Semitism and said the Holocaust, in which some 6m Jews were killed, should remind everyone that human rights should be defended with “maximum vigilance”.
More than 300 Wood Group oil and gas maintenance workers employed at several Royal Dutch Shell platforms in the North Sea plan to for 24 hours on Tuesday in a dispute over pay.
The workers, protesting against changes to pay and working conditions, will also undertake several three-hour stoppages over following weeks.
“It is anticipated that the action will severely disrupt operations on the Shell platforms,” said the Unite union.
It will be the first industrial action of its kind in the offshore industry in almost 30 years.
The oil services company said it was “extremely disappointed” by the decision to take strike action.
The unions said it was likely to “severely disrupt” operations on seven Shell platforms — Shearwater, Gannet, Nelson, Curlew, Brent Alpha, Brent Bravo and Brent Charlie.
Workers at Fawley oil refinery in Hampshire will be striking for 24 hours on Wednesday in a dispute in which it is claimed that foreign workers are being paid less than half that of UK workers at the Southampton site.
About 20 specialist workers, employed by Italian company Nico Industrial Services, will strike for 24 hours at the Esso refinery. This accompanies an overtime ban until Friday.
Unite, the country’s largest union, said that the Nico workers, mainly Bulgarians and Italians, are being paid about £48 for a 10-hour day, while the 270 other workers on the site, employed by other contractors, are paid £125 a day. British workers employed by Nico are paid £125 a day, the union says.
The effect of the strike will be to slow up the site’s refining process as the workers clean out catalyst converter tanks.
Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, a well-respected economist and former US citizen, is to take office as the new president of Peru on Thursday after the country’s tightest election.
Mr Kuczynski won 21 per cent of the popular vote in Peru’s general election on April 10. He faced a run-off vote against Keiko Fujimori, in which he won narrowly with 50.12 per cent.
Mr Kuczynski, aged 77, fought a hard campaign, but must now put together a legislative coalition and win popular support as he takes power with a weak political base.
His centre-right Peruvians for Change party will have just 18 of the 130 seats in Congress, where Ms Fujimori’s rightwing Popular Force will have 73 seats, the first majority any party has held in 20 years.
The second biggest group in Congress, the left-leaning Broad Front party, is critical of Mr Kuczynski’s economic proposals despite supporting him in the runoff vote, a decision aimed at preventing Ms Fujimori’s election. Ms Fujimori is daughter of jailed former President Alberto Fujimori.
The in Portsmouth concludes in the Solent on ‘Super’ Sunday with Land Rover BAR enjoying a home advantage after a strong opening day.
After a shaky start his team on Saturday won two of three races on the first day of the 2016 Louis Vuitton America’s Cup World Series.
A disappointing fifth in the first race was followed by through-the-pack wins in races two and three off Southsea. The results left the team tied with Groupama Team France at the top of the standings.
Ainslie, the most successful Olympic sailor, saw his team sweep to success in last year’s event, beating main rivals Emirates Team New Zealand to the top of the leaderboard by one point. The world series leads to the two-boat AC final against the American defenders off Bermuda in 2017.
Oracle Team USA skipper Jimmy Spithill has stepped up the pressure on the British challengers by declaring he would love to get a win over former teammate Sir Ben.
Spithill said: “It would be great to get the win over Sir Ben and his team. We would like to get a good result here. Ben will have the home town support, and there will be a lot of energy to draw from that, but that’s motivation for us as well.”
Six international teams were competing in hydrofoiling carbon-fibre AC45 catamarans, reaching speeds of more than 40 knots. Last year’s inaugural event attracted more than 25,000 spectators on board 1,650 private and chartered boats.
Meanwhile, this year’s for GC32 hydrofoiling catamaran’s is approaching halfway mark with the fleet in action in Hamburg on Thursday. The fleet of seven GC32s will race in one of Europe’s busiest ports until Sunday, on the waters of the River Elbe.
Last year Denmark’s SAP Extreme Sailing Team had a dramatic capsize, on a day which saw thunderstorms and winds of up to 30 knots (56km/h).
Oman Air and Red Bull Sailing Team have both secured podium spots at every event this season, and heading into Hamburg, the Omanis maintain their lead, but Red Bull Sailing Team, skippered by double Olympic gold medallist Roman Hagara, are close behind.
We are at the bottom. That was the message of Paal Kibsgaard, ’s chief executive, presenting the last week. The rig count figures bear him out; Baker Hughes’ survey of rigs active in the US has risen from 404 at the end of May to 447. Rising rig numbers are a sign that it is once again profitable to drill for oil and gas. But oil traders keep an eye on them to gauge the potential for new supply.
When US onshore oil production was declining, the US rig count did not matter much. The arrival of shale oil, fracked from onshore fields, has changed that. US oil production nearly doubled in the decade to 2015, driven by the success of onshore drilling. Yet the surge in the rig count that accompanied this production growth blended less productive older rigs with more efficient newer ones.
As the oil price fell two years ago, explorers quickly began to shed less effective equipment. Rig counts fell sharply last year (from 1,800 to 700) partly for this reason: the quickest way to cut costs was to eliminate lesser quality equipment. The result is that productivity, in terms of barrels per rig, from each new well there has doubled in the past couple of years. If this improvement is permanent, then one would expect a sharp pick up in oil output as the rig count increases
Shale wells tend to produce a lot of oil quickly, but decline rapidly thereafter. Production can often halve in the first year before stabilising. One reason that onshore oil production has fallen is this natural decline from “legacy” wells. But that decline rate has stabilised as fewer new wells come on stream; meaning less of a drag on overall production. Another plus for supply, and potential negative for prices. Mr Kibsgaard’s optimism may prove premature.
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IOC, the country’s largest oil company, wants the state government entity to remain as a part of the project for smooth operations, sources said.
RIL-BP are currently producing from Dhirubhai-1 and 3 gas field and MA oil and gas field in the Bay of Bengal Block KG-DWN-98/3 or KG-D6.
“Government of India is not going to force or apply force. After consulting and take local community and the state government into confidence then only we can proceed.”
North Sea oil platforms will be hit with the first significant strike in a generation, as hundreds of workers protest against cost-cutting in response to lower oil prices.
A 24-hour stoppage is planned for Tuesday by employees of , an oilfield services company, across eight platforms operated by , the Anglo-Dutch energy group.
The dispute is being closely watched as a test of companies’ ability to force through further cuts in labour costs in the face of union resistance as part of their broader .
Union leaders say workers have already made heavy sacrifices since oil prices collapsed from over $100 a barrel in 2014 to a 12-year low of $28 in January. Prices have since bounced back to around $47 a barrel but that has not been enough to lift the gloom hanging over one of the world’s oldest and highest-cost offshore oil-producing basins.
“Strike action by our members is not a decision they take lightly, but they have been pushed to the limit,” said John Boland, regional officer of Unite, which called the strike together with the RMT union.
By the end of this year, the number of oil and gas jobs in the UK is forecast to have fallen by 8,000 from a peak of 41,700 in 2014, according to the industry group Oil & Gas UK. When support jobs are included the number is expected to have fallen from 453,800 to 330,400 — a .
The brunt of the losses has been felt in Aberdeen, capital of the UK oil industry, where the number of people claiming unemployment benefits has more than doubled since the end of 2014.
People still in work have also faced sacrifices. Figures from oilandgaspeople.com, a recruitment site, show that average pay for an offshore worker has fallen from around £80,000 a year in 2014 to £62,000 now. Kevin Forbes, managing director of the site, said: “The industry has been adapting to a ‘lower for longer’ oil price with wage cuts seen by many companies as the quickest way to reduce costs.”
As well as lower pay, workers have also been forced to accept new shift patterns involving longer stretches away from home. Before the price slump, most companies gave workers three weeks off after a two-week stretch offshore. That has now shifted to a two-weeks-on, two-weeks-off pattern.
“The hardest thing is trying to manage things at home, especially for those of us with kids,” said one offshore worker who did not wish to be named. “When it was two weeks offshore, your wife could just about manage. But now it is a long time for her to be looking after the children on her own — especially if something goes wrong during that time.”
The Wood Group dispute shows how the pressure from low prices is being passed down from producers to suppliers to workers. The Aberdeen-based company announced in May that it had won a three-year extension to its contract to provide maintenance services for Shell, which is itself in the midst of a . Terms were not disclosed but the average 3 per cent cut in pay being imposed on about 400 Wood Group employees working for Shell hints at the squeeze being felt all along the supply chain.
Unions say the cuts amount to as much as 30 per cent for some workers when changes to benefits and allowances are included. More than 98 per cent of those voting in the Unite and RMT ballots backed strike action, with a turnout well over 50 per cent.
Dave Stewart, chief executive of Wood Group’s eastern region, said unions had been offered multiple concessions, adding that his priority was “safeguarding long-term employment” for the workforce.
Shell said it hoped that discussions between Wood Group and its employees would continue in search of a resolution before Tuesday’s strike and a series of shorter planned stoppages in weeks ahead. No immediate disruption is expected to Shell’s operations but analysts said delays to essential maintenance could cause problems if the dispute drags on.
, the Indian mining group controlled by billionaire Anil Agarwal, has offered improved terms for a proposed deal to take greater .
wants to tighten its grip on Cairn India to get better access to the cash on the oil group’s balance sheet and simplify its convoluted corporate structure but the plans have stalled for more than a year.
The deal would merge Vedanta Limited, the Indian-listed subsidiary of Mr Agarwal’s UK-listed group, with Cairn India. Vedanta Limited already owns almost 60 per cent of Cairn India, while Vedanta Limited is in turn 63 per cent owned by Vedanta Resources.
Vedanta has suggested the deal as a way for Cairn India shareholders to access a more diversified resources group, but it has only won lukewarm support for the terms offered when the plan was announced more than a year ago.
, the UK-listed group that sold its Indian operations to Vedanta and remains one of Cairn India’s two large minority investors, had particular Cairn Energy could not be reached for comment on Friday.
Vedanta Limited is now offering one of its own shares and four redeemable preference shares for each share in Cairn India, as opposed to the single share and one preference share that was offered last year.
The enhanced terms, including a 7.5 per cent interest bearing coupon on the preference shares, mean the offer is worth a fifth more than the average price at which Cairn India shares have traded over the past month, Vedanta said. The original deal offered a 7 per cent premium on a comparable basis.
Tom Albanese, chief executive at Vedanta, said a merger was “highly compelling”.
“Diversified resources companies have delivered superior returns for shareholders historically. The transaction consolidates our portfolio . . . and simplifies the group structure,” he said.
Vedanta’s other operations include zinc, aluminium, copper and iron ore mining.
The deal would also help Vedanta, which has more than $7bn of net debt, make use of more than $3bn of cash within Cairn India.
A majority of independent investors in both Cairn India and Vedanta Limited have to vote in favour of the deal. Like Cairn Energy, India’s state-run Life Insurance Company also owns about 10 per cent of Cairn India.
If the deal proceeds then Vedanta Resources would own just over half of an enlarged group. Cairn India shareholders would hold 20 per cent of the shares in Vedanta Limited.
State officials defended their requests for access to North Slope producers’ confidential Prudhoe Bay gas marketing information in legislative hearings July 19 but the issue appears headed for a showdown, perhaps ultimately in the courts.
Corri Feige, director of the state Division of Oil and Gas, s…
Expecting (or at least hoping for) an improved economic climate, Eni Petroleum plans to resume drilling activities at the nearshore Nikaitchuq unit in the first quarter of 2017.
The local subsidiary of the Italian major suspended activities at its North Slope unit and reduced its Alaska workforce b…
