Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Oil

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China, US simply decide oil market's trend

This topic has been un-sticky by szh at 2011-5-31 16:27.
Abbc

1# > A < Posted  2011-5-31 14:40  Only show this user's posts

China, US simply decide oil market's trend


The U.S. summer driving season starts next week amid predictions that gasoline consumption in the U.S. will be lower than last year as squeezed motorists cut back due to high prices.

The U.S. summer driving season starts next week amid predictions that gasoline consumption in the U.S. will be lower than last year as squeezed motorists cut back due to high prices. Fear that this phenomenon will diminish overall oil demand has been a big factor in the recent fall in international oil prices from their April high of $127 a barrel.

However on the other side of the world, industry observers see the opposite situation due to the threat of electricity shortages in China. If power supply is tightly rationed this summer and the Chinese turn to backup oil-fired generators as they have in the past, oil demand may be significantly higher than previous predictions.

With the balance between global oil supply and demand seen increasingly tight, which of these countervailing trends proves stronger could have a significant impact on prices in the second half of this year.

"Power outages are estimated at between 30 gigawatts, by the China Electricity Council and 50GW, by South China Grid," said Eurasia Group analyst Robert Johnston. When the same thing has occurred in recent years, people have turned to back-up diesel generators to fill the gap.



China's Three Gorges Dam


Increased use of diesel generators has boosted Chinese oil demand by 400,000-600,000 barrels a day in previous summers, according to Barclays analysts. Many analysts, including the International Energy Agency, predict a more modest boost of around 300,000 barrels a day this summer as power shortages are are less severe than previous years, but still significant.

The picture in the U.S. is much less clear. The price of gasoline recently hit the $4 a gallon mark, which is widely seen as the point at which motorists start to reduce the number of miles they drive. But prices have fallen since then, and the strength of the U.S. economy remains difficult to assess.

Data is mixed. Gasoline stockpiles have increased for three straight weeks and most analysis shows consumption down by a couple of percentage points compared with last summer. However, a survey by travel and leisure group AAA last week predicted a fall of just 0.3% in the number of Americans driving to a vacation destination this summer despite high prices.

Estimates for U.S. gasoline demand this summer are all over the map. The U.S. Energy Information Administration still expects a year-to-year increase in liquid fuel consumption of 109,000 barrels a day, although it has trimmed this figure recently.

Another well-respected provider of energy data, the International Energy Agency, recently cut 190,000 barrels a day from its 2011 oil demand forecast this month, citing weak U.S. fuel demand. "We believe U.S. gasoline demand will indeed disappoint this year," it said in its monthly oil market report.

Until more data comes in it will be difficult to judge which of the two opposing forces will prove more significant. The most bearish view says current consumption trends, affected by the recent peak in prices, imply U.S. oil demand could fall by more than 1 million barrels a day, according to Petromatrix analyst Olivier Jakob. "The drop in US oil demand dwarfs the increase in oil demand from China," he said.


As the two biggest economies in the world, US and China both need enough oil to satisfy their developing. However, now the situation has entered a vicious circle that the oil shortage and high price slow down their developing speed on one hand, and on the other hand they keep rising the oil prices by endless consumption. What does the world gonna do to get out it? The situation is getting more and more serious and urgent now!
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Sunday, May 29, 2011

Always Energy Source after Food Source

Who's Right and Who's Wrong? And Whose behind the little Culprit?



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New clash in South China Sea

This topic has been sticky by szh at 2011-5-29 13:52.
MXII

1# > A < Posted  2011-5-29 13:52  Only show this user's posts

New clash in South China Sea



Vietnam has accused China of escalating the long-running dispute over control of the South China Sea after three Chinese patrol boats confronted and damaged an oil exploration ship operated by PetroVietnam, the state-owned oil and gas company.


Vietnam’s foreign ministry on Friday called on China to immediately cease violations of its sovereignty and its exclusive economic zone and asked Beijing to pay compensation for the damage caused.


It also accused China of breaching the 1982 UN convention on the law of the sea and undermining efforts to reduce tensions in the South China Sea.


Carl Thayer, an expert on the South China Sea at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra, said that this latest incident represented an escalation in Chinese aggression toward Vietnam.


Just before 6am on Thursday, three Chinese patrol ships rushed the Binh Minh 2, a seismic survey ship owned by PetroVietnam, damaging a number of cables, according to Vietnam’s foreign ministry. The oil exploration vessel had detected the Chinese ships approaching on radar about an hour earlier without warning.


The clash will heighten disquiet among China’s neighbours in south-east Asia over what they perceive as increasingly assertive behaviour in regional waters.


It comes just a week after China and the Philippines pledged “responsible behaviour” in the disputed areas and repeated their commitment to a peaceful resolution of conflicting territorial claims. During a visit of Liang Guanglie, China’s minister of defence, to Manila last Monday, officials from both governments pledged to avoid unilateral moves which could raise tension.


Security experts have said that such an arms race is under way already. Several south-east Asian countries are beefing up their air and sea defences – Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand have all acquired or placed orders for frigates, fighter aircraft and submarines.






China opposes Vietnam oil, gas exploration in China's jurisdictional sea area: FM spokeswoman 



China opposes Vietnam's exploring oil and gas in China's jurisdictional area of the South China Sea, Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Jiang Yu said Saturday.


"China's stance on the South China Sea is clear and consistent. We oppose the oil and gas operations conducted by Vietnam, which have undermined China's interests and jurisdictional rights in the South China Sea and violated the consensus both countries have reached on the issue," Jiang said in a statement.


Jiang made the remarks responding to a recent report saying that Hanoi claimed Chinese marine surveillance vessels interfered with Vietnam's oil and gas exploration in the South China Sea and accused Beijing of violating its sovereignty.


"What relevant Chinese departments did was completely normal marine law-enforcement and surveillance activities in China's jurisdictional sea area," Jiang said.


"China has been committed to safeguarding the peace and stability in the South China Sea. We are willing to work together with relevant parties to seek a solution to related disputes and implement the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea," Jiang said.




Financial Times/Xinhua
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fairdinkum

2# > A < Posted  2011-5-29 14:08  Only show this user's posts
Another exaggeration by FT. What they won't do to increase circulation!
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Huan

3# > A < Posted  2011-5-29 14:24  Only show this user's posts
Vietnam should know its place and not exacerbate the confrontation with China.
Oooh, bright orb! ^^
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Saturday, May 7, 2011

Jose


Jose

Here is a man who’s traveled and lived on three continents only to die alone in a hotel room. Not that he didn’t have family; he had two, one in Hong Kong and one in Peru. He was married twice, once in China and once in Peru. None of “his” children were his, however.

Jose was the oldest of my maternal uncles. When he was twelve, his second maternal uncle got him to Peru. My maternal grandmother let her son go to make his fortune in Peru, where his uncle was raising guyoes, rabbit-like creatures who never drank water. They get their moisture through their nose when their keeper burns leaves. When Jose was 21, his uncle took him back to China to marry. Once married, he had to leave his bride in China and followed his second-maternal uncle back to Peru.

According to Jose, he had many opportunities. First, there was a German industrialist who wanted him to marry his daughter. Jose told me that the Germans in Chile took over the copper mines in Peru after an unjust war with Peru, that is, a war a little bit on the imperialistic side. Those Germans in Chile had technology, but the Japanese were in Peru and they were competition too. Jose then tried logging and one time his vehicle flipped over on the mountain road so that its four wheels “all pointed towards Heaven.” Jose survived unscratched. However, logging in the jungle was not good for his health, for he developed rheumatism from the damp and wet in the jungle. Those days, though, Jose was young and full of ambition, he drank with the Indios and marveled at how the natives which he called “mountain devils” could haul heavy loads day and night without end, without eating, and only ask that they be given enough cacao leaves to chew. And when they run out of cacao leaves, they would just rest their loads and refused to work.

Jose married Carmen, a mestiza, in Lima, and he worked principally in chifas, or Chinese restaurants. Carmen had already a daughter when she came to live with him. While he was in Peru, my family was in the United States, and while Jose’s age when up as his potential declined, ours were improving slowly. Our Chinese-American restaurant in Aberdeen, a coastal town in Washington State along highway 101, got busier and busier. Normally my parents and my siblings work in the kitchen and we hire two white waitresses. But when we were old enough to leave home for college, it became a sore point who and how much anyone was sacrificing for the family. My father decided to get needed help in the kitchen and so he looked up J. P. Sanderson, the immigration lawyer who did the paper work for me to come over from China to join my family some two dozen years ago. We went to the Sanderson private residence. Mr. Sanderson, an old man at that time, was still working from his home near Lake Washington in Seattle. I finally connected the face with the Christmas card I receive from a J. P. Sanderson, P.S.. He was a white-haired, tall thin man. He moved about quietly and deliberately. We were mostly silent in his presence. I have to admit that my father had the ability to employ ability where he lacks it. Not long, when I was living at the Albert Yu house in Seattle’s University District, Jose and my mother and a brother suddenly dropped in to see me. Jose was jubilant and he hugged me. I stepped back a step. Our nuclear family is not very demonstrative with feelings. We went to Tai Tung Restaurant to eat. My mother was disappointed for her older brother did not look very robust, but lately on, we found that it was deceptive. Jose started complaining right away that Tai Tung was not much of a restaurant compared to the chifas in Lima that partied two thousand or more people. And they were owned by Japanese. What Jose complained about was that the Japanese always placed their toilets next to the kitchen.

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Friday, May 6, 2011

An Enormous Conspiracy -- general distust of US in Moslem World.


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The Bin Laden Conspiracy Theories

This topic has been highlight by szh at 2011-5-6 10:15.
PR099

1# > A < Posted  2011-5-6 10:04  Only show this user's posts

The Bin Laden Conspiracy Theories

Why Falsehoods Flourish in the Muslim World

Summary: After the death of Osama Bin Laden was announced, rumors about it swirled throughout the Middle East. Given its history and politics, the region is particularly prone to conspiracy theories--and there is little that can be done to counter them.





Bin Laden the US fabricated terrorist?


Immediately after the death of Osama bin Laden was announced, rumors about it swirled through the streets, coffee shops, and Internet cafés of the Middle East, Pakistan, and other parts of the Muslim world. The raid took place, some claimed, only to hand U.S. President Barack Obama a political victory, or to give him political cover for the troop drawdown in Afghanistan. Other, more outlandish, theories proposed that bin Laden had been collaborating with Washington all along. Another one had it that bin Laden died years ago but that his body had been frozen and retained for later use by the United States; still others suggested that he remained alive. “There are numerous question marks still seeking clear and honest answers from the American administration,” went an opinion piece in the Palestinian paper Al-Quds Al-Arabi. “Why did we not see the corpse of the Sheikh until this moment, while all we have heard was that it was ‘buried’ at sea because his homeland the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia refused to receive it?” Some have even suggested that the world’s most wanted terrorist was not real but an American invention.





The muslim world's pray for "bin-Laden", even the Musliam themselves are deceived?

Conspiracy theories like these are especially common in the Middle East and western Asia. Why? At the simplest level, conspiracy theories in the region are a way of displaying skepticism toward the United States. But they can also be earnest attempts by the angry to explain dramatic events, particularly when people have difficulty accepting them: most residents of Abbottabad were no doubt amazed to learn that they had been neighbors of bin Laden. Media reports have quoted some Abbottabad locals as saying that in the absence of any evidence that bin Laden or other Arab extremists had been living in the town, the bin Laden story simply had to be a conspiracy.




And how about the 9-11 real story and the anti-terrorist timeline?

One reason the region is so susceptible to conspiracy theories is that it has been subject to an unusually high number of actual conspiracies in the past. The overthrow of Iranian President Mohammed Mossadeq in 1953 was driven by a secret U.S. and British plot to remove him, and the 1956 Suez War was the result of a covert British-French-Israeli agreement struck in France. Thus, today’s conspiracy theorists often cite real conspiracies of the past as evidence for present-day ones. During the 2003 Iraq war, for example, many Middle Eastern commentators brought up the Suez War: If one generation of foreigners could craft a scheme to conquer a recalcitrant Arab leader, the argument went, why could another not do the same, half a century later? Now, as conspiracies about bin Laden gain currency, those peddling them will likely point to past American plots in the Muslim world, real or imagined, for support.



Conspiracy theories also flourish where people feel disempowered -- a condition that applies to the Muslim world. In much of the region today, there is  a sense of ideological aimlessness and a feeling that the region, for all its history, is unfairly weak and vulnerable compared to the West. Even bin Laden used rhetoric along these lines, justifying jihad as a counterattack against a conspiracy and explaining the Crusades as a Western and Christian conspiracy against Islam. Conspiracy theorists seek to counter these sentiments of disempowerment. Feeling as though one possesses rare or secret knowledge and controlling who shares such information can bring one a sense of power and privilege. This is true even at the societal level: a culture that feels vulnerable can find solace in a conspiratorial perspective of their condition.




The symbol?

The Middle East has been subject to an unusually high number of actual conspiracies in the past. Another factor explaining the ubiquity of conspiracy thinking in the Middle East is the presence of authoritarian governments there. Dictators may spread such ideas themselves as propaganda, to confuse their citizens, divide the opposition, or rally support for the regime or nation. (They may also tolerate or nurture conspiracy claims coming from society, usually for the same reasons.) At times, leaders or elites in Pakistan, Iran, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and elsewhere have mouthed conspiracy theories or encouraged others to do so. In the past few months, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi have each cited foreign conspiracies as a source of protests in their countries; the Iranian leadership often justifies the regime’s actions as a response to U.S. or “Zionist” plots. While bin Laden enjoyed little sympathy among the rulers of the Middle East, if conspiracy theories about him mean that people pay less attention to examining their own governments, few leaders will try to stop conspiracy talk.



Given how common conspiracy theories are, and how fragmented, conflict-prone, and anti-American the Middle East can be, is there any hope of conspiracy claims being countered? Direct counterargument is useless; it is exactly what conspiracy theorists expect from a plotter, and it may even strengthen their case. This is why it is a mistake for the U.S. State Department to engage conspiracy theories as it does, posting takedowns of them on its Web site. While understandable, such initiatives are probably futile in changing the views of those most being targeted. Likewise, releasing a photograph of bin Laden’s body will convince only those who remain open-minded about bin Laden’s death: it will have no impact on die-hard conspiracy theorists, or even those customarily suspicious of the United States.



MATTHEW GRAY is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University and the author of Conspiracy Theories in the Arab World: Sources and Politics.





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Huan

2# > A < Posted  2011-5-6 16:29  Only show this user's posts
Since Obama decided not to release any evidence. Conspiracy theories will dominate the narrative.
When beauty and science-fiction become one.
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