NYMEX-Natural gas gains 3 pct on wintry weather outlook
NEW YORK, Jan 6 (Reuters) - U.S. natural gas futures rose nearly 3 percent on Friday, rising back above $3 per million British thermal units as some long-term weather forecasts called for more winter-like weather after a very mild start to the heating season.
MDA EarthSat forecasters called for a shot of cold late in the six to 10-day outlook, noting models were on track for a storm system to bring a shot of much below readings south and east in its wake, followed by high pressure.
Euro Coal-Prices rise 50c/T on short-covering
LONDON, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Prompt physical coal prices rose by 50-75 U.S. cents a tonne on Friday as players covered short positions and Indian buying showed signs of picking up after several months of a lull.
"Every rupee, every paisa counts for the consumers, even more now than before they want the lowest prices and they are looking at a variety of coals, South African, Australian, American," one major Indian trade buyer said.
COMMODITIES-Up in 1st week of year though Europe fears stay
NEW YORK, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Commodities ended little changed on Friday, retaining most of the week's strong gains despite a resurgent dollar that reflected investor fears about Europe's debt crisis.
"This sovereign debt crisis will still be the overarching theme in the near-term," Credit Suisse analyst Stefan Graber said, adding that any gains in commodities would be limited given funding stress at European banks.
GLOBAL MARKETS-Euro, stocks down as debt jitters trump U.S. data
SINGAPORE, Jan 9 (Reuters) - The euro sank against the dollar and the yen and Asian stocks stalled on Monday, as renewed gloom about the fallout from the European sovereign debt crisis overshadowed signs of vigour in the U.S. economy.
"Despite the positive U.S. employment data, investor focus remains largely on Europe, especially after the downgrade of Hungary's credit rating," said Lim Tae-geun, an analyst at Daewoo Securities in Seoul.
Venezuela will not recognize World Bank ruling in Exxon case
CARACAS, Jan 8 (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday that his country would not recognize any ruling by a World Bank tribunal in a multibillion-dollar arbitration case with Exxon Mobil Corp .
Exxon took Venezuela to the World Bank's International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes, or ICSID, seeking as much as $12 billion in compensation after Chavez ordered the nationalization of the Cerro Negro oil project in 2007.
Nigerians to strike over soaring fuel prices
LAGOS, Jan 9 (Reuters) - Nigerian unions launch a nationwide strike on Monday to protest against the axing of a fuel subsidy which many ordinary people saw as one of the few benefits they ever got from the state.
Nigeria's fuel regulator announced the end of the subsidy on Jan. 1 as part of efforts to cut government spending and encourage badly needed investment in local refining.
Kenya sees retail fuel prices falling this month
NAIROBI, Jan 8 (Reuters) - Kenyan retail fuel prices are expected to fall next week when the energy regulatory commission carries out its next monthly review, the regulator said on Sunday, giving further traction to views that inflation may have peaked.
Through this regulatory commission, the government sets a maximum price per litre for retailers every month in order to shield consumers from sharp jumps in prices.
Venezuela's Cardon refinery restarting after fault
CARACAS, Jan 7 (Reuters) - Venezuela's 310,000 barrel per day Cardon oil refinery was stopped by a fault overnight but began restarting on Saturday, a union leader said.
Ivan Freites of the oil workers union said it was not immediately clear what caused the failure. The facility's catalytic cracking unit still had to be restarted, he said.
Repsol halts Bilbao CDU, FCC on poor margins
MADRID, Jan 7 (Reuters) - Repsol has decided to halt one of two crude distillation units (CDU) at its 220,000 barrels-per-day Bilbao refinery for at least two months due to poor margins, the Spanish oil and gas company said on its web site.
Repsol's Petronor subsidiary added that it would also halt the fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) unit in January, which is used to make gasoline "due to lack of activity in this fuel, in the domestic as well as the American market".
US govt, Exxon reach deal on disputed Gulf leases
WASHINGTON, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Exxon Mobil Corp and the U.S. government struck a deal on Friday that would allow the company to move ahead with development of a field in the Gulf of Mexico estimated to yield tens of billions of dollars of oil.
Exxon sued the government last year after the Interior Department canceled three of five leases for what is called the Julia field.
Chesapeake unit drilling rig catches fire in Okla
NEW YORK, Jan 6 (Reuters) - A drilling rig in Sweetwater, Oklahoma, owned by Chesapeake Energy subsidiary Nomac Drilling, caught fire late Thursday after unexpectedly hitting a pocket of natural gas near the surface, Chesapeake said on Friday.
No injuries were reported, though local officials in the town 130 miles west of Oklahoma City expect that the blaze will be left to burn as escaping natural gas is flared.
Trading oil on Iran: untangling rhetoric from reality
LONDON, Jan 6 (Reuters) - How does an oil trader play the market when Iran threatens to shut the Strait of Hormuz and strangle Middle East oil supplies?
"Buy!" some would say.
But "Sell!" could come from cooler heads, the grizzled veterans who can cut through the bellicose rhetoric and who remember the 1980s Gulf "tanker war" in the Iran-Iraq conflict.
BEYOND THE HEADLINES:
Venezuela sees no W.Bank ruling on Exxon in 2012
PUERTO ORDAZ, Venezuela, Jan 7 (Reuters) - Venezuela's oil minister said on Saturday he does not expect a ruling in World Bank arbitration with Exxon Mobil this year, after another tribunal awarded the U.S. major $908 million last week.
Both cases relate to the nationalization by President Hugo Chavez of the Cerro Negro heavy oil project in the South American OPEC member, following years of legal wrangling between Exxon and his socialist government.
West readies oil stocks release, Iran plans war games
TEHRAN/LONDON, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Iran announced on Friday new military exercises in the Strait of Hormuz, but the West has readied plans to use strategic oil stocks to replace almost all Gulf oil lost if Iran blocks the waterway, industry sources and diplomats told Reuters.
They said senior executives of the International Energy Agency (IEA) discussed on Thursday an existing plan to release up to 14 million barrels per day (bpd) of government-owned oil stored in the United States, Europe, Japan and other importers.
Oil markets brace for turbulence of index shift
NEW YORK, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Amid the drama of Iran, the meltdown of refiner Petroplus and a wave of upbeat economic data, it was all too easy to overlook one of the most important short-term factors shaping oil markets this week: the reweighting of the world's biggest commodity indexes.
The S&P GSCI Index and the DJ-UBS Index, the world's no. 1 and no. 2 commodity indexes, announced two months ago plans to rejig their component weights to reflect growing trade in European benchmark Brent crude, at the expense of U.S. WTI, which some traders say had become detached from global prices.
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