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Lindsey Williams: Arab Monarchies To Be Overthrown (Video
UPDATE 2-Oil could hit $200-$300 on Saudi unrest-Yamani
LONDON, April 5 (Reuters) – Oil prices could rocket to $200- $300 a barrel if the world’s top crude exporter Saudi Arabia is hit by serious political unrest, former Saudi oil minister Sheikh Zaki Yamani told Reuters on Tuesday.
Yamani said he saw no immediate sign of further trouble following protests last month calling for political reforms but said that underlying discontent remained unresolved.
“If something happens in Saudi Arabia it will go to $200 to $300. I don’t expect this for the time being, but who would have expected Tunisia?” Yamani told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference of the Centre for Global Energy Studies (CGES) which he chairs.
“The political events that took place are there and we don’t expect them to finish. I think there are some surprises on the horizon,” he said in a speech.
Saudi King Abdullah offered $93 billion in handouts in March in an effort to stave off unrest rocking the Arab world.
So far, demonstrations in the Kingdom have been small in scale and police were able to easily disperse a Shi’ite protest in the oil-producing eastern province last month.
But Yamani said that the reluctance of people to participate in popular protests was merely concealing underlying discontent.
“Some people relax about the situation in Saudi Arabia because the Saudi Islamic brand prohibits people to go to the street and to talk,” he said in a speech.
SAUDI TIME BOMB
Oil traded at two-and-a-half-year highs above $121 a barrel LCOc1 on Tuesday. Libya’s rebellion has shut its oil exports, stoking fears of disruptions in other major producers.
Warning of Recurring Food Crises
Soaring and volatile food prices have experts warning of recurring food crises, putting poor people – especially women and children – at risk.
Similar conditions existed during the 2007/2008 food crisis, when high prices and shortages ignited unrest in many countries around the world.
IFPRI, the International Food Policy Research Institute, is calling for urgent action to prevent a repeat of the crisis. Director-General Shenggen Fen says, “Many food items have become more expensive…since last May or June. Wheat prices have almost doubled. The maize price has also increased substantially. Many meat products, dairy products have also increased substantially.”
While the situation is not as serious as the food crisis three years ago, Fen says, “If we don’t take urgent actions, food prices will continue to rise and the poor people will suffer.”
What’s triggering the price hikes? Read more…
High Gas Prices May Turn Suburbs Into Slums
Americans rarely think much about zoning, but it governs almost every facet of how we live our lives. And unintended consequences of 50-year-old zoning codes may be about to turn some of our loveliest and quietest suburbs into the next slums.
Why? Simply because they’ve been built too far away from everything else, and we won’t be able to afford the gasoline it takes to go to and fro.
Suburbs: slums of the future?
At least, that’s the provocative conclusion of Peter Newman, one of the authors of a study released by the Planning Institute of Australia late last year.
The study looks at the future of suburban Australia, which has evolved in patterns very much like suburban America: sprawling, low-density, auto-dependent residential enclaves miles away from commercial areas and office parks.
“Urban sprawl is finished,” Newman told The Age. “If we continue to roll out new land releases and suburbs that are car-dependent, they will become the slums of the future.”
Following World War II, with the rise of affordable automobiles, cheap fuel and an increasingly Read more…
Silver, gold gain on fast-changing global events
Silver and gold prices are climbing as developing crises from Portugal’s financial problems to uprisings in the Middle East are prompting investors to buy more stable assets.
Silver for May delivery rose 2.6 percent Wednesday to settle at $37.198 an ounce. Gold settled up $10.40 at $1,438 an ounce.
Investors are nervous as they monitor fast-changing global events.
In Portugal, lawmakers are poised to vote against more austerity measures for the debt-stressed country. Meanwhile violence in the Middle East and North Africa is raising concern about oil supplies.
The uncertainty of how those events will play out is supporting both precious metals, which have the reputation of being safer assets to hold during turbulent economic times.
Energy prices were mainly higher. Bean and grain prices fell.
The Causes of Rising Food Prices
Food prices are rising quickly around the world. Part of the problem is weather. The winter wheat crop in China has been poor. Australia has suffered floods, while Russia has undergone a drought. The earthquake and tsunami in Japan, no doubt, will hammer the very intensive agricultural production of the limited arable land on that archipelago. Weather-related agricultural problems, however, balance out fairly quickly. Mythical “global warming” aside, weather has ups and downs, and farmers, who are smart folks, take that into account. The Soviet Union, whose vassal state the Ukraine was once one of the best farmlands on earth, never managed to feed its people well, because a communist-controlled economy destroys Read more…
Pressure on Portugal After New Credit Downgrade
LISBON — Portugal’s borrowing costs pushed higher after Moody’s downgraded the country’s credit rating, stoking the pressure on the country’s beleaguered minority government.
The yield on Portugal’s ten-year bond rose 0.04 percentage point to 7.44 percent. The equivalent yields for Greece and Spain, two other euro countries struggling with high borrowing levels, were down modestly.
Moody’s Investors Services cut the country’s rating by two notches to A3 late Tuesday, saying the debt-stressed country is struggling to generate growth and faces a tough battle to restore the fiscal health needed to calm jittery financial markets.
Prime Minister Jose Socrates said late Tuesday he would quit if Parliament doesn’t consent to his government’s latest batch of contested austerity measures.
Portugal aims to raise up to €1 billion in a sale of Read more…
US could tap oil stockpiles as prices rise: Obama
WASHINGTON (AFP) – President Barack Obama on Friday said he had “tee-ed up” moves to tap emergency US oil stockpiles, as Middle East violence pushed up gas prices for hard-hit US consumers.
Trying to tamp down concern that oil prices will continue to rise on Middle East unrest, Obama said he was willing to make a rare move to open the strategic reserve, but not yet.
“We are going to try to do everything we can” to stabilize the market, Obama said.
“Everybody should know that should the situation demand it, we are prepared to tap the significant stockpile of oil that we have in the strategic petroleum reserve.”
With Americans struggling with Read more…
Oil Should Spike Higher Following Saudi Riots and Nigerian Elections in April
The following special report on oil (LA Blog Only, leverageacademy.com/blog) discusses the oil market, providing reasons to be bullish on the commodity given unrest in the Middle East, Nigerian elections in April, and rising domestic consumption in oil producing countries, including Venezuela, Nigeria, and Iran. According to the article, the rise of oil prices could easily cause the next recession. In 2010, soft commodities outperformed energy, but that will certainly change given the political headwinds abroad and continued monetary easing in the developed world. Therefore, the Bernanke “Put,” combined with political unrest will be to blame for continued sharp price increases in the energy commodity sector.
Emerging market demand, especially in China, which now consumes nearly 10mm barrels of oil per day, will also be driving the demand side of the equation. Money supply in China was also up 19.7% in 2010, because of the rapid Read more…
Oil will go up ‘ballistically’ if unrest shifts to Saudi Arabia, says Marc Faber
INTERNATIONAL. Marc Faber the Swiss fund manager and Gloom Boom & Doom editor sees oil prices extending their bull run despite the 15% run-up this year alone.
In an optimistic scenario demand for oil will rise as the global recovery takes hold, and in a pessimistic scenario prices still go up if the Middle East unrest spreads and crude production is curtailed. In both cases, he says, you should be long energy and energy related shares.
Speaking to CNBC today, Faber said: ” I think long term you should be exposed to energy in either scenario….if you are extra bearish and believe that War World III is going to start soon, as I believe, or in an optimistic scenario”.
Addressing the fundamentals of the oil market, Faber said: “What we had over the last couple of years is essentially a reduction in demand from the developed world, the US, Western Europe and Japan, and continued growth in emerging economies.
“So, if you take a very optimistic view of the world, namely a global economic recovery, demand in the Western World will pick up and demand in the Emerging World will continue to rise strongly, so from a very optimistic point of view you should be long oil,” he recommended.
On the flip side, “in a very pessimistic scenario you have to assume that unrest will shift to Saudi Arabia and other countries in the gulf and at that stage the production is curtailed and in that case obviously oil will go up ballistically.”
Brent crude futures could hit US$200 a barrel if political unrest spreads into Saudi Arabia, Societe Generale said on Monday.
Under what the bank called Geopolitical Scenario 3, “unrest spreads to Read more…
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