Archive for February 13th, 2008
Join NATO and we’ll target missiles at Kiev, Putin warns Ukraine!
Join NATO and we’ll target missiles at Kiev, Putin warns Ukraine!
Russia could redirect its missiles towards Ukraine if the country joined Nato, Vladimir Putin warned today.
The president said he would be forced to target Russian rockets at Ukraine in response to a possible deployment of a US missile shield in the eastern European country.
“I am not only terrified to utter this, it is scary even to think that Russia … would have to target its offensive rocket systems at Ukraine,” he said.
If Kiev agrees to sign up to Nato, it could host US anti-missile defences on Ukrainian soil.
The mood proved more amicable between the two neighbours moments earlier when an agreement had been reached to end the gas dispute.
Putin said Russia and Ukraine had negotiated a deal on Kiev’s gas debt repayment.
The Russian state energy firm Gazprom had threatened to halt gas supplies to Ukraine today from 6pm (3pm GMT) if an agreement could not be reached, but a last-minute deal was reached.
“We have heard that the settlement of the debt will begin in the nearest time,” said Putin, after talks with the Ukrainian president, Viktor Yushchenko.
Yushchenko said Ukraine would start repaying the debt, “which was amassed in November-December of last year because supply contracts had not been signed”.
The debt for gas from Russia and central Asia is put at $1.5bn (£770m).
The row raised the spectre of disrupted gas supplies to Europe. A pricing dispute between Moscow and Kiev stopped shipments to EU states in 2006.
Gazprom insisted the row would not have affected gas deliveries to the EU, and would only halt Ukraine’s Russian gas, which makes up 25% of Kiev’s supply. Shipments would have continued from central Asia, which accounts for the remaining 75%.
In another source of tension with the west, Russia warned that a unilateral declaration of independence by Serbia’s Kosovo province would violate international law and damage security in Europe.
The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said the US and European countries did not understand the potential consequences of independence for Kosovo, whose Albanian leaders are expected to announce the move on Sunday.
“It would undermine the basics of security in Europe, it would undermine the basics of the UN charter,” Lavrov said in Geneva. He said western countries were dealing with the problem in a “haphazard” way.
“Many of them, frankly, do not understand the risks and dangers and threats associated with a unilateral declaration of Kosovo independence,” he said.
“They do not understand that it would inevitably result in a chain reaction in many parts of the world, including Europe and elsewhere.”
Russia has warned that Republika Serbska could call a referendum on its secession from Bosnia-Herzegovina or that the Albanian minority in Macedonia may seek independence.
Venezuela cuts oil sales to Exxon Mobil – Oil rises – Iran to open oil bourse next Sunday
Venezuela cuts oil sales to Exxon Mobil
Venezuela’s state oil company has stopped selling crude to Exxon Mobil and suspended commercial relations with the US-based oil Corp.State-run Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, said in a statement that it “has paralyzed sales of crude to Exxon Mobil, in response to the company’s judicial-economic harassment. “PDVSA will completely honor the existing contractual commitments relative to common investments with Exxon Mobil abroad, reserving the right to terminate those contracts whose terms permit them to be rescinded,” the state oil company said.
“The legal actions carried out by the US transnational are unnecessary … and hostile,” PDVSA said of Exxon’s attempts to seize Venezuelan assets in US, British and Dutch courts. Exxon is challenging President Hugo Chavez government’s nationalization of one of four heavy oil projects in the Orinoco River basin, one of the world’s richest oil deposits.
Last month, a British court issued an injunction, temporarily freezing up to $12 billion in PDVSA assets abroad. Exxon is also challenging the nationalization in a US court in New York. President Hugo Chavez has already shaken oil markets with recent threats to entirely cut supply to the US, in retaliation for Exxon’s legal drive to freeze Venezuelan assets in a dispute over nationalized oil ventures.
It was not immediately clear what impact PDVSA’s decision to cut supply to Exxon would have.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=42857§ionid=351020704
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Oil rises as Venezuela cuts off Exxon Mobil
Tue Feb 12, 2008 7By Rebekah Kebede
NEW YORK, Feb 12 (Reuters) – Oil prices rose late on Tuesday after Venezuela announced it was stopping sales of crude oil top U.S. oil company Exxon Mobil Corp.
The move came in response to a legal challenge by Exxon Mobil (XOM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) against Venezuela’s nationalization last year of a heavy oil project.
U.S. crude CLc1 rose 24 cents to $93.02 a barrel by 6:50 p.m. EST (2350 GMT), climbing into positive territory after settling the trading session 81 cents lower at $92.78 a barrel. London Brent crude LCOc1 settled 67 cents lower at $92.86 a barrel.
“This is a little bit more saber-rattling from Venezuela and the market is just beginning to realize that it is going to see more sparks from Venezuela and Exxon Mobil,” said Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch & Associates.
On Monday, oil prices rose as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez threatened a stoppage after Exxon won court rulings freezing $12 billion in Venezuelan assets in a fight over compensation for a nationalized project. The U.S. government has received assurances that the world’s top oil producers could compensate for any Venezuelan disruption, a U.S. government official, who declined to be named, told Reuters.
“While a disruption in short-haul Venezuelan supplies would be a blow to the U.S. economy, it would arguably be much more devastating to Venezuela itself,” said energy analyst Antoine Halff of Newedge Group.
Before Venezuela’s announcement, oil prices had been pressured by forecasts that U.S. government inventory data to be released on Wednesday would show a 2.7 million-barrel build in crude stocks in the week to Feb. 8. That would mark the fifth consecutive weekly rise in crude stocks amid concerns that the slowing U.S. economy was damping oil demand.U.S. crude prices have tumbled from record highs above $100 a barrel struck in early January as the credit crisis keeps dragging on the U.S. economy.
Analysts also forecast a 1.4 million-barrel decline in distillate stocks and a 1.8 million-barrel build in gasoline inventories. (Reporting by Matthew Robinson in New York, James Topham in Tokyo and Alex Lawler in London; Editing by David Gregorio)
reuters
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Iran to open oil bourse next Sunday
Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari said on Wednesday that Iran’s Oil Bourse is to start operation from next Sunday. Speaking to reporters after a cabinet session, he said Minister of Economy and Financial Affairs Davoud Danesh Jaafari is to attend the opening ceremony.
Iran’s national currency, rial will be the base of hard currencies for all transactions in Tehran Oil Bourse, he said. The country’s oil revenue is to hit dlrs 63 billion this year, said the minister.
On construction of Peace Pipeline between Iran, Pakistan and India, he said China can join the project if it desires so. “Iran and India are now working on the plan and involvement of China does not mean that India has to be excluded from the project,” he said.
On invitation extended by Turkey to India for cooperation in ‘Valve Oil’ in Central Asia and impacts on such cooperation on Iran-India joint cooperation in Peace Pipeline, he said these are some assumptions which are not true.
The Oil Ministry is to drill ten oil wells which is expected to raise the volume of gas production by another 20 to 25 million cubic metric next year, he said. On formation of a gas cartel like OPEC, he said the plan is very time consuming and requires collective cooperation among gas producing countries.
http://www2.irna.ir/en/news/view/menu-237/0802135267165148.htm
Note: Recall that the OPEC secretary general stated that OPEC is going to gradually wean itself away from the dollar. That’s not just in pricing, but in purchasing also.
Moscow To Present Sino-Russian Space Arms Race Control Initiative
Moscow To Present Sino-Russian Space Arms Race Control Initiative
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by Staff Writers
Moscow (RIA Novosti) Feb 12, 2008
Russia will submit to a UN disarmament conference a joint Sino-Russian proposal for an international treaty to ban the deployment of weapons in outer space.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will present the draft treaty to the UN-sponsored annual Geneva Disarmament Conference on February 12.
The United States has been critical of the Russian-Chinese initiative, especially following China’s anti-satellite missile tests last year.
Donald Mahley, acting U.S. deputy assistant secretary for threat reduction, export controls and negotiations, said: “We see nothing in the new proposal to change the current U.S. position.” He said additional binding arms control agreements, “are simply not a viable tool for enhancing the long-term space security interests of the United States or its allies.”Washington said that after China tested an anti-satellite missile in January 2007, the U.S. administration had intensified work on a program called Space Situational Awareness (SSA).
The program has been defined as “knowing the location and potential function of every object orbiting the earth active or inactive regardless of its size, its purposes, its mission and its status.”Russian President Vladimir Putin said last Friday that a new arms race had begun, but that Russia would not allow itself to be drawn into it.
Russia has also been unnerved by NATO’s ongoing expansion and Washington’s plans to deploy missile defense bases in Central Europe, which it says are needed to deter possible strikes from Iran and other “rogue states.”
