Libya unrest drives petrol prices higher

Ashley Hall reported this story on Tuesday, March 22, 2011 12:46:00

ELEANOR HALL: The unrest in Libya and the surrounding region is fuelling sharp rises in petrol prices around the globe.
Here, the price of unleaded petrol rose by half a cent per litre last week to its highest level in 29 weeks. That means the average household is now spending about $200 a month on petrol.
But on the upside, it will give the Reserve Bank board more room to hold off raising interest rates, as Ashley Hall reports.

ASHLEY HALL: It's the steepest rise in petrol prices in two years. Over the past five weeks, the national average price of unleaded petrol has climbed 8.4 cents per litre.
The average household is now spending $200 a month to keep the tank full. That's an increase of $25 in the last four months.

MICHAEL ROTH: If the problems don't spread to other Middle East countries we wouldn't expect prices to go up much higher than they are now. If problems spread to other areas then who knows what's going to happen.

ASHLEY HALL: But the biggest driver of the latest sustained price surge is the unrest in Libya.

The impact on 3rd world countries like Phil will be horrendous. Ay nako! Kawawa ang Pilipinas kong mahal!

Philippines subsidizes public transport as fuel prices soar
Mar 31, 2011, 5:27 GMT

Manila - The Philippine government would provide fuel subsidies to public transport, President Benigno Aquino III said Thursday as thousands of drivers protested rising oil prices.
Aquino said the government was allocating 500 million pesos (11.53 million dollars) to help operators of minibuses and motorized rickshaws with fuel costs for a month.
He said public transport operators would be given cards that they could use to obtain the discounts at petrol stations.
'After the end of one month, we will examine if we have to increase, decrease or totally remove the subsidy, depending on the condition of the prices of fuel in the world market,' he said.
Fuel prices have been increasing almost every week since February amid unrest in several oil-rich Middle Eastern countries.
Leftist transport groups held strikes Thursday, paralysing public transport and causing massive traffic jams in several cities.
More than 500 vehicles joined a protest convoy in Manila while at least 20,000 drivers went on strike in the northern city of Angeles, a police officer was quoted as saying by radio broadcaster DZMM.

By James Reevell in Djerba
11:33PM BST 21 Aug 2011

Few knew whether their promises were real, or whether they had the strength in numbers or arms to make good on them.
On Saturday night, the promise was put to the test. According to rebel sources in the capital and opposition groups abroad, including in the Tunisian resort town of Djerba, "Operation Mermaid Dawn" was launched from the Ben Nabi Mosque on Sarim Street near the heart of the city.
"Mermaid" is a long-standing nickname for Tripoli.
The rebels moved just after Iftar, the breaking of the Ramadan fast.
A group of young men began chanting Allahu akbar, God is Great, signifying the start of a new protest at the mosque, witnesses in Tripoli and rebels said. Prayers were cancelled and all women sent home. The men then locked themselves in and began shouting anti-Gaddafi slogans.
They then used the mosque's loud speaker system, normally used to call people to prayer, to broadcast their chants across the city.
As shooting and explosions lit up the Tripoli night, Gaddafi forces arrived and initially opened fire on the mosque with machine guns, also summoning reinforcements armed with anti aircraft guns mounted on pick up trucks. The men inside the mosque were unarmed.
Local residents and rebel fighters then converged on the mosque to defend it, using machine guns and Molotov cocktails in a fierce firefight. The rebel forces were able to drive the Gaddafi forces back forcing them to take refuge in the state TV centre on Al Nasr Street nearby.
This TV centre has been previously bombed by Nato but has several underground levels.
It was still in the hands of loyalists yesterday. A woman presenter brandished a gun while launching into an impassioned speech declaring she would fight the rebels to the death if they attacked the station.
From the mosque the uprising proceeded to spread in what, from telephone reports, appeared to be a coordinated movement. Opposition members inside the capital reported that as many as thirteen suburbs within the city were actively taking part in the uprising and engaging in firefights with loyalist troops.
Multiple sources reported that fighters temporarily entered Green Square and, in a hugely symbolic moment, raised the outlawed Libyan national flag.
Green Square is the epicentre of Colonel Gaddafi's power and status in Libya, the scene of his great rallies early in the uprising and his dramatic personal appearance in the arches of the ruined fortress on its edge. It features a giant mural of the Colonel.
Local residents said Gaddafi forces had begun to use heavy weapons, including artillery shelling, against the mosque, killing at least a dozen people in the immediate vicinity.
According to witnesses one shell hit a civilian home next door to the mosque, killing an elderly woman inside. They also said that Gaddafi forces commandeered garbage trucks as a form of disguise before ambushing opposition members near the mosque.
Later in the day, as the imminence of the rebel advance became clear, opposition forces came out elsewhere.
Prominent opposition members confirmed that the rebels had been shipping weapons into Tripoli for several weeks, in preparation for this uprising.
Mass text messages were used to urge residents within the capital to rise up. The rebels do have weapon caches along with small numbers of fighters smuggled into the capital, according to sources.
Although rumours swirled among opposition supporters both in Tripoli and abroad that Col Gaddafi and his family had fled, few gave them much credence.
They were confident, though, for the first time in the conflict that this was the end, and the fall of the Gaddafi regime was near. The question they were asking was not whether Gaddafi would fall, but how many lives he would take with him.

By: Amy R. Remo
Philippine Daily Inquirer
11:32 pm | Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011



THERE’S NO STOPPING Expect more price hikes in petroleum products until the end of the year as the Brent benchmark for crude prices may reach as much as $130 per barrel.

Consumers should brace for higher prices of local petroleum products until the end of this year as the Brent benchmark for crude prices would likely reach as much as $130 a barrel, according to a Platts official.

At the sidelines of the Platts Forum held Tuesday, Jorge Montepeque, global director for pricing at Platts, admitted that while nobody could rightfully predict oil prices, the slowdown in the growth in Asia has tempered what would have been a surge in Brent prices to as much as $150 a barrel.

“Growth in Asia is not so hot anymore. I think $120 barrel to $130 a barrel [pricing for Brent] is quite likely because China is cooling off a little bit. China is not as strong as it was. But the overall base for prices continue to be very strong,” Montepeque explained.

Although the expected increase in the Brent benchmark for crude prices would definitely impact local fuel prices, Montepeque urged the Aquino administration “not to do much at all and let the [fuel price] market be free.”

The Philippines uses the Dubai crude benchmark for crude prices while Brent is used largely as a benchmark in Europe. However, the price movement of the Dubai crude closely follows that of the Brent, which stood at $116 a barrel as of Monday.

Zenaida Monsada, director for the oil industry management bureau at the Department of Energy (DoE), also admitted that “petroleum prices are moving up generally” and will thus impact the Philippines, which imports practically all of its transport fuel requirements.

“In order to lessen the country’s dependence on imported oil, we have moved toward cleaner, more indigenous fuel. The most feasible alternatives would be liquefied petroleum gas, compressed natural gas, biofuels and even electricity,” Monsada told delegates who attended the forum.

Separately, Energy Undersecretary Jose M. Layug Jr. stressed that the DoE already laid down its short-, medium- and long-term plans that would help cut costly fuel imports and lessen the vulnerability of the Philippines in the event of any global oil price surge. These measures and initiatives, in effect, would cushion the country from volatile oil prices.

Layug said that for the short term, public transport was being given various forms of assistance such as discounts from oil companies and the P450-million Pantawid Pasada Program, under which the government provides some 140,000 jeepney drivers with fuel assistance smart cards with a load of P1,050.

Montepeque, however, disagreed with this particular program, saying that it was “not a good idea as [the government would only create a bigger] budget deficit.”

“Subsidies create artificial demand so you just harm yourself [as a country that imports most of its fuel requirements],” Montepeque said.

Over the medium term, the government is crafting the Alternative Fuels Roadmap, which seeks to diversify the Philippine transport fuel mix. The roadmap will see the conversion of existing transport vehicles to run on other fuels than diesel.

The DoE, in particular, wanted to convert more than 2,000 diesel-fed jeepneys to run using liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and natural gas—the cost of which could reach P200,000 for each unit of jeepney. It was earlier reported that the DoE was working with multilateral agencies for cheap funding for the program.

For the buses, the energy department is set to launch a pilot program to convert 10 buses so these would run on LPG at a cost of P150,000 each, or a total of P1.5 million.

In the long term, the government is pushing the exploration and development of the country’s own resources through the recent launch of the Philippine Energy Contracting Round 4, in which the DoE offered contracts for 15 highly potential oil and gas areas.

dirty games of politics

Pilipinas kong mahal!!!!!

(philstar.com) Updated August 23, 2011 01:36 PM  

SINGAPORE (AP) – Oil prices rose to above $85 a barrel Tuesday in Asia as a bid by Libyan rebels to take over Tripoli stalled and Moammar Gadhafi's whereabouts remained unknown.

Benchmark oil for October delivery was up 60 cents to $85.02 at midday Singapore time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Crude rose $1.86 to settle at $84.12 on Monday.
In London, Brent crude for October delivery was up 47 cents to $108.83 on the ICE Futures exchange.
 Crude fell in early trading Monday amid reports rebels were about to capture Tripoli and had arrested two of Gadhafi's sons. However, one of the sons, Seif al-Islam, later appeared free in front of a cheering crowd of Gadhafi supporters, putting into doubt who controlled the capital.
 Analysts were also questioning how fast Libya's oil production could recover should rebels take power. Fighting since February has cut the OPEC nation's crude output to 60,000 barrels a day from 1.5 million, and the country's oil infrastructure has been damaged.
 Goldman Sachs said it was sticking by its forecast that Libya's oil production will average 250,000 barrels a day next year.
 "It will be challenging to bring the shut-in production back online," Goldman Sachs said in a report. "We don't change our production forecast until we have more clarity on the situation."
 Other analysts are more optimistic. Libyan crude output will likely return to pre-war levels in the first half of next year, said Richard Soultanian of NUS Consulting.
 "With the new regime entirely dependent on oil revenues, the momentum to get facilities operational will be overwhelming," energy consultant Cameron Hanover said in a report. "In order for this new democracy to attract enough support, it will need to get oil flowing right away."
 In other Nymex trading for October contracts, heating oil rose 1.0 cent at $2.93 per gallon and gasoline futures added 1.0 cent to $2.72 per gallon. Natural gas for September delivery gained 0.1 cent to $3.89 per 1,000 cubic feet.

sad news

The Telegraph 10:30PM BST 23 Aug 2011

Brent crude rose above $109 a barrel after heavy fighting in Tripoli led the market to cut its expectations an early resumption of production in the oil-rich nation.

A fightback by troops loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has dashed hopes of an early end to the conflict after rebels swept into the capital to be joined by many residents.
Brent for one-month forward delivery rose $109.25 early on Monday before slipping back slightly. It closed up $1.34 at $109.70.
"It could take months before oil can start to flow again from Libya," said John Vautrain, a director at energy consulting firm Purvin & Gertz.
"I think there was a lot of euphoria on Monday. But the whole country is not completely pacified yet and we don't have an organised government. A lot is lacking."
Libya would be able to restart some oil output in a few months, said Shokri Ghamen, the country's former top oil official on Monday, but it would take as long as 18 months to reach the pre-war level.
 
Before the civil war Libya was supplied for 2pc of the world's oil, pumping around 1.6m barrels a day. Most oil from the country went to European refiners.
 
Oil prices rose above $100 a barrel during the Arab Spring, hitting a high of $127 in April after Libyan exports were halted by the unrest. In recent days, the prices of oil has fallen on fears of a double dip recession in the US and Europe.
Oil is Libya's main revenue earner.