Tag: Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline

How Finnair’s Huge Bet on Faster Flights to Asia Suddenly Came Undone

Chin@Strategy

Nestled near Europe’s rooftop, Finland spent decades leveraging its location to become a popular gateway for Asian travelers. Its flagship airline, Finnair, offered flights from Tokyo, Seoul and Shanghai to Helsinki that, by crossing over Russia, were hours shorter than flights to any other European capital. Airport chiefs invested nearly $1 billion in a new terminal with streamlined transfers. There were signs in Japanese, Korean and Chinese, and hot water dispensers for the instant noodle packets favored by Chinese tourists. Then Russia sent troops across Ukraine’s border on Feb. 24,…

US Penalizes Chinese Companies for Aiding Iran’s Oil Exports

Chin@Strategy

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration announced on Thursday that it would impose sanctions on two Chinese companies that transport and store Iranian oil, a shift to a tougher stance on Tehran amid signs that efforts to restore the 2015 Iran nuclear deal have failed. In a statement, the State Department said the United States was targeting Zhonggu Storage and Transportation Co. Ltd., which it said operates a commercial crude oil storage facility for Iranian petroleum, and WS Shipping Co. Ltd., which it said manages a vessel that has transported Iranian…

For China’s Auto Market, Electric Isn’t the Future. It’s the Present.

Chin@Strategy

Zhang Youping, a Chinese retiree, purchased an all-electric, small sport-utility vehicle from BYD — China’s largest electric vehicle maker — at an auto show for around $20,000 last month. Her family has bought three gas-powered cars in the last decade, but she recently grew concerned about gas prices and decided to go electric “to save money.” A few months earlier, her son had also bought an E.V. It was a $10,000 hatchback from Leapmotor, another Chinese manufacturer. This year, a quarter of all new cars purchased in China will be…

Oil Prices Tumble to Their Lowest Level Since January

Chin@Strategy

The U.S. benchmark oil price tumbled below $80 a barrel on Friday for the first time since January as traders grew increasingly worried that much of the world was headed into a recession or was already in one. The steady fall in prices from more than $120 a barrel a few months ago could easily reverse if the European Union severely limits its purchases of Russian oil as it has threatened to do. But for now, the falling oil price has offered consumers some relief from inflation. Oil prices had…

Oil Prices Fall After Signs of Chinese Economic Slowdown

Chin@Strategy

Oil prices fell to their lowest level in months on Monday, after signs emerged that China’s economy is faltering. The price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil, the U.S. benchmark, dipped below $90 per barrel in afternoon trading, down more than 3 percent, its lowest level since February. The price of Brent crude, the international benchmark, fell by a similar amount, to below $95 a barrel, the lowest since March. China’s economy, which has shown signs of a slowdown for months, sputtered even more in July according to data from…

Economic Headwinds Mount as Leaders Weigh Costs of Confronting Russia

Chin@Strategy

The interruption of wheat exports from Ukraine and Russia, which together account for 28 percent of global exports, along with supply chain disruptions, a severe drought in India that has caused it to ban shipments of grain and Covid-related lockdowns in China, are also causing food prices to spiral and increasing global hunger, particularly in Africa and the Middle East. The question for both American and European policymakers is how to corral leaping prices without sending their economies into recession. The Federal Reserve has begun raising interest rates to tame…

Russia Wants to Sell More Energy to Asia, but Has to Slash Prices

Chin@Strategy

BEIJING — Last year, the Grand Aniva, a Russian tanker with four spherical tanks for holding ultracold liquefied natural gas, sailed back and forth between a gas field in eastern Russia and depots in Japan and Taiwan. But two days after Russia invaded Ukraine, the ship switched routes, sailing to China instead. The voyages of the tanker, which is as long as three football fields, underlined that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia can still find buyers in Asia for his country’s fossil fuel exports despite Western sanctions. He needs…

It’s Not Just High Oil Prices. It’s a Full-Blown Energy Crisis.

Chin@Strategy

Look to the Mediterranean, for an example. Europe’s decoupling from Russia will intensify the geopolitical tensions over gas around the sea. In the eastern Mediterranean, Turkey resents its exclusion from energy projects and has been increasingly confrontational in asserting its interests. When Turkey struck a deal with Libya in November 2019 to claim new maritime economic boundaries for itself in the eastern Mediterranean, European Union leaders denounced the agreement as a violation of Greek and Cypriot sovereignty and incompatible with United Nations law. Now the route for a pipeline to…

Your Friday Briefing: Biden Releases Oil Reserves

Chin@Strategy

Good morning. We’re covering global energy challenges, missile deception in North Korea and the wild world of Wikipedia. War roils global energy access On Thursday, the White House announced a plan to release up to 180 million barrels of oil from U.S. strategic reserves, the largest release since it was created, hoping to push gas prices down. Oil prices, which had been surging since the fighting in Ukraine began, fell modestly on expectations of the announcement. But diesel prices are still soaring. At the same time, OPEC and its allies,…

OPEC and Russia to Meet as War in Ukraine Roils Oil Market

Chin@Strategy

In the last month, oil markets have been shaken by a war that has sparked a jump in prices and threatened a critical shortfall in crude and other petroleum products. But when most of the world’s largest oil producers meet by teleconference on Thursday to discuss supplies, analysts don’t expect much action. Officials from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia are likely to do little more than announce their usual modest monthly production increases, leading to questions about how much oil the group really does have in…