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MOSCOW, June 3 (Reuters) – Russia’s Gazprom (GAZP.MM) will send 40.3 million cubic metres (mcm) of gas to Europe via Ukraine on Saturday, the company said, down from 40.6 mcm on Friday.
Reporting by Reuters
Editing by Mark Potter
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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LONDON, March 15 (Reuters) – Oil extended losses on Wednesday as unease over Credit Suisse spooked world markets, offsetting hopes of a Chinese oil demand recovery.
Early signs of a return to calm and stability faded after Credit Suisse’s largest investor said it could not provide the Swiss bank with more financial assistance, sending its shares and broader European stocks sliding.
“The financial sector in Europe is under significant turmoil today,” said Naeem Aslam, chief investment officer at Zaye Capital Markets.
Brent crude fell $1.44, or 1.9%, to $76.01 a barrel by 1100 GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures (WTI) were down 33 cents, or 0.5%, at $71.00.
Oil had rallied earlier on figures showing that China’s economic activity picked up in the first two months of 2023 after the end of strict COVID-19 containment measures.
On Tuesday both benchmarks shed more than 4% to three-month lows, pressured by fears that the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) last week and other U.S. bank failures could spark a financial crisis that would weigh on fuel demand.
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Wednedsay’s monthly report from the International Energy Agency provided support by flagging an expected boost to oil demand from China a day after OPEC increased its Chinese demand forecast for 2023.
Investors are now awaiting official U.S. oil inventory data later on Wednesday to see if it confirms the 1.2 million barrel rise in crude stocks reported on Tuesday by the American Petroleum Institute.
(This story has been refiled to correct typographical error in headline)
Reporting by Alex Lawler
Additional reporting by Florence Tan in Singapore and Yuka Obayashi in Tokyo
Editing by Jason Neely and David Goodman
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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RIYADH, Nov 24 (Reuters) – Representatives from Russia and Ukraine met in the United Arab Emirates last week to discuss the possibility of a prisoner-of-war swap that would be linked to a resumption of Russian ammonia exports, which go to Asia and Africa, via a Ukrainian pipeline, three sources with knowledge of the meeting said.
The sources said the talks were being mediated by the Gulf Arab state and did not include the United Nations despite the U.N.’s central role in negotiating the ongoing initiative to export agricultural products from three Ukrainian Black Sea ports. Ammonia is used to make fertilizer.
However the talks aim to remove remaining obstacles in the initiative extended last week and ease global food shortages by unblocking Ukrainian and Russian exports, they added.
The sources asked not to be named in order to freely discuss sensitive matters.
The Russian and Ukrainian representatives travelled to the UAE capital Abu Dhabi on Nov. 17 where they discussed allowing Russia to resume ammonia exports in exchange for a prisoner swap that would release a large number of Ukrainian and Russian prisoners, the sources said.
Reuters could not immediately establish what progress was made at the talks.
The Ukrainian ambassador to Turkey, Vasyl Bodnar, told Reuters that “releasing our prisoners of war is part of negotiations over opening Russian ammonia exports”, adding “Of course we look for ways to do that at any opportunity”. Bodnar said he was unaware if a meeting took place in the UAE.
Putin said on Wednesday that Russian officials would work to unblock Russian fertilisers stuck in European ports and to resume ammonia exports.
The UAE’s foreign ministry did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
Lana Nusseibeh, UAE’s Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, said Abu Dhabi remains firmly committed to help keep channels of communication open, encourage dialogue and support diplomacy to end the war in Ukraine.
“In times of conflict, our collective responsibility is to leave no stone unturned towards identifying and pursuing paths that bring about a peaceful and swift resolution of crises,” Nusseibeh said in a statement carried by state news agency WAM.
Russia and Ukraine’s defence and foreign ministries did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
Asked if the United Nations were involved in the talks, a spokesperson for the organisation declined to comment.
The export of Russian ammonia would be via an existing pipeline to the Black Sea.
The pipeline was designed to pump up to 2.5 million tonnes of ammonia gas per year from Russia’s Volga region to Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Pivdennyi, known as Yuzhny in Russian, near Odesa for onward shipment to international buyers. It was shut down after Russia sent its troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24.
The export of ammonia was not part of the renewal of the U.N.-backed grains corridor deal that restored commercial shipping from Ukraine.
Last week, Rebeca Grynspan, Secretary-General of U.N. agency UNCTAD, who leads the negotiations on fertiliser, said she was optimistic Russia and Ukraine could agree to the terms for the export of Russian ammonia via the pipeline, without giving details.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has publicly set several conditions before allowing Russia to resume its ammonia exports via the pipeline, including a prisoner swap and reopening of Mykolaiv port in the Black Sea.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine have released official figures on how many prisoners of war they have taken since Russia invaded in February. On Oct. 29, Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskiy said that since March, Russia had freed a total of 1,031 prisoners.
Russia and Ukraine have disclosed few details about direct meetings between representatives from the two countries following the abandonment of ceasefire talks in the first few weeks following Moscow’s invasion on February 24.
Abu Dhabi’s efforts follow in the footsteps of Saudi Arabia, which scored a diplomatic win by securing freedom for foreign fighters captured in Ukraine in September.
The UAE, like Saudi Arabia, is a member of the OPEC+ oil alliance that includes Russia and has also maintained good ties with Moscow despite Western pressure to help isolate Russia over the invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow calls its “special military operation”.
UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan visited Moscow last month where he discussed with President Vladimir Putin the possibility of Abu Dhabi mediating for an ammonia deal, two of the sources said.
Ukraine is a major producer of grains and oilseeds. Russia is the world’s largest wheat exporter and a major supplier of fertilisers to global markets.
Since July, Moscow has repeatedly said its shipments of grain and fertilisers, though not directly targeted by sanctions, are constrained because sanctions make it harder for exporters to process payments or to obtain vessels and insurance.
Reporting by Aziz El Yaakoubi in Riyadh, Pavel Polityuk in Kiev and Jonathan Saul in London, additional reporting by Jonathan Spicer; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Jon Boyle
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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ACCRA, Nov 24 (Reuters) – Ghana’s government is working on a new policy to buy oil products with gold rather than U.S. dollar reserves, Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia said on Facebook on Thursday.
The move is meant to tackle dwindling foreign currency reserves coupled with demand for dollars by oil importers, which is weakening the local cedi and increasing living costs.
Ghana’s Gross International Reserves stood at around $6.6 billion at the end of September 2022, equating to less than three months of imports cover. That is down from around $9.7 billion at the end of last year, according to the government.
If implemented as planned for the first quarter of 2023, the new policy “will fundamentally change our balance of payments and significantly reduce the persistent depreciation of our currency,” Bawumia said.
Using gold would prevent the exchange rate from directly impacting fuel or utility prices as domestic sellers would no longer need foreign exchange to import oil products, he explained.
“The barter of gold for oil represents a major structural change,” he added.
The proposed policy is uncommon. While countries sometimes trade oil for other goods or commodities, such deals typically involve an oil-producing nation receiving non-oil goods rather than the opposite.
Ghana produces crude oil but it has relied on imports for refined oil products since its only refinery shut down after an explosion in 2017.
Bawumia’s announcement was posted as Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta announced measures to cut spending and boost revenues in a bid to tackle a spiraling debt crisis.
In a 2023 budget presentation to parliament on Thursday, Ofori-Atta warned the West African nation was at high risk of debt distress and that the cedi’s depreciation was seriously affecting Ghana’s ability to manage its public debt.
The government is negotiating a relief package with the International Monetary Fund as the cocoa, gold and oil-producing nation faces its worst economic crisis in a generation.
Reporting by Cooper Inveen and Christian Akorlie
Writing by Sofia Christensen
Editing by Estelle Shirbon and Elaine Hardcastle
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WASHINGTON, Oct 5 (Reuters) – President Joe Biden called on his administration and Congress to explore ways to boost U.S. energy production and reduce OPEC’s control over energy prices after the cartel’s “shortsighted” production cut, the White House said on Wednesday.
The Saudi Arabia-led OPEC+ cartel at a Vienna meeting on Wednesday ignored pleas from the White House to keep oil flowing and agreed to cut output by 2 million barrels per day, its deepest cuts in production since the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.
The move drew a sharp response from Biden that underscores the growing rift between the United States and Saudi Arabia on energy policy.
“The President is disappointed by the shortsighted decision by OPEC+ to cut production quotas while the global economy is dealing with the continued negative impact of (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s invasion of Ukraine,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan and National Economic Council Director Brian Deese said in a statement.
Biden warned that he will now continue to direct releases from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve “as necessary,” a shift from the White House’s previous comments that it would end the drawdown in the coming weeks.
Earlier this year, the Biden administration announced the largest sale ever from the reserve: 180 million barrels for six months beginning in May. Last month it extended that historic sale into November as only about 155 million barrels had been sold. It now aims to sell 165 million through November.
As a result, the amount of oil in the reserve has fallen to the lowest level since July 1984. It now holds about 416 million barrels of oil, well above what the United States is required by its membership in the International Energy Agency, at sites on the Texas and Louisiana coasts.
Rising oil and fuel prices are a risk to Biden’s fellow Democrats as they seek to keep control of Congress in the Nov. 8 midterm elections.
Biden also pledged to consult with Congress on additional tools to cut OPEC’s control over energy prices, a potential reference to a decades-long effort to open the cartel to antitrust lawsuits for orchestrating supply cuts.
The so-called NOPEC bill, which has brought up numerous times over the past 20 years but never enacted, easily passed a Senate committee in May.
The White House has previously expressed concerns about unintended consequences of the bill.
The White House is also worried about the cut cementing Saudi Arabia’s closer cooperation with Russia, also a member of OPEC+, as oil revenues fund Moscow’s war machine in Ukraine.
“Look it’s clear that OPEC Plus is aligning with Russia with today’s announcement,” White House spokesperson Karine-Jean Pierre told reporters aboard Air Force One on Wednesday.
Reporting by Susan Heavey and Jarrett Renshaw; editing by Tim Ahmann and David Gregorio
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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LONDON, Oct 5 (Reuters) – OPEC+ key ministers, known as the joint ministerial monitoring committee, has agreed oil production cuts of 2 million barrels per day, three OPEC+ sources said.
Reporting by OPEC Newsroom; editing by David Evans
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NEW YORK, Oct 22 (Reuters) – The Dow Jones industrial average registered a record closing high on Friday and major equity indexes posted a third straight week of gains while the U.S. dollar slipped.
On the day, MSCI’s broadest gauge of global shares (.MIWD00000PUS) was flat, and the S&P 500 (.SPX) and Nasdaq (.IXIC) ended lower.
Stocks came under pressure after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the U.S. central bank was “on track” to begin reducing its purchases of assets. read more
Intel’s stock (INTC.O)fell 11.7% and was among the biggest drags on the S&P 500. Late Thursday, Intel reported sales that missed expectations and pointed to shortages of chips holding back sales of its flagship processors. read more
American Express Co’s stock (AXP.N) gained, boosting the Dow after the company beat profit estimates for the fourth straight quarter.
Next week brings reports from several key mega-cap names including Amazon (AMZN.O). read more
The dollar pared losses after Powell’s comments, but the dollar index was last down 0.10% at 93.64, and is off from a one-year high of 94.56 last week. read more
“There’s a bit of a positioning unwind taking place. We’ve obviously seen a firmer dollar since the September” Fed meeting, said Mazen Issa, senior FX strategist at TD Securities in New York. “That also dovetails with the seasonal tendency for the dollar to soften into the end of the month.”
Investors also digested news that China Evergrande Group (3333.HK) appeared to avert default with a source saying it made a last-minute bond coupon payment. read more
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) rose 73.94 points, or 0.21%, to 35,677.02, the S&P 500 (.SPX) lost 4.88 points, or 0.11%, to 4,544.9 and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) dropped 125.50 points, or 0.82%, to 15,090.20.
The pan-European STOXX 600 index (.STOXX) rose 0.46% and MSCI’s gauge of stocks across the globe shed 0.03%.
The MSCI index posted gains for a third straight week along with the three major U.S. stock indexes.
In the U.S. bond market, yields on longer-dated U.S. Treasuries slid.
The yield on 10-year Treasury notes was down 1.6 basis points to 1.659% after rising to a five-month high of 1.7064% late Thursday.
Oil rose and ended up for the week, near multi-year highs. Brent crude futures rose 92 cents to settle at $85.53 a barrel, and registered its seventh weekly gain. U.S. crude futures gained $1.26, to settle at $83.76, and rose for a ninth straight week. read more
Spot gold was up 0.6% at $1,793.82 per ounce.
Among cryptocurrencies, bitcoin last fell 2.21% to $60,841.96.
Additional reporting by Simon Jessop in London, and Karen Brettell, Sinead Carew and Herbert Lash in New York and Kevin Buckland in Tokyo
Editing by Hugh Lawson Mark Potter and David Gregorio
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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