Back in November, Peaceprize winner Barack Obama, announced he was sending 2,500 U.S. Marines to Australia.
April 4, 2012, the first 200 U.S. Marines arrived in Darwin, Australia.
Over the next five to six years the United States will send a total of 2,500 military personnel, including artillery and armored units.
This is part of a new U.S. defense strategy, announced earlier in the year, which also plans to make greater use of Australian naval and air force bases.
French oil company Total, could lose $2.5 million USD per day due to its North Sea oil rig leak.
The Elgin ocean rig, near Scotland, began leaking natural gas eight days ago. It’s coming from a well that workers were trying to cap. The situation in the North Sea now, is similar to the 2010 BP Gulf of Mexico blow out.
Workers were evacuated for fear of a huge explosion. There are now reports of “oily sheen” on the ocean’s surface.
According to the North African country of South Sudan, their neighbor Sudan is bombing their oil rich areas, in order to drive off investors from the United States.
Officials from Sudan deny that they are specifically targeting oil wells, but U.S. President Barack Obama asked both sides to avoid targeting oil resources. The U.S. supported the creation of the new country of South Sudan.
The Kurdish autonomous government in northern Iraq, have stopped oil shipments. Kurdish officials say the Iraqi government has not made any of the payments promised for past oil shipments.
Iraqi officials responded by stating that the Kurds have not sent all the oil that was promised. However, a payment of $560 million USD is being reviewed.
Iraqi officials also say they have reason to believe the Kurds are illegally selling oil to neighboring Middle Eastern countries. However, despite such claims of loss from Iraqi Kurdistan, Iraqi oil exports hit 2.13 million barrels per day in March.
The world’s biggest oil producer is no longer Exxon Mobil. PetroChina is now the number one producer of petroleum oil.
According to Bloomberg, PetroChina is now producing a little more than 2.4 million barrels per day of oil. Chinese officials say the petroleum company will actually increase its take over of other oil companies around the world, because China’s industries need the oil.
“Look, the very fact that a ‘no’ [a no on Keystone] could even be said underscores to our country that we must diversify our energy export markets. We cannot be, as a country, in a situation where our one and, in many cases, only energy partner could say no to our energy products. We just cannot be in that position.”-Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada
Canada has been selling its oil to the United States by at least half the going rate, but Canadian officials say that can’t continue, even if U.S. officials approve the Keystone XL pipeline. Canada will eventually jack up the price for U.S. customers.
“We have taken a significant price hit by virtue of the fact that we are a captive supplier and that just does not make sense in terms of the broader interests of the Canadian economy…”-Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada
After several suicides in 2010, at Foxconn factories that made iPads and iPhones, Apple hired the Fair Labor Association (FLA) to investigate.
FLA discovered at least 50 cases where workers were not paid! They also discovered many cases of employees being forced to work excessive overtime hours, in violation of Chinese labor laws!
Foxconn is an affiliate of Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry and is Apple’s largest partner. With a name like Foxconn, you should be suspicious (as in sly/tricky like a Fox, and con artist).
Daniel Cameron, Argentina’s Energy Secretary, is proposing to raise the price of Argentine oil exports to $63 per barrel. Currently Argentina sells their oil at $42 per barrel.
Decades ago the Argentine government froze their export oil prices. Now oil production is way down, because it’s not worth it to the Argentine oil companies.
To make the economic situation worse, Argentina imports most of its refined fuel, and that’s been going up, in price as well as volume. Cameron wants to increase their export oil prices to offset the growing demand and cost of imported fuel, and to build up reserve funds in Argentina’s Central Bank.
The Australian airline Quantas, will be using a mix of kerosene based jet fuel, and used cooking oil.
Two of their airliners will be using the mixed fuel. It’s being supplied by a Dutch company called SkyNRG.
Don’t be too concerned, the turbine (jet engine) is a glorified diesel engine. In 1893 Rudolph Diesel designed the diesel engine specifically to run on peanut, or vegetable oil. He succeed, however he was sued by Rockefeller’s Standard Oil.
Today’s diesel fuel is actually Petrodiesel, meaning fuel for diesel engines made from petroleum, not plant oils.
So, turbines and piston diesel engines should run fine on cooking oil, unless they were specifically made to run on Petrodiesel only (and don’t forget the bogus U.S. EPA rules that force you to use Petrodiesel in your diesel powered vehicle).
Virgin Airways Australia is also about to run their airliners on plant based fuels. The fuel will be based on a type of Eucalyptus, called a Mallee tree in Western Australia.
China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) will increase oil production and natural gas extraction. This is partly because their profits dropped by 23% in their fourth business quarter.
The drop in profits came as corporate officials tried to shift from producing fuel, to buying fuel from other refiners. Officials said Sinopec refining operations were actually costing more than refiners in other countries.
Sinopec is also exploring possible shale oil in western China, which could rival shale oil production in the United States.
“For Hoku and its majority shareholder Tianwei New Energy Holdings, things cannot be worse.”-Rober Dydo, CEO of Solar PV Investor
March 18, 2012, customers who have pre-paid for Hoku’s polysilicon are getting restless. One buyer, Jinko Solar, has already reduced their original purchase contract of ten years down to eight. And there’s rumors they want to reduce it even more.
Hoku also owes two other buyers, Hanwha Solar One and Solargiga. In total the three customers already paid Hoku $140 million!
To make matters worse, Jinko Solar is the only Chinese customer that is not in trouble financially. This means that Hanwha Solar One, and Solargiga, are more likely to cancel their contracts all together.
To top everything, Hoku Materials, in Pocatello, Idaho, is still not ready for production and the delays are only costing more money: “The current estimate for the cost of facility is now $600 million to complete Phase I of 2,500 metric ton (MT) of capacity. Phase II with the complete capacity of 4,000 MT will cost another $100 million to complete. All told the $700 million dollar price tag is 70.7% more than its previous estimate…“-Michael Lofing, CPA and market analyst
IDAHO’S HOKU MATERIALS LOSES $28 MILLION, BLAMES IDAHO POWER.
The Xinjiang Bureau of Surveying and Mapping has revealed that they detained a U.S. citizen after he was caught using two GPS devices to map out cities in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.
The detention happened back on January 31, 2012. Chinese officials say he collected and stored over 90,000 geographic coordinates using his GPS receivers.
Officials with Xinjiang Bureau of Surveying and Mapping were tipped off in August 2011, after several people told them they had spotted a U.S. citizen using GPSs around a local military base.
China’s National Administration Bureau of Surveying and Mapping confirmed the man did not have permission to do any GPS mapping of China. The U.S. citizen claimed he was establishing routes for tourists from the United States!
On March 13, 2012, the Chinese government approved a request from Japan, to buy U.S.$10 billion worth of bonds.
Japanese officials admitted the move was to help them “diversify” away from U.S. bonds. The move signals the growing influence of the Chinese yuan, as a international currency.
It also comes as BRICS countries prepare to sign an agreement on March 29 that would create a new international banking system that refuses to use the U.S. dollar.
Days after a UBS oil analyst said ten countries (allies of the U.S.) would be destroyed if Iranian oil was cut off, a dumb U.S. Senator proposes to cut off Iranian oil!
In a Friday interview with C-SPAN’s (Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network) Newsmakers program, democrat Carl Levin says he wants to use the U.S. Navy to blockade Iranian oil shipments.
Levin is inviting other countries to join in: “I think (these are) options that whoever is willing to participate should explore, including Israel and including the United States.”
Levin admitted that alternative oil supplies would have to be found for the allies of the United States. Mmmm, you mean like the United States now that it actually has too much oil on hand (recently the CEO of Exxon Mobil said the U.S. oil “…markets are well supplied.”)? Now we know the real reason for going to war against the World’s second largest petroleum producer (oil from Canada and North Dakota is actually creating a surplus in the U.S.).
Julius Walker, an oil analyst with Swiss based financial company UBS, says war with Iran could destroy ten countries, from lack of oil.
He told Business Insider that not only would the price of oil skyrocket past $250 per barrel, but the economies of ten countries could be devastated.
Those ten countries are actually allies of the United States (and some are already on the verge of collapse): China, India, Japan, South Korea, Turkey, Italy, Spain, Greece, South Africa and France. Maybe they won’t be allies for very long?
March 10, 2012, just hours after Moody’s declared Greece in full default the U.S. based International Monetary Fund offers Greece another multi-billion Euro loan.
Moody’s declared Greece in full default after Greece agreed to a new sovereign debt (government bonds) swap deal, which will see 53% of Greece’s debt erased. Many holders of Greek bonds will be forced to take losses.
Now Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the IMF, is offering Greece a U.S. $36.7 billion loan. That’s on top of the other loans Greece is still waiting for.
So credit ratings companies are saying Greece is not in a position to pay back more debt, yet the U.S. led world finance institutions are offering Greece more debt? By the way, the IMF had to borrow that money from BRICS! In 2011, for the first time in the IMF’s history they were broke, and went ‘cap in hand’ to BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) to beg for money, so they could in turn lend it to Western countries.