Oil’s problem – it’s everywhere

In a good news-bad news scenario, the timing of Parliament’s research paper, The Next Oil Shock? (pdf) was presented as the latter when it could just as well have been the former.

Exxon Mobil and Todd surrendered their exploration licence for the Great South Basin, making it harder other permit holders to go drilling. But the good news was a return to full production at the Tui field and first flows from the new Manaia field, which is now part of the larger Maari field.

Oil discoveries are booming around the world and, as the Parliamentary report says, supply problems are not as imminent as is made out. In other developments this week, the US lifted its ban on deepsea drilling, while both Iran and Iraq – the third and fourth largest holders of reserves – substantially lifted theirs to above 150 billion barrels.

The price of oil – which has remained in fairly narrow band of $US70-84 a barrel this year – is now driven more by the declining US dollar than demand. By contrast, oil fluctuated between $US147 and $US32 in 2008.

While The Next Oil Shock? may be more overtly alarmist than the reality, it also presents the upside of New Zealand eventually becoming self-sufficient and even an exporter.

Circumstances can also change quickly. Take Basra, in southern Iraq. The Guardian reports the once despairing city British forces left behind 16 months ago is now heaving with new money.

Wide boulevards, once scarred with bomb craters and decades of putrid refuse, are now full of new cars and touts hawking trinkets. [A] 250-room hotel – five-star by European standards – has been rebuilt, renamed the Basra International hotel, and redesigned by local architect Waad al-Radhi, who left the city two decades ago.

Basra [has] a resource that could eventually transform the economy into one of the world's leading economic powerhouses.

"This is potentially the fourth biggest oilfield in the world," said Gary Jones, BP's director of operations in North Rumaila. "The intention is not just to create a spike but to build production to nearly triple capacity."

Greed is still good
The film Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps has survived the school holidays but has not made the splash that was expected. I still recommend it, even though Oliver Stone overcooks the story.

It may be recalled Stone’s original Wall Street also received a lukewarm reception but went to be become a cult classic.

Meanwhile, the real Gordon Geckos are doing better than ever. The Wall Street Journal this week calculated their pay will break a record high for a second consecutive year.

About three dozen of the top publicly held securities and investment-services firms –which include banks, investment banks, hedge funds, money-management firms and securities exchanges – are set to pay $US144 billion in compensation and benefits this year, a 4% increase from the $139 billion paid out in 2009.

Compensation was expected to rise at 26 of the 35 firms with revenue rising at 29 but at a slower pace than pay. Total Wall Street revenue is forecast to rise 3% to $US448 billion from $US433 billion, despite a slowdown in some activities such as stock and bond trading.

Meanwhile, don’t miss the November 18 debut on Rialto channel of Shadow Billionaire, a documentary about DHL co-founder Larry Hillblom, who died in a plane crash in the Pacific leaving no wife, kids or will…until dozens of women claimed he was the father of their children.

Can’t wait for this movie, either
The mystery of the assassination in Dubai of a top Hamas arms dealer last January has deepened after the police chief leading the investigation said a “western” country had arrested a key suspect but wants it kept secret.

At least, that is what The Nation is reporting in the United Arab Emirates, adding that the country is not European. It was following up an earlier and lengthy Wall Street Journal story that the trail had gone cold and that some arrested in case had been released because evidence was lacking.

Mahmoud al Mabhouh was suffocated with a pillow in his hotel room and later Dubai police released footage showing a number of people dressed in sports clothing trailing him as he exited the hotel’s lift.

A list of 35 suspects was released with allegations they were Israeli agents using false passports issued by various European countries and Australia.

Meanwhile, in a further updater, The Nation reports that Israel’s Mossad is getting stick for a British national linked to the case using the identity of a dead Israeli soldier.

Dubai police chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim is saying no more, suggesting he is no closer to solving a mystery no one but him wants solved.

Not the marrying kind
A French demographer has praised the fecundity of his countrywomen. Writing in Le Figaro (English version), Jean-Claude Barreau, former president of France’s Institute for Demographic Studies, offers a new slant on the immigration debate.

As noted here previously, even the most tolerant of European societies have risen up against alien cultural values brought in by Muslim migrants. Yet without migration, Europe’s population would decline.

Except in France, where Barreau says the women are immune to trends that have lowered birth rates in other European countries.

He predicts within the next 15 years, France’s population will become larger and younger than Germany’s for the first time since the French Revolution (1789-99). Among the reasons Barreau gives for the reluctance of women to have babies is that Germans continue to believe that a working mother is not a good mother, while in the Catholic strongholds of Italy, Spain, Poland, and Ireland,

…women are no longer sufficiently Catholic to get married, but they are still too Catholic to have children out of wedlock. So now that the number of marriages is on the wane, they are having fewer children.

[French women] are not more likely to get married than Italian women, but as they are less Catholic in outlook, this does not prevent them from having children, and the majority of babies in France are now born to unmarried parents.