Energy Notes du Jour

Radio Baghdad: Insurgents explode oil pipeline in southern Iraq

July 21, IRNA – Iraqi state Radio Baghdad announced minutes ago that insurgents on Wednesday night exploded an oil pipeline in southern Iraq’s Mahmoudiyeh region. The radio added, “Due to the explosion of a heavy bomb along the route of Mahmoudiyeh-Latifiyeh oil pipeline on early hours of Wednesday evening a part of it was set ablaze and the high flames due to the burning of the leaking oil covered a vast area for six hours.

No reference in western media to this as yet

BP plans resumed production at Badami oil field

Oil production at the Badami field on Alaska’s North Slope could resume as early as this summer, and BP expects output of 1,000 barrels a day, said Daren Beaudo, the company’s Alaska spokesman. High oil prices make the venture worthwhile, not so much for the expected daily trickle of oil but for the chance to try new technologies that might significantly improve Badami’s performance, Beaudo said.

Experimentation or desperation?

Russia increases oil export to China by 28 percent in 6 months

IRKUTSK, July 20. KAZINFORM. – A total of 3.7 million tonnes of oil has been shipped from Russia to China in the first six months of the current year, which is by 28.4 percent more than during the same period last year, the East-Siberian Railway Company, a branch of the Russian Railways Company, told Itar-Tass on Wednesday. Additional yards for receiving and dispatch of railway tank cars are being built there and railways are extended for making trains for carrying of up to 6,000 tonnes of oil.

OPEC President Says Oil Market Is Well Supplied

July 20 (Bloomberg)—The president of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the source of almost 40 percent of the world’s oil, said the oil market is well supplied as prices fall below $60 a barrel.

China 2nd-Qtr Growth Unexpectedly Accelerates to 9.5%

Crude oil rises as China fuel sales jump

‘‘When we look at Chinese sales, we still see a strong and robust trend in consumption,’’ said Frederic Lasserre, head of commodities research at Societe Generale SA in Paris. ‘‘We might see a huge rebound in Chinese oil imports in the second half of this year.’’

‘‘China has confounded expectations of a slowdown,’’ said Dariusz Kowalczyk, a senior investment strategist in Hong Kong at CFC Securities Ltd. ‘‘Commodity prices should increase for the very simple reason that the recent declines have been caused by fears of a Chinese slowdown. This data disproves such fears.’’

so much for the so-called slow-down in China