oil – Page 2 – praag.org

Brimming with oil

Across much of the U.S. Facilities in the Midwest are about 70 percent full, while the East Coast is at about 85 percent capacity. This has some analysts beginning to wonder if the U.S. has enough room to store all its oil. Ed Morse, the global head of commodities research at Citigroup, raised that concern on Feb. 23 at an oil symposium hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. “The fact of the matter is, we’re running out of storage capacity in the U.S.,” he said.

If oil supplies do overwhelm the ability to store them, the U.S. will likely cut back on imports and finally slow down the pace of its own production, since there won’t be anywhere to put excess supply. Prices could also fall, perhaps by a lot. Morse and his team of analysts at Citigroup have predicted that sometime this spring, as tanks reach their limits, oil prices will again nosedive, potentially all the way to $20 a barrel. With no place to store crude, producers and trading companies would likely have to sell their oil to refineries at discounted prices, which could finally persuade producers to stop pumping.

Oil investors appear to be coming around to the notion that a lack of storage capacity could lead to another price crash. In the futures market, hedge funds have spent the past few weeks cutting their bets that oil prices will rise. Instead, they’ve built up a record short position, increasing their wagers that prices will fall. During a March 11 interview on CNBC, Goldman Sachs President Gary Cohn said he’s concerned the U.S. is running out of storage, particularly as refineries enter their seasonal maintenance period, to prepare for the summer driving season. Around this time they usually cut the amount of crude they buy. Cohn said prices could go as low as $30 a barrel.

The math on this can be a bit tricky. The U.S. Department of Energy measures oil storage capacity twice a year, once in the spring and again in the fall. As of September 2014, the U.S. had 521 million barrels of working capacity, up from 500 million in 2013. That includes the space inside tank farms and on-site at refineries. It doesn’t, however, include the amount of oil that can be stored in pipelines or storage tanks near oil wells; nor does it include the amount of capacity in tankers off the coast, in transit from Alaska, or on trains. Of the 449 million barrels of total crude stocks, about 327 million are stored in tank farms or on-site at refineries.

According to data from the Energy Information Administration, the U.S. is using about 63 percent of its storage capacity, up from 48 percent a year ago. “We have more space than some people tend to believe,” says Andy Lipow, an energy consultant in Houston. The most recent estimate of storage capacity also doesn’t include tanks built since September in North Dakota, Colorado, Wyoming, and Texas, he says.

Running out of room inside the nation’s storage tanks might be the only way to keep companies from pumping more oil. “These producers have kept chugging away when they should have been shutting down,” says Dominick Chirichella, co-president of the Energy Management Institute, a New York-based advisory group. “At some point, the fact that supply is outstripping demand has to have its moment of truth.”

Source: Bloomberg

Nemtsov’s role in plundering Russia

Murdered opposition figure Boris Nemtsov apparently liked to accuse Putin of things he himself was busy with.

“Russia is rapidly becoming a colony of China. Russia is losing sovereignty. This is the main point of modern foreign policy of the Kremlin” Nemtsov ranted about Putin’s stance towards China.

He had clearly forgotten that back in 1997 as Deputy Prime Minister he personally initiated a peculiar diplomacy towards Beijing, arriving a day ahead of President Yeltsin to finalize the hushed agreement on the gas pipeline from the Kovyktinskij gas field in Irkutsk and from Western Siberia to China.

His signature is actually on the agreement between the governments of Russia and China for the transportation of crude oil from Eastern Siberia to China. Nemtsov even participated in the negotiations on the demarcation of the Russian-Chinese border, which ended with the signing of a disadvantageous treaty for Russia.

After Nemtsov’s direct meddling, many Russians, to their astonishment, ended up on Chinese territory.

And what about the agreement with Japan “about some cooperation in the field of harvesting live marine resources”?

Business publications briefly reported that the Japanese were allowed by Nemtsov to fish in Russian waters without having to worry about strict Russian legislation. After only seven years the damage to Russia was then estimated at $10 billion.

The Deputy Prime Minister also aided the Chechen terrorists. He personally signed an agreement on the transit of oil through Chechnya, through which the militants received about $10 million in excess fees for oil transit from the federal budget.

This instrument of financial support for terrorism from the state worked swimmingly before Putin put an abrupt end to it. The Antlanticist press predictably only howled about human rights violations in Chechnya and remained mum on state sponsored terror.

In one interview Nemtsov admitted that he had agreed to become first Deputy Prime Minister under pressure from Boris Berezovsky’s allies. Nemtsov later denied this, but the jury from the High Court of England came to a different conclusion.

Boris and Boris admittedly had quarreled about a stake in Svyazinvest. Berezovsky wanted to buy it, but Nemtsov sold it to Soros!

In 1998 Nemtsov founded “The National Fund for Regional Policy” for the transfer of money from offshore companies, including TNK and YUKOS of the criminal Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Part of the funds went to Nemtsov.

The loss to the state was estimated at 370 billion rubles. But everything remained on the fringes of the law, since after October 1993, the laws were written by scoundrels for scoundrels, and approved by the cohort of senators whom Nemtsov had joined in December of the same year.

His election to the Council of Federation [Russian Senate] was financed by a businessman with a criminal background, Andrey Klimentyev.

Translated from Russian

Putin heads for Hungary

Vladimir Putin has chosen Hungary for his first state visit to an EU state since the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis a year ago. Energy issues are expected to top the agenda, yet the Russian leader usually has an ace up his sleeve.

The Russian president’s visit to Hungary is keeping EU officials in Brussels guessing about what sort of deals exactly are going to be signed in Budapest.

Putin is visiting Prime Minister Viktor Orban at a time of unprecedented confrontation between the western world and Russia over the bloody conflict in Ukraine.

The EU has broadened its anti-Russian sanctions on Monday, expanding the blacklist with 19 more people and nine new companies. The EU blacklist now includes 151 citizens of Russia and Ukraine’s self-proclaimed eastern republics, as well as 37 Russian companies.

The Kremlin press service said that talks of the Russian and Hungarian leaders will focus on bilateral economic and trade relations, and in particular the nuclear energy deal signed in December.

Under a deal worth up to €10 billion, Russia’s Rosatom will build a 2,000 megawatt addition to Hungary’s state-owned nuclear power plant MVM Paksi Atomeromu.

Orban is famous for his skeptical attitude towards many European Union’s policies, particularly Brussels’ siding with the US in the sanctions against Russia, a campaign that damages ailing European economies.

Despite all the accusations, Orban’s Fidesz party won last year’s general election with a landslide victory, receiving practically 45 percent of votes and securing Orban’s third term as the Hungarian prime minister.

Prime Minister’s supporters view his action as defending Hungary’s national interests against agendas of international corporations and foreign governments. Among the biggest successes of the Orban government was the law that forced conversion of mortgages denominated in Swiss francs, which saved Hungarian borrowers from suffering a debt cost hike after Switzerland unpegged their currency from the euro, which resulted in sharp 20 percent gain in value.

Brazil and Russia may exit BRICS warns phrasemaker

Brazil and Russia’s membership of the BRICs may expire by the end of this decade if they fail to revive their flagging economies, according to Jim O’Neill, the former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. chief economist who coined the acronym.

Asked if he would still group Brazil, Russia, India and China together as emerging market powerhouses as he did in 2001, O’Neill said in an e-mail “I might be tempted to call it just ’IC’ or if the next three years are the same as the last for Brazil and Russia I might in 2019!!”

The BRIC grouping will be dragged down by a 1.8 percent contraction in Russia and less than 1 percent expansion in Brazil, according to the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. China is seen growing 7 percent and India 5.5 percent.

The BRICs were still booming as recently as 2007 with Russia expanding 8.5 percent and Brazil in excess of 6 percent that year. The bull market in commodities that helped propel growth in those nations has since ended, while Russia has been battered by sanctions linked to the crisis in Ukraine and Brazil has grappled with an unprecedented corruption scandal involving its state-owned oil company.

“It is tough for the BRIC countries to all repeat their remarkable growth rates” of the first decade of this century, said O’Neill, a Bloomberg View columnist and former chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management International. (GSGEPPA) “There was a lot of very powerful and fortuitous forces taking place, some of which have now gone.”

The growth slump this year isn’t a new normal though and O’Neill sees expansion in Brazil and Russia partially recovering, helping the BRICs average about 6 percent growth per annum this decade — still more than double the average for the Group of Seven nations.

Their share of global gross domestic product will “rise sharply,” he said.

O’Neill had previously estimated average annual growth of 6.6 percent for the BRICs this decade, a pace it was close to achieving through last year mainly because China exceeded the 7.5 percent annual average growth he estimated for the first three years, he said.

Unlike Brazil and Russia, China is embracing economic change while India, after the election of Narendra Modi as prime minister and benefiting from low oil prices and a young labor pool, may have brighter prospects this decade than last, O’Neill said.

With China and India spurring growth, the BRICs will remain the most dominant and positive force in the world economy “easily,” said O’Neill.

China growing at 7 percent will add about $1 trillion nominally to global output every year, O’Neill said. When measured by purchasing power parity, China’s growth adds twice as much as the U.S.’s, he said. India expanding at 6 percent will add twice as much as the U.K. in those terms, he said.

Source: Bloomberg

ISIS supplies run through NATO country

Germany’s international broadcaster published a video report of immense geopolitical implications.

This is possibly the first national broadcaster in the West to admit that the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS) is supplied not by “black market oil” or “hostage ransoms” but billions of dollars worth of supplies carried into Syria across NATO member’s borders.

Every day, trucks laden with food, clothing, and other supplies cross the border from Turkey to Syria. Turkey is a NATO member.

It is unclear who is picking up the goods, Deutsche Welle reports.

The haulers believe most of the cargo is going to the “Islamic State” militia.

Oil, weapons, and soldiers are also being smuggled over the border, and Kurdish volunteers are now patrolling the area in a bid to stem the supplies.

NATO has feigned a desire to defeat ISIS but has failed to expose and uproot ISIS’ multinational sponsorship and more importantly, has refused to cut its supply lines – an elementary prerequisite of any military strategy.

Oil tankers head for China as drop sparks boom

Add oil shippers to the list of winners from this year’s collapse in crude.

The price plunge has spurred China, the world’s second-biggest importer after the U.S., to accelerate bookings of oil cargoes. It will also shave almost $20 billion a year in fuel costs across the maritime industry if prices that dropped 18 percent since last November hold around current levels, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

While the oil slide is hurting nations from Saudi Arabia to Iran that depend on energy for revenues, companies including airlines and cement makers are benefiting as their fuel costs decline. Ship owners serving the industry’s benchmark Middle East-to-Asia trade routes are reaping the best returns from charters in years as the slump drives down the industry’s single biggest expense.

The number of supertankers sailing toward China’s ports matched a record on Oct. 17 and is still close to that level now. The country added 35 million barrels to its inventories in the past three months as the nation fills its strategic petroleum reserves, OPEC said yesterday.

“The Chinese, among others, seem to be responding to the lower oil price with additional demand,” Paddy Rodgers, the chief executive officer of Euronav NV (EURN), an Antwerp-based owner whose fleet is part of the world’s largest pool of tankers, said by e-mail Nov. 10.

Oil companies booked ships to load 148 million tons of Persian Gulf crudes in the 12 weeks since Brent fell below $100 a barrel. The orders are up 5 percent from a year earlier, according to lists of charters compiled by Bloomberg.

The shipping industry consumes as much as 3.5 million barrels a day in fuel, according to Trafigura Beheer BV, an oil trader. Prices averaged about $73 a barrel on Nov. 11, about $15 a barrel less than a year earlier, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The year-on-year slump amounts to annualized savings of $19 billion.

The price slump will curb investment in higher-cost production projects and drive a rebound in the second half of next year, Abdalla El-Badri, OPEC’s secretary-general, said in Vienna on Nov. 6.

Shipping isn’t the only industry benefiting from cheaper oil. American Airlines and United Airlines both said they beat quarterly estimates last month with a boost from higher fares and falling fuel costs. Bernd Scheifele, the chief executive officer of HeidelbergCement AG, the world’s third-biggest cement-maker, said on a Nov. 6 conference call that each $0.10 cut in the gasoline price represents $12 million in savings for the company.

At a time when China’s economy is growing at the slowest pace in decades, its oil imports are rallying. The world’s second biggest economy purchased 25.5 million metric tons a month in the January-to-September period, heading for a record year. Falling prices may add to those figures as winter approaches.

“The main traders, they are typically more active in the tanker market when prices have dropped,” said Moerkedal of RS Platou Markets. “When you look at chartering in the last couple of weeks China has definitely been one of the most active buyers of oil.”

Source: Bloomberg

Russia may ban circulation of US dollar

Russia may ban the circulation of the United States dollar.

The State Duma has already been submitted a relevant bill banning and terminating the circulation of USD in Russia, APA’s Moscow correspondent reports.

If the bill is approved, Russian citizens will have to close their dollar accounts in Russian banks within a year and exchange their dollars in cash to Russian ruble or other countries’ currencies.

Otherwise their accounts will be frozen and cash dollars levied by police, customs, tax, border, and migration services confiscated.

After the law enters into force, it will be impossible to obtain cash dollar in Russia. The ban or termination of the US dollar will not apply to the exchange operations carried out by Russian Central Bank, the Russian government, ministries of foreign affairs and defense, the Foreign Intelligence Service and the Federal Security Service.

Source: APA

Texans ban fracking in its birthplace

Voters approved a ban on hydraulic fracturing in the north Texas town of Denton on Tuesday, making it the first city in the Lone Star State to outlaw the oil and gas extraction technique behind the U.S. energy boom.

The vote in the city of 123,000 was highly symbolic because hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking, is widely used in Texas, the top crude producer in the United States.

“Denton, Texas is where hydraulic fracturing was invented,” said Bruce Baizel, Earthworks energy program director. “If this place in the heart of the oil and gas industry can’t live with fracking, then who can?”

Green groups said the result served as a wake-up call to the industry.

Groups like Frack Free Denton won even though they were outspent by a margin of 10 to one, according to organizers and local media reports.

The Texas Oil & Gas Association, the state’s energy lobby, on Wednesday quickly filed for an injunction.

“A ban on hydraulic fracturing is inconsistent with state law,” Thomas Phillips, a former head of the Supreme Court of Texas who now represents the trade group, said.

In a frack job, a mix of pressurized water, sand and chemicals is used to unlock hydrocarbons from rock. Operators claim it is safe but many environmental groups oppose the practice – calling it wasteful, polluting, dirty and noisy.

Fracking was pioneered at the Barnett shale formation where Denton is located. Exxon Mobil’s XTO unit honed its shale expertise in the natural gas-rich Barnett. Most of the crude output in Texas comes, however, from the growing Eagle Ford and Permian fields to the south and west.

The Denton referendum pitted oil and gas operators and mineral rights owners against residents who say their homes and lives are being encroached on by work that can be noisy, soak up scarce water supplies and overwhelm roads with heavy truck traffic.

“It’s essentially a ban on all drilling,” said Ed Ireland, executive director of the Barnett Shale Energy Education Council, a group aligned with producers. “No one would try to drill a well if they can’t frack it.”

Source: Reuters

Russia to submit request to UN for new Arctic borders

A decade after its first application was turned down, Russia plans to submit another request to the United Nations (UN), seeking to expand its Arctic borders by over 1 million square km, a senior government official said Wednesday.

“If the request is approved, Russia will fix its sovereign right over an extra territory of 1.2 million square meters in the Arctic Ocean and will also have a chance to increase its forecasts for hydrocarbon resources by 5 billion tons of equivalent fuel,” Natural Resources Minister Sergei Donskoi told a meeting chaired by President Vladimir Putin.

He added that the approval of the Russian claim would support Moscow’s geopolitical interests in the Arctic and provide its control over seabed and covered waters.

Moscow initially submitted its claim to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf in 2001 but was asked in 2002 to revise the application by adding more trustworthy data. Russia could again submit the claim next spring.

“Now all the work has been done. Since 2002 rather a large volume of field and camera work has been carried out in ice conditions,” Interfax news agency quoted Donskoi as saying.

For the UN to recognize Moscow’s ownership of those areas, it must be scientifically proven that they are a continuation of the continental crust with the same general geological structure.

Russia, along with the United States, Canada, Denmark and Norway, exercises sovereignty of 200 nautical miles (370 km) exclusive economic zone from their respective Arctic shorelines.

All the five countries have reserved the right to demand expansion of their exclusive zones, which requires each country to demonstrate the seabed is a natural extension of its continental shelf.

Source: Xinhua

French detectives join investigation into Total CEO’s death

Russian Prosecutor General’s Office agreed on French detectives to participate in a probe of the crash of a French jet Falcon at Moscow airport Vnukovo in which France’s oil giant Total CEO Christophe de Margerie died, spokesperson of the Prosecutor General’s Office Marina Gridneva told TASS.

“The Prosecutor General’s Office has granted the French partners’ request on their coming to Russia to participate in the investigation of the criminal case opened over the oil major Total CEO’s fatal jet crash at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport on October 20,” she said.

During the takeoff at Vnukovo airport on Monday night, the Dassault Falcon business jet, bound for Paris, collided with a snowplow, caught fire and fell onto the runway. All the people on board died in the crash.

The field stage of the Falcon jet crash investigation was completed on Thursday. A chief investigator with the Interstate Aviation Committee reported the results of the field stage.

The crew of the French Falcon jet that crashed in Moscow’s Vnukovo airport on Monday night noticed the snowplow just 14 seconds before takeoff.

A trainee air traffic controller supervised by instructor was guiding Falcon at Vnukovo before crash. All systems of Falcon jet were properly functioning until crash.

The collision of the snowplow and Falcon jet occurred on an intersection of runway strips. The runway strip was free when takeoff authorization was given. Falcon’s speed was about 250 km/h when it crashed with the snowplow.

All fragments of the jet have been collected from the crash site. A thorough examination of the fuselage, collected fragments and fuel is still to be conducted in the future.

A Moscow court on Thursday ruled that the prime suspect in the case. Vladimir Martynenko, a snowplow operator who allegedly caused the crash of the French Falcon jet, remains in detention until December 21.

The court ruled in favor of the prosecution after preliminary medical examination results were announced that Martynenko was drunk at the moment of the crash.

Russia’s Investigative Committee spokesman said the level of alcohol found in Martynenko’s blood was 0,6.

Medical tests show that four staff members of Moscow’s Vnukovo-3 airport detained in connection with the Falcon jet crash were sober, the official spokesman of Russia’s Investigative Committee said on Thursday.

Billionaire’s buying up mega-farms

It was a showdown in New Mexico earlier this year, as two billionaires, both from Fort Worth, Texas, battled it out to buy two enormous cattle ranches.

When the dust cleared, oil, gas and real-estate investor Bobby Patton, co-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, had won the 174,000-acre York Ranch, spending more than the $10.9 million asking price and outmaneuvering D.R. Horton , one of the country’s largest home-building companies. In a separate deal, D.R. Horton, founded by Donald Horton, outbid Mr. Patton for the nearby 292,779-acre Great Western Ranch, closing in July for around the asking price of $59 million.

The market for large ranches is on the rebound. The recession and droughts dampened demand for wide swaths of ranch land in recent years. Dry conditions forced ranchers to sell off their herds, creating a glut that drove down cattle prices. Now, with easing drought conditions across much of the country and higher cattle prices, ranches that had been sitting on the market have started to sell. A boom in the oil and gas industry and current 2% interest rates on ranch mortgages are also fueling big land grabs.

“It’s the perfect storm,” says Sam Middleton, a Lubbock, Texas-based ranch agent who is representing Waggoner Ranch. With 510,000 acres across six counties in Texas, Waggoner Ranch is one of the largest ranches ever to go on the market. The heirs of Texas cattle baron W.T. Waggoner listed it just a few weeks ago for $725 million. Mr. Middleton and Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International broker Bernie Uechtritz say “hundreds” of interested buyers have called about the property.

Demand is particularly strong right now for mega ranches—those with over 25,000 deeded acres and often more than 100,000 total acres listed in the $10 million to $175 million range. Deeded acres are more desirable because they’re owned outright; ranches may also include acreage leased from the state or federal government, which allows them to graze their cattle in exchange for a fee. These properties typically have cattle operations, as well as recreational assets such as hunting, fishing or hiking. Some listings include mineral rights in the sale, which offers potential revenue from oil, gas, uranium, coal or other resources.

Hall & Hall, a ranch real-estate agency that listed both the York and Great Western ranches in New Mexico, says a substantial part of its $1 billion-plus in ranch sales since 2012 has come from these larger properties. The firm has sold seven ranches bigger than 25,000 deeded acres since 2011, three times the number it sold in the previous four years.

Buyers of these mega ranches are looking for income, such as a profitable livestock operation or fees from allowing wildlife-hunting, says Jeff Buerger, a Denver-based partner with Hall & Hall. More important, they are looking for a safe, long-term investment. The value of U.S. pasture land normally grazed by livestock rose 11% in the fiscal year 2014, which ended in September, from a year earlier, after averaging about 5% yearly increases for the two years before that, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

In a statement from D.R. Horton, the company said the purchase of Great Western Ranch was a “long-term investment, with no immediate plans for development. It will remain an active ranch operation and be made available for use by our key employees.”

Michael Hewatt, a member of the D.R. Horton board, says the company will use it much like it does the two large ranches it owns in Texas: as a place to entertain brokers, bankers and other D.R. Horton vendors. “It’s a perk for the people we work with,” he says. He also says the ranch is a “good investment for the long term.” Mr. Horton has also personally purchased large parcels of ranch land in Texas and New Mexico, according to public records.

Mr. Patton is more likely to use York Ranch for entertaining than for raising cattle, says Thomas G. Fitzgerald, one of the sellers. Mr. Fitzgerald says the cash flow from the cattle was “insignificant” in comparison to the value of the land. There’s also some potential hunting revenue, from $25,000 to $40,000 a year. The ranch, which has elk, mule deer and pronghorn antelope, is allocated about 14 big-game tags—which signifies the number of animals that can be harvested. A three-bedroom, two-bathroom main house and a small airplane hangar with two landing strips came with the sale. It is very much a working ranch—it’s nothing fancy, says Mr. Fitzgerald. Mr. Patton declined to comment on his plans for the ranch.

A major ranch purchase also comes with bragging rights. Many of the bigger properties are known as “legacy” ranches in part because buyers want to stake their claim in history. These ranches stand out for their size, unusual location or a unique feature, says Eric O’Keefe, editor of the Land Report, which publishes an annual ranking of the largest 100 private landowners in the country. To make that list requires owning 100,000 deeded acres or more.

Billionaire Stan Kroenke, who owns the St. Louis Rams and soccer’s Arsenal F.C., bought a roughly 124,000-acre ranch in 2012 near Augusta, Mont., listed for $132.5 million by the estate of William and Desiree Moore, the late co-founders of Kelly-Moore Paints. Called the Broken O Ranch, Mr. Kroenke’s purchase elevated him on the Land Report’s list of largest landowners, where he currently holds the No. 9 spot. Mr. Kroenke didn’t respond to a request for comment. Liberty Media Chairman John Malone remains at the No. 1 spot on the Land Report’s 2014 list, with 2.2 million acres. Mr. Kroenke didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Much of the action is in New Mexico. Unlike Texas and Colorado, the state still has quite a few very large properties that haven’t been broken apart. Real-estate agents estimate that New Mexico has about 30 ranches bigger than 100,000 acres of deeded land. Land prices are lower, too. New Mexico ranch land sells for $200 to $300 per acre, compared with as high as $1,000 an acre in Wyoming, Montana and elsewhere.

Ben Scott of Dimmitt, Texas-based Scott Land Co. is representing a 109,000-acre Double V ranch near Roswell, N.M., listed for $26.2 million, or $240 an acre. Double V first went on the market in 2009 but didn’t sell. It was relisted in the spring of 2013 and is currently under contract.

Caleb Matott, also a Texas-based ranch real-estate agent, in August sold the 35,000-acre Red Bluff Ranch, listed for $7 million, near Roswell, N.M. The buyers were Mr. Horton and his wife, Martha, personally—not by the company, according to public records. In marketing the ranch, Mr. Matott stressed the legacy value of the property: “To stand on the same ground that John Chisum, John Tunstall, Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett and so many more have stood, makes a man walk with a little higher step in his stride. To own a ranch of the grandeur makes a person part of history.”

Mr. Patton has another property in New Mexico: He and Mark Walter, the Chicago financier who is also a co-owner of the Dodgers, bought the 93,403-acre Double H ranch in west-central New Mexico last year through Double H Holdings LLC, which was used to buy the York ranch. The sale price isn’t public, but the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, a habitat-protection organization that owned the ranch, earned at least $30 million in the deal, according to Blake Henning, vice president of lands and conservation for the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation.

Vast ranch holdings by a few individuals can cause deep resentment in the community, Mr. Henning says. Since private landowners either ban the public from hunting on the land or use outfitters to sell expensive hunts, local hunters often complain, he says.

That resentment won’t go away soon. Competition for recreational ranches, particularly by owners of thriving oil and gas companies, has picked up. There’s a shortage of supply now of the largest properties, which tend to go to the same small group of investors. “There’s a finite group of potential purchasers. We are all aware of them and what their appetites are,” says Greg Fay, founder of ranch brokerage firm Fay Ranches.

Great Western Ranch closed in July for around the asking price of $59 million. A previous version of the story said the ranch had sold for more than its asking price.

Source: WSJ

Russia loses an oil ally

Christophe de Margerie’s last act as chief executive officer of Total SA (FP) left no room for doubt about his feelings toward Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

In a Moscow speech hours before the plane crash that took his life two days ago, de Margerie said U.S. and European Union sanctions on the country were “unfair and unproductive,” and that he opposed efforts to render it “isolated from the major global economic and political process.”

Appearing before a receptive audience that included Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and a host of Russian executives, he cited his work as co-chair of a Franco-Russian business body alongside Gennady Timchenko — a commodities billionaire who was one of the first targets of U.S. sanctions.

De Margerie’s death removes from the scene a businessman who rarely shied away from geopolitical debates and became one of Russia’s most outspoken allies in its efforts to avoid economic quarantine, willing to say what others only dared think. Although European corporate giants from Siemens AG to Renault SA (RNO) have built close relationships with Russia, most business leaders have preferred to keep their lobbying private to avoid offending governments committed to punishing Putin.

“Christophe was an extraordinary individual who had nurtured his relationships with Russia and many other international players on a person-to-person basis,” said John Hofmeister, former U.S. president of Royal Dutch Shell Plc and now CEO of advocacy group Citizens for Affordable Energy. “The major players in Russia operate at multiple levels of visibility. Christophe was singular in his approach.”

Good Reason

De Margerie, 63, had good reason to oppose efforts to fray Russia’s economic ties with other major economies in the wake of the simmering civil war in the Ukraine. Under his leadership, Total bet big on the world’s largest country by landmass, partnering with OAO Novatek (NVTK) to develop an Arctic gas-export terminal and hunting with OAO Lukoil (LKOD) for so-called tight oil deposits in Siberia.

Since taking over as CEO in 2007, De Margerie repeatedly told audiences at the endless conferences he attended around the world that meeting the growth in global energy demand would be impossible without Russia’s vast reserves.

After buying a stake in Novatek, Russia in 2013 became Total’s biggest source of production after Nigeria, the United Arab Emirates and Norway, providing about 9 percent of its daily oil output.

The CEO made clear his displeasure with sanctions shortly after they were imposed earlier this year. Total made plans in April to raise its stake in Novatek just weeks after the U.S. moved to freeze the assets of Timchenko, the company’s second-largest shareholder.

Business Conclave

In May, de Margerie traveled to the annual St. Petersburg Economic Forum, an annual business conclave convened by Putin and shunned by American executives at the urging of President Barack Obama’s administration.

In a letter expressing his condolences after de Margerie’s death, Lukoil CEO Vagit Alekperov said the Frenchman had “remained an example of honor, steadfastly defending the principles of an honest partnership with Russia.”

De Margerie and Alekperov had signed an agreement to work together in Russia at the St. Petersburg event.

Although other major oil companies have also worked to develop partnerships in Russia, which has the world’s largest proven oil and gas reserves, none has advocated as forcefully against isolation as Total.

De Margerie “said out loud what many didn’t dare,” said Laurence Parisot, former head of France’s employers federation Medef. He was never afraid to criticize anyone, from the president of France down, she said. “One of his exceptional characteristics was that he was very direct, very clear and very frank in all settings.”

Exxon Mobil

BP Plc (BP/) CEO Bob Dudley, whose company owns 20 percent of state-backed oil producer OAO Rosneft (ROSN), in July described sanctions as “a matter for governments to resolve.” Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) CEO Rex Tillerson has consistently declined to comment publicly on the measures, which have forced the world’s largest private oil producer to suspend Arctic exploration alongside Rosneft.

“In defending investment in Russia it’s likely de Margerie was driven by an economic rationale which will survive him,” Alex Griffiths, head of natural resources and commodities at Fitch Ratings, said by telephone from London. “A lot of western companies have major stakes in Russia because of the huge reserves there.”

The U.S. and European governments have said Putin is backing separatist rebels in the east of Ukraine, who this week skirmished with the Ukrainian army in and around Donetsk. Putin has denied supporting the militants.

Oil Search

Russia wasn’t the first controversial country that De Margerie, always on the hunt for new sources of oil and gas, sought to do business with even at the risk of political opprobrium. Total was working on developing the giant South Pars natural gas project in Iran until sanctions designed to halt its nuclear program drove the company to pull out in 2009.

This year de Margerie said he’d like to re-enter the country as soon as political conditions allow. He met with Iranian president Hassan Rouhani along with other energy CEOs in Davos, Switzerland.

Total’s press office wasn’t available to comment beyond a statement earlier today that the company’s board would meet in Paris to consider the appointment of a new CEO.

De Margerie and other Total executives “saw the world as a place they should be operating, not their own countries or their own continents,” James Hackett, the former CEO of Anadarko Petroleum (APC) Corp., said today. “He never reverted to a focus on financial engineering as opposed to finding resources.”

Yamal Development

De Margerie’s determination to keep pumping more oil and gas drove him in recent weeks to say he was “doing everything” to keep his signature Russian project on track, the $27 billion Yamal gas development. After U.S. sanctions barred the project from receiving loans in dollars, he said the company and its partners would look to Chinese banks to fill the gap.

Explaining his stance on Russia in May of this year, de Margerie told reporters he believed economic sanctions were an ineffective way to resolve conflicts between countries. Businesses, he argued, could serve as diplomatic intermediaries in political disputes, and “the relationship between politics and companies is a good way to calm things.”

Source: Bloomberg

More suspects to emerge after Total’s CEO death

New suspects are likely to emerge in the ongoing Russian investigation into the accident in Moscow’s Vnukovo airport that killed the CEO of French oil giant Total, a Russian Investigative Committee spokesman told RIANovosti on Tuesday.

“Although first suspects have already been identified in the case, it is evident that the negligent behavior of perpetrators was, naturally, overlooked by the upper management, whose actions or inaction will undoubtedly undergo a proper legal scrutiny, and we do not rule out more detentions in this case,” Vladimir Markin said.

“Moreover, investigators will take measures soon to suspend some airport officials, who may hinder the investigation, from official duty,” the spokesman added.

Russia’s Investigative Committee will legally assess the actions of the leadership of the air company over the crash of the Falcon plane with Total CEO Christophe de Margerie on board, Investigative Commitee spokesman Vladimir Markin told TASS.

The chief executive of French oil major Total was killed when a business jet collided with a snow plough during takeoff at Moscow’s Vnukovo International Airport, the company and airport officials said.
The collision occurred late on Monday, minutes before midnight Moscow time, the airport said in a statement. The Dassault Falcon business jet carrying de Margerie was heading to Paris, Reuters reported.

“The investigators will soon take measures to suspend from office a number of airport staff members who may impede the investigation. Despite the appearance of the first suspects in the case, it is also obvious that senior managers of the air company the action and inaction of which will be legally assessed during the investigation, are behind the negligent conduct of the persons directly responsible for the incident,” he said.

Markin did not rule out that more suspects may be detained during the criminal case investigation.

Investigators confiscated all video and audio recordings from the crash scene of the private Falcon-300 jet to establish those responsible for the tragic incident.

The driver of the snowplow that collided with the jet that crashed at a Moscow airport killing all four people on board, has been detained for 48 hours. The driver was drunk at the time of the accident when the snowplow he was operating crashed into the four-seat Falcon-300 airplane, which caught fire and fell onto the runway. Three crewmembers and France’s oil giant Total CEO Christophe de Margerie died in the jet’s crash.

The French Air Accident Bureau (BEA) has sent its experts to Moscow who will join the Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC) investigating the circumstances of the death of Total CEO Christophe de Margerie.
A team of three investigators is due to arrive in Russia soon, the Agence France-Presse reported on Tuesday.

The Paris Prosecutor General’s Office has opened a criminal case into “involuntary manslaughter” following the tragic death of the Total CEO.

MPLA’s British handler dies

The British MI6 spy, Michael Wolfers, died in London at the start of a private dinner in one of London’s most exclusive clubs to celebrate the milestone 75th birthday of his close friend of 56-years’ standing, Lord Bragg, on October 15.

He was a devout Marxist for the Foreign Office in London.

Wolfers, working undercover as a journalist, left The Times in 1973 and in 1975 became an adviser on political and media matters to the MPLA in Luanda.

The MPLA was dominated by a network of well-educated, often prosperous whites, like Wolfers, working to end “colonial rule”.

Michael Wolfers, who never married, will be cremated at the Jewish cemetery in Golders Green, London, on Tuesday, October 21, 2014.

In the past two decades he had travelled widely as an election observer for the European Union, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the Carter Center, monitoring polls in countries such as Rwanda, Bosnia, Madagascar and Togo.

Five years ago he had an apartment built in in Lomé, the capital of Togo, which he grandly named “Villa Wolfers”.

Lara Pawson recently challenged the superficial account of the violent repression by the MPLA in her book In the Name of the People: Angola’s Forgotten Massacre, London: I.B.Tauris, 2014.

Pawson’s gripping study of the events of 27 May 1977 in Angola show the utter ruthlessness of the MPLA, advised by the likes of Wolfers.

Her meticulous account demonstrates the extreme ferocity of the MPLA response – the killings, torture, mass purges and also the way that personal scores were settled under the guise of purging the party of alleged “factionalists” and “racists”.

Most importantly, it shows how the killings of perhaps 20,000 to 30,000 party members or supporters, the cloak of secrecy thrown over the events and their aftermath and the all-pervading fear that resulted, have helped maintain the dominance of a small clique and its clients within the MPLA and through the party’s hegemony over Angola and its resources.

The book starts with events the author witnessed in Luanda in 2000 and how people even two decades later or longer feared expressing open opposition because of the lessons of 27 May. The extent of the killings, torture, detentions and purges left an indelible mark on Angolan politics.

Wolfers was one of 16 guests savouring the first course at the men-only Garrick Club when an evening of celebration turned into one of horror.

Despite attempts by paramedics for more than an hour-and-a-half to revive him, he was declared dead before he arrived at St Thomas Hospital on South Bank, close to his home in Waterloo.

“We’d been close friends for 56 years,” Lord Bragg told a reporter from the Daily Mail. “He made close friendships. He was much loved. He was very highly regarded.”

Michael Wolfers was the product of exclusive and expensive primary and secondary education and was an outstanding scholar at Wadham College, Oxford University in the late 1950s.

It was there he met young Bragg who came from an English working-class background but who went on to become one of Britain’s best known media figures.

After an apprenticeship on a north of England newspaper, Michael Wolfers joined The Times and was that paper’s correspondent in various parts of Africa until 1973.

When in London, Wolfers was a familiar figure at Chatham House. He was fluent in Portuguese and several other languages and a well-respected authority on both the MPLA in Angola and FRELIMO in Mozambique.