Oil prices rose to near US$113 a barrel yesterday in Asia after Libyan rebels said they would not produce crude for at least a month as they repair fields damaged by fighting.
Benchmark crude for June delivery was up US$0.52 at US$112.81 a barrel at late afternoon in Singapore in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Oil markets were closed on Friday for the Easter holiday. The June contract last settled up US$0.84 at US$112.29 on Thursday.
In London, Brent crude for June delivery was up US$0.37 to US$124.36 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.
Fighting between forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi and rebels has shutdown almost all of the OPEC nation’s 1.6 million barrels a day of oil output and contributed to a 34 percent gain in crude prices since mid-February.
Rebels said on Sunday that they will need at least four weeks to fix equipment at the key Messla and Sarir oil fields in the rebel-controlled east.
Rising crude prices have pushed gasoline above US$4 a gallon in some US states. On Saturday, US President Barack Obama said the US must develop alternatives to fossil fuel and renewed calls to end US$4 billion in subsidies for oil and gas companies.
Traders are also closely watching this week for comments by the US Federal Reserve at its meeting tomorrow and the latest US GDP figures scheduled to be released on Thursday.
Last week, signs of growing oil consumption in China and an unexpected drop in US crude supplies helped lift prices to near two-and-a-half-year highs.
“We continue to note demand strength out of the emerging economies and a gradual tightening in US petroleum balances,” Ritterbusch and Associates said in a report. “We expect a run at the US$114 level [this week] with the market ultimately pushing up to around the US$119 area within about one month.”
In other Nymex trading in contracts for next month, heating oil rose US$0.02 to US$3.23 a gallon and gasoline was flat at US$3.31 a gallon. Natural gas futures were up US$0.01 at US$4.43 per 28.3m3.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained