The US will surpass Saudi Arabia and Russia as the world’s top oil producer by 2015, according to a report published by the International Energy Agency (IEA) on Tuesday — with significant implications for industry and manufacturing in the coming years.
Gulf producers have scaled back investment in anticipation of a US shale oil boom and oil glut.
The shift in global energy production will put UK industry at a serious competitive disadvantage as a result of the low price of energy in rival nations, chiefly the US, the IEA says. As much as 10 percent of Europe’s market for energy-intensive industrial products, including iron and steel, glass and chemicals, could go to competitors within the next decade, it said. The finding could have profound consequences for jobs, the economic recovery and climate change policies.
The IEA — regarded as the gold standard for energy data — said that Europe, Japan and other nations were being outpaced by the US because of the low price of energy in the US resulting from the shale gas boom there.
In its annual World Energy Outlook, the organization said that the price differential was likely to endure for decades.
“Today, there is a substantial gap between the US and Europe in gas and electricity prices,” said Fatih Birol, chief economist at the IEA and one of the world’s foremost analysts of energy. “This is a serious problem for Europe. It’s even more serious because this differential in prices will remain for at least the next 20 years.”
He predicted that energy-intensive industries in the UK and Europe would suffer a 10 percent decline in their international market share.
“This will have huge costs in terms of employment, as there will be significant losses. There will be a knock-on effect on the whole economy,” he said.
Energy prices around the world have been transformed by the US push to exploit fracking for shale gas, the controversial form of gas extracted by blasting high-pressure water and chemicals at dense shale rocks.
Only four years ago, according to the IEA, Europe’s gas prices were about the same as those in the US. Now, they are three times higher. In Japan, prices are about five times higher.
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