BG Group Plc, the third-biggest UK oil and gas producer, said global oil prices are too high to be sustained.
“The current prices, if you look at the underlying long-run marginal cost of oil production, are too high to be sustained,” BG CEO Frank Chapman told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. “There is a good deal of speculative anxiety because of geopolitical effects, holding the price up.”
Crude oil more than doubled in the past year to a record US$142.99 a barrel in New York on Friday. The price of oil will climb to US$170 a barrel before year’s end because of the declining US dollar and political conflicts, OPEC president Chakib Khelil predicted on Saturday.
“There’s just no way that we can see prices going down,” Gavin Wendt, senior resources analyst at Fat Prophets Funds Management in Sydney, said yesterday by telephone. “We’re not finding oil and replacing oil nearly as fast as the rate that we are consuming it.”
Crude oil for August delivery rose 0.4 percent, to US$140.21 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Friday. Prices are up 38 percent this quarter, heading for the biggest three-month gain since January 1999 to March 1999, when oil traded between US$11 and US$17.
“We’re screening projects still down as far as US$30 a barrel. We think around mid-50s is a price that could be sustained if you take away all of the anxiety,” Chapman said. “We have to make sure that our investments are taking account of that low case as well as looking at what might happen in a high case.”
BG is offering A$13.8 billion (US$13.3 billion) in its hostile bid for Origin Energy, Australia’s biggest producer of gas from coal seams.
The US government has signed defense cooperation agreements with Japan and the Philippines to boost the deterrence capabilities of countries in the first island chain, a report by the National Security Bureau (NSB) showed. The main countries on the first island chain include the two nations and Taiwan. The bureau is to present the report at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The US military has deployed Typhon missile systems to Japan’s Yamaguchi Prefecture and Zambales province in the Philippines during their joint military exercises. It has also installed NMESIS anti-ship systems in Japan’s Okinawa
‘WIN-WIN’: The Philippines, and central and eastern European countries are important potential drone cooperation partners, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung said Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) in an interview published yesterday confirmed that there are joint ventures between Taiwan and Poland in the drone industry. Lin made the remark in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper). The government-backed Taiwan Excellence Drone International Business Opportunities Alliance and the Polish Chamber of Unmanned Systems on Wednesday last week signed a memorandum of understanding in Poland to develop a “non-China” supply chain for drones and work together on key technologies. Asked if Taiwan prioritized Poland among central and eastern European countries in drone collaboration, Lin
The Chien Feng IV (勁蜂, Mighty Hornet) loitering munition is on track to enter flight tests next month in connection with potential adoption by Taiwanese and US armed forces, a government source said yesterday. The kamikaze drone, which boasts a range of 1,000km, debuted at the Taipei Aerospace and Defense Technology Exhibition in September, the official said on condition of anonymity. The Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology and US-based Kratos Defense jointly developed the platform by leveraging the engine and airframe of the latter’s MQM-178 Firejet target drone, they said. The uncrewed aerial vehicle is designed to utilize an artificial intelligence computer
Renewed border fighting between Thailand and Cambodia showed no signs of abating yesterday, leaving hundreds of thousands of displaced people in both countries living in strained conditions as more flooded into temporary shelters. Reporters on the Thai side of the border heard sounds of outgoing, indirect fire yesterday. About 400,000 people have been evacuated from affected areas in Thailand and about 700 schools closed while fighting was ongoing in four border provinces, said Thai Rear Admiral Surasant Kongsiri, a spokesman for the military. Cambodia evacuated more than 127,000 villagers and closed hundreds of schools, the Thai Ministry of Defense said. Thailand’s military announced that
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