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Mass Rally Paralyses Lagos
Recent fuel price increases ‘must be reversed’
S.Bajulaiye, S.Ojo & B.Auta, Daily Trust (Nigeria)
The Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and the Civil Society Coalition (LASCO), yesterday paralysed both commercial and business activities in major areas within the metropolis as it held a mass rally in Lagos State to protest the recent fuel increase by the federal government. …
At the Fadeyi end, hoodlums believed to be agents of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), attacked the procession by hurling stones and other dangerous weapons at them. However, the situation was brought under control by the quick intervention of policemen who were in the entourage of the protesters. The protesters who arrived at the secretariat at about 1:00pm to present their protest letter to Governor Bola Tinubu for onward delivery to President Olusegun Obasanjo, were at first barred from entering the secretariat but were later allowed in after the intervention of some government officials. …
Delivering the letter, NLC president, Oshiomhole ordered Obasanjo and the federal government to summon an emergency meeting to reverse the recent increase in the price of petrol. Oshiomhole in his letter, also asked that since the death of the late dictator, Gen. Sanni Abacha, who handed over the Kaduna refinery to French companies “why can’t the federal government fix the refineries?”. …
(15 September, 2005)
French anger grows at fuel prices
Caroline Wyatt, BBC News
This despite a move there last week, by petrol companies Total, BP and Esso, to lower prices at the pump by three cents for unleaded petrol.
Earlier this week, the French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin tried to pacify farmers and lorry drivers who were threatening protests unless the price of petrol came down. Mr de Villepin announced several tax breaks specifically for farmers, including tax credits, as well as tax rebates for some commuters.
However, there’s no sign as yet that the French government is prepared to cut fuel duties – unlike in the year 2000 when France’s move to lower fuel duty helped spark protests in Britain. …
Speaking on French radio this week, Mr de Villepin warned that France and the rest of the world would have to get used to more expensive petrol prices as the world entered a “post-oil” era.
(15 September 2005)
Emphasis added -AF
Plastics industry reeling from oil, gas hikes
Can’t pass on costs
Duncan Mavin, Financial Post (Canada)
Surging oil and natural gas prices are putting the squeeze on the Canadian plastics industry and could lead to job losses in the long-term, industry insiders said yesterday.
“Anyone who’s in the plastics industry is going to be feeling it,” said Paul Cohen, vice-president of marketing at W. Ralston (Canada) Inc., a Montreal-based manufacturer of garbage bags, adhesive tape and plastic film, which employs 400 staff.
Mr. Cohen was reacting to news that Newell Rubbermaid Inc., a U.S.-based manufacturer of plastic storage containers, is to close a third of it’s plants and cut 5,000 jobs. Rubbermaid blamed the closures on oil price increases.
The soaring cost of natural gas, a raw material in plastics production, as well as record oil prices impacting transport and machinery costs, are putting the industry here under similar pressure, said Mr. Cohen. “Will there be job losses? If buyers say we’ve got to go out and shop around, who knows where it will end.” “It could end up in China for all I know,” he said.
The difficulties facing manufacturers were reflected in 108,000 factory jobs lost in Canada in the past twelve months, according to data released by Statistics Canada on Wednesday.
The Canadian plastics industry currently employs approximately 105,000 workers, and is worth about $20-billion, said John Margeson, a plastics specialist with Industry Canada. He said he expects some “rationalization” of the industry in North America in the next five to ten years.
“We’re already seeing signs. Almost all the new investments in producing resins, the plastics precursors, are happening in the Middle East and Asia,” he said. He said there are two segments that will likely suffer most: consumer products and the automotive industry.
“Companies like Rubbermaid, in consumer products, have limited ability to pass on the price increases to their big customers like Wal-Mart or Canadian Tire who have a motto of low prices,” said Mr. Margeson. Big automakers, with their own sales and cost problems, are also reluctant to accept price increases from suppliers, he added.
(16 September 2005)
Energy to burn
Liberals clueless on fuel security
Christopher Kremmer, Sydney Morning Herald (Au)
The noise over high fuel costs, dirtier air and a trade deficit blowout is getting louder. But the people who matter don’t seem to be listening.
The plush, light-drenched ministerial wing of Parliament House is a world away from the struggles of ordinary Australians. In the Treasurer’s waiting room dark suits queue for an audience, the air heavy with the vibe of power. But in a nearby suite this week you could have sworn you smelt the acrid odour of petrol. …
The former president of BP Australasia, Greg Bourne, who is now head of World Wildlife Fund-Australia, said rigid free-market orthodoxy could be dangerous if it inhibited policies aimed at reducing dependence on expensive imports and building energy security.
“Greater energy security and resilience to oil shocks requires political leadership,” Bourne said. “We need tax and other incentives to make people use more gas at home and in our cars. Bringing North-West Shelf gas onshore for domestic use is probably the most important option we have to rapidly build resilience.”
Yet we’re shipping our gas abroad as fast as the freighters will carry it, while domestic oil production is in free fall. On current estimates, Bass Strait supply will be exhausted in nine years.
Said Labor’s federal resources spokesman, Martin Ferguson: “We are exposed from an energy point of view, potentially. The Government needs to get serious about more self-sufficiency in liquid fuels – oil, gas-to-liquids technology, and other similar investments.”
“At this stage Australia’s fuel security is still good,” [Minister Ian] Macfarlane said. “Do we need to find more oil? Yes we do. But short of finding more oil I don’t know what the solution is.” …
Whenever it begins losing domestic political or economic arguments, the Howard Government flicks the switch to terrorism. But around the world, experts are beginning to ask whether energy insecurity is the greater threat in the 21st century.
(17 September 2005)
Longish and surprisingly informative article, covering the Hirsch report, fossil fuel subsidies, the status of nuclear power and other ‘solutions’ and more. The reporter seems to be getting it, even if the Federal government isn’t; that last quote from the Federal Minister Macfarlane is priceless.-LJ
Why China is not backing Bush on Iran
Matthew Forney, Time
President Hu Jintao’s talks with President Bush this week have shown just how far apart the two countries remain on issues dear to Washington — most significantly, on the goal of depriving “Axis of Evil” states of nuclear programs. …
An oil-rich country like Iran has a tougher time making a case for a nuclear energy program, according to President Bush, and he wants China’s support in pressuring Iran to surrender its nuclear ambitions. Specifically, he wants President Hu to support his efforts next week to have the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, refer Iran to the Security Council over failure to disclose aspects of its nuclear program. …
That’s a little like asking the glue factory manager to punish the guy who shoots horses: China imports roughly half of the 6.7 million barrels of oil it uses every day, and Iran is its biggest supplier. …
(15 September 2005)
Guzzling Resale Value
SUV’s worth less with every rise in oil price
By S.K.Goo and D. Morse, Washington Post via Hartford Courant
…But selling an SUV may also be a pain. Sales of the largest General Motors and Ford SUVs have plummeted in the past year. Car dealerships around the country are flooded with used SUVs they find difficult to unload.
SUV owners are finding that their cars are depreciating quickly, mostly because manufacturers offered steep discounts on new models, causing the older ones to fall in price. The resale values of the biggest and most expensive SUVs are dropping the fastest. A 2004 Ford Expedition, a monstrous vehicle with three rows of seats, has dropped nearly 10 percent in value, or $2,400, since the beginning of the year, to $22,200, according to Kelley Blue Book. …
Similarly, car shoppers now rank fuel efficiency as the 23rd-most-important factor in what kind of car they will buy, up from the traditional ranking of about 35th, said Art Spinella, who tracks car-buying trends at CNW Marketing Research. …
(16 September 2005)
Soaring oil prices fuel smuggling in Cambodia
Ek Madra, The Dawn (Pakistan)
PHOUM KOMPONG (Cambodia) As night falls over the watery wastes of the Cambodia-Vietnam border, the petrol people start their day. Rainy season floods give the Mekong Delta smugglers myriad routes through the rice fields where 35 years ago North Vietnamese communist guerillas battled US soldiers guarding the gateways to Ho Chi Minh City – what was then Saigon.
Soaring international crude oil prices, which have pushed up pump prices in impoverished Cambodia, have made an industry out of smuggling from Vietnam, where state subsidies hold increases in check.
“If the customs men block off one way, we just go another way,” said 35-year-old Yen, dragging a plastic barrel of gasoline off a rowing boat near Phoum Kompong, a waterlogged village around 70km southeast of Phnom Penh.
Around her in the gloom are scores of other wooden boats, many of which will be loaded with gasoline and diesel from the southern Vietnamese province of Chau Doc and destined for Cambodia, which has to import nearly all its energy.
After docking as much as 20km inside Cambodia, the boats are met by scores of pony carts – an increasingly popular distribution network given the sharply escalating cost of running a vehicle.
With scant resources at its disposal – and endemic corruption in its ranks – the government of the Southeast Asian nation, still recovering from the Khmer Rouge genocide of the 1970s, is powerless to resist.
“I am not really a smuggler,” said 43-year-old pony cart driver Pou Rin, sitting under a coconut tree waiting for his first run of the evening. “I’m just hired to do this.”
With a flick of the whip, man and beast disappear off into the darkness down the potholed track, the jangling bells around his pony’s neck shamelessly advertising their activities.
Paid $1 to transport as much as 300kg of gasoline – a run they can repeat up to five times a night – the pony carters are making big money in a country where around one third of the 13 million population lives on less than $1 per day. “My horse is my bread winner,” said another carter, puffing on a cigarette in the darkness.
Furthermore, customs officials believe the widening margins in gasoline prices between the two countries in the past 18 months have fuelled a major increase in activity in a region where cross-border contraband has been a way of life for years.
Last month, the price of one litre of high-octane ‘Super’ gasoline in Phnom Penh rose from $0.82 to $0.92, whereas in Vietnam, it costs 10,000 dong ($0.63) a litre – despite three price rises already this year.
Smuggled petrol, therefore, which is sold throughout the country from barrels at road-side kiosks or informal filling stations, can be priced at a hefty mark-up to Vietnam but an equally hefty discount to its legitimate equivalent.
For locals, it is madness not to get involved. “If I didn’t do this, I don’t know what I’d do,” said 40-year-old Ry Sok Reang, sitting on a roadside gazing out at the flooded rice fields waiting for her next shipment to come in. According to Kung Samrech, a customs official, the smugglers are sophisticated enough to use mobile phones to tip each other off about patrols. If cornered, they are also prepared to fight.
“It is very difficult to stop them. They use knives, sticks and machetes to attack us,” he said. Other customs officers complain of being overstretched and no match for the organized criminal ranks arrayed against them. “We can’t be everywhere all the time,” said customs patrolman Yim Pheang, carrying an AK-47 and life jacket.-Reuters
(16 September 2005)
McDonald’s feels petrol pain
Bruce Brammall, Herald Sun (Au)
SKY-HIGH petrol prices are finally causing real pain for consumers according to McDonald’s Australia, which yesterday warned of slumping sales growth. The Australian arm of the US burger giant admitted 4 to 5 percentage points had been knocked off sales growth in just the past three or four weeks.
McDonald’s Australia chief executive Peter Bush said the double whammy of increased mortgage interest rates in March-April and sharply higher fuel prices had come home to roost in the past month. Mr Bush said many families were struggling to find the extra $30, $40 or more needed for fuel each week and had been forced to cut family budgets. …
“The higher fuel prices go, the more every damn industry has to be affected.” Mr Bush said.
(17 September 2005)
