Word: oiled
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China Petroleum (PTR) is buying 45.5% of Singapore Petroleum for just over $1 billion and will probably move to purchase the balance of the company. China recently proposed a deal to lend $10 billion to Brazilian oil giant Petrobras to help it develop deep sea crude deposits. In exchange, the world's most populous nation has negotiated getting a steady flow of oil from Brazil at market prices...
...long time, the normal laws of economics did not seem to apply in Dubai, the most populous of the seven states that comprise the United Arab Emirates. Abu Dhabi, the seat of political power in the UAE, controls most of the country's oil resources. With less oil to tap, Dubai has used low taxes, easy money and cheap Asian labor to transform itself into one of the region's most dynamic economies. The city state developed a kind of signature swagger, expressed most gaudily in the gargantuan real estate projects - an indoor ski slope, man-made islands shaped like...
Inevitably, though, the laws of economics have reasserted themselves. Since oil prices plummeted, and world stock markets crashed last fall, some $75 billion worth of real estate projects have been suspended and canceled in Dubai, according to a report by the local branch of HSBC bank. Business journal the Middle East Economic Digest puts the figure at more than $300 billion. Postponed developments include the World, a luxury man-made island community designed to resemble a world map, and Dubailand, a theme park planned to be twice the size of Florida's Disney World. Housing prices have fallen...
...worsening revenue picture for the Iraqi government apparently stirred talk among leadership in Baghdad of allowing the export of oil from Kurdish northern Iraq. Kurdistan, as the semi-autonomous region is known, has long sought to export its significant oil reserves. But the central government in Baghdad has always objected to any such move, insisting that Baghdad control the country's oil exports and its revenues. The dispute has proven to be one of the most intractable impasses in Iraqi politics. Early reports of a possible deal buoyed hopes for a breakthrough, but so far no agreement has emerged...
...Tsvangirai has made some progress in resurrecting Zimbabwe's all-but-dead economy. Schools that closed last September after teachers went on strike have reopened. Zimbabweans can now go to shops to buy basic goods that had not been available for 10 years, such as maize meal, sugar, cooking oil and salt (previously they had to be purchased in neighboring Botswana or South Africa and brought into the country). "I think they have done a lot," says economist John Robertson, "but prices must go down, and that will happen only when production improves." He adds, "Our [labor costs] are still...