Oil prices slip back after big gains
Oil prices slipped back Friday on profit-taking after bumper gains had been won on the deepening crisis between Moscow and the West over the Russian intervention in Georgia, traders said.
New York s main contract, light sweet crude for October, fell $1.70 to $119.48 a barrel.
Brent North Sea crude for October shed $1.65 to $118.51.
Oil had jumped higher on Thursday, gaining almost $6 as traders tracked geopolitical tensions between the United States and Russia, as well as reacting to a weak dollar and large drop in stockpiles of US motor fuel.
The New York contract topped $122 at one point on Thursday, a level last seen in early August.
Cold War sentiment supported (oil prices) as tensions increased between the West and Russia over the deployment of a US missile system in Poland, sparking fears of disruption to supply, wrote analysts at British energy consultancy John Hall Associates in a note to clients.
Russia, the world s biggest producer of crude oil after recently overtaking Saudi Arabia, promised to withdraw most forces from deep inside Georgia on Friday but was set to retain a military presence in two separatist regions and a buffer zone.
On Thursday it had told NATO that it was suspending all cooperation, a spokeswoman for the Western military alliance said in Brussels.
Oil prices had earlier got a boost after US gasoline (petrol) reserves slumped by 6.2 million barrels last week, compared with market expectations for a drop of only 2.4 million barrels.
Gasoline stocks are closely watched at this time of year as American motorists are on the highways for their summer vacations, typically pushing up demand for motor fuel.
Oil prices had closed up by more than $1 on Tuesday after OPEC member Venezuela said it would ask the cartel at its September meeting to cut production if downward price pressure continued.
Despite recent gains, prices have tumbled sharply from record highs above $147 set in July as weak economic growth dents global demand for energy.
Traders said the market is now looking ahead to the regular meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in September.
OPEC, which is steered by Saudi Arabia, produces about 40 percent of the world s crude. -AFP
Italcementi signs deal to build Libya cement plant
Italian public works and construction giant Italcementi has signed a contract with Libya to build a cement plant in partnership with the Libyan Mining Company.
The plant to be built in the Tobruk region of northeast Libya will have an annual production of four million tons of black cement and half a million tons of white cement, the Libyan company said on Friday.
The deal was signed on Wednesday, it said without giving a cost for the contract.
The North African state aims to triple cement production, which is estimated at four million tons annually, to meet a nationwide construction boom. -AFP
Kuwait loans Cambodia $546 mln, plans embassy
Kuwait has agreed to give Cambodia loans totaling $546 million to develop agriculture, build hydro-power facilities and construct roads, a Cambodian foreign ministry official said on Friday.
This is the second-biggest aid pledge ever received by Cambodia, after aid and loans totaling $601 million offered by China last year.
This is showing a stronger relationship between Kuwait and Cambodia, both political and economic, Cambodian foreign ministry spokesman Sin Bunthoeurn told Reuters late on Thursday after the ministry hosted bilateral ministerial talks.
He said they planned to open embassies early next year. The two countries have had diplomatic ties since 1997.
A Kuwaiti newspaper reported that Kuwait had leased rice fields in Cambodia to secure food supplies after Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammad Al-Sabah met Cambodian leaders earlier this month.
Qatar s prime minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al-Thani, paid his first official visit to Cambodia in April 2008 and Qatar plans to invest $200 million in Cambodian farmland.
Some $486 million from the Kuwaiti loan will be invested in irrigation systems and hydro-power on the Stueng Sen River in the northeastern province of Kampong Thom.
The remaining $60 million will be used for building roads in the northwestern province of Battambang, a rice-growing area, Sin Bunthoeurn said.
Kuwait has signed more than $27 billion of investment agreements with nine Asian countries during an Asian tour this month, its finance minister was reported as saying on Aug. 17. -Reuters
Kuwait orders four oil tankers from SKorea s Daewoo
The state-run Kuwait Oil Tanker Company (KOTC) said on Thursday it had signed a contract with South Korea s Daewoo to buy four oil tankers worth more than $700 million dollars.
KOTC chairman Nabil Bouresly said the deal with Daewoo Engineering and Construction was part of a plan to renew the company s fleet, official KUNA news agency reported.
The tankers will be built at a cost of $176.9 million each, will have a maximum loading capacity of 318,000 tons and will be delivered by 2012, the agency said.
Bouresly said that KOTC was also expected to launch tenders by October for the purchase of two other giant oil tankers.
The new ships will replace old ones at KOTC which carry petroleum products including crude oil and liquefied natural gas.
KOTC, a subsidiary of Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, is one of the largest companies in the world specializing in the transport of crude oil. Founded by private investors in 1957, it was nationalized in 1979. -AFP
US sanctions not hampering business: Iran bank chief
American sanctions on Iran s financial sector have not hampered business for Bank Mellat, one of Iran s major state-owned banks, its managing director said in an interview published Friday.
Speaking to the Financial Times in Tehran, Ali Divandari said that while US sanctions initially had a negative impact on the bank s reputation and created troubles … in practice there was no halt to our operations.
We are now working with important international commercial and correspondent banks on a daily basis … including European, Asian and African ones, he added, declining to name any of the banks or their home countries.
Divandari noted that the number of banks doing business with Bank Mellat had increased since the US sanctions because major international financial institutions that were doing business with it were replaced by a larger number of smaller banks.
It will be troublesome if Europe imposes unilateral sanctions on Iran s banks, but we will be able to again replace the outgoing banks, he added. -AFP
