24 Gulf Daily News Sunday, 2nd January 2011
In association with www.tradearabia.com
Russia opens crucial
China crude pipeline
MOSCOW: Russia, the
world’s top crude exporter,
said it had begun scheduled
oil shipments to China via
an East Siberian link yesterday as the Kremlin cements
ties with its energy-hungry
neighbour.
So far, Russia’s 50,000-km
oil pipeline network has been
concentrated in West Siberia
and run towards Europe.
With the commissioning
of the Eastern Siberia-Pacific
Ocean pipeline, Moscow is
carving out a large chunk of
the world’s second-largest
energy consumers’ market.
“The shipments started at
12.30am local time (9.30pm
GMT on Friday).
“We plan to pump 1.3 million tonnes of oil in January,”
said Igor Dyomin, a spokesman for Russian oil pipeline
monopoly Transneft.
According to the final schedule for crude oil exports and
transit, in January-March 2011,
Russia will ship 3.68m tonnes
of oil to China via Eastern
Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline.
An annual plan envisages
the supply of 15m tonnes
(300,000 barrels per day).
Many oil market participants
oil storage tanks in Mohe, Heilongjiang Province. The pipeline is a joint project conducted
expected it would effective- n Workers inspect the pipelinesbyand
PetroChina, China’s largest oil and gas producer, and Rosneft
ly double Russian sales to
China, which totalled 12.8m tonnes transported only by rail to the Pacific be the world’s longest. At a cost of $25 The purchase was facilitated by a $6bn
(308,000 bpd) in the first 10 months port of Kozmino.
billion, it dwarfs all other infrastructure loan from China, which effectively preof 2010.
Yesterday, the crude flowed to Daqing projects in post-Soviet Russia.
paid $17 per barrel for 48.4m tonnes
Transneft started to ship the barrels in China from Russia’s Skovorodino via
Russian state oil firm Rosneft has of oil.
along the first stage of the pipeline, the pipeline.
been sending oil to China by rail ever
That contract ran out this year, and
which runs in a 2,757-km arch above
When the 4,070-km, the pipeline’s since it bought the biggest unit of Rosneft decided not to extend it, citing
Lake Baikal. So far the oil had been second stage, is finished in 2013, it will defunct oil giant Yukos six years ago. the low selling price.
Brokerage firm closure given green light
DUBAI: A Dubai-based financial
brokerage is shutting down, capping a year in which the sector
contracted by more than a quarter because of low volumes on the
stock markets, said a report.
Emaar Financial Services said
it had received the approval of
the country’s stock exchange
regulator to suspend its brokerage activities.
“Emaar Financial Services has
received initial approval from
Securities and Commodities
Authority (SCA) for the temporary suspension of its brokerage
licence,” the company said.
The company will terminate its
trading activities on Thursday.
Its online trading platform will
be disabled.
In accordance with SCA
requirements, Emaar Financial
must immediately refund its clients’ credit balances. It also must
transfer out of its custody any
securities held at that time.
Emaar Financial’s offices
in the Dubai Financial Market
(DFM) building have been closed
for several months.
Others in the industry lamented the firm’s departure, saying
that having local firms alongside
global investment companies was
important.
“It is unfortunate where
the local brokerage industry is
going,” said CAPM Investment
chief
investment
officer
Mohammed Ali Yassin.
Brokerage revenues in the
UAE dropped sharply at the
start of the year as trading volumes slumped to the lowest in
four years on the DFM and the
Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange.
More than a quarter of the
brokerages operating at the start
of the year closed because the
fees they would earn from conducting transactions for clients
dried up as trading volumes
remained low.
The SCA said in November
that 76 financial securities firms
were operating in the country that
month, down from 103 at the start
of last year. Emaar Financial
Services is a unit of Emaar
Properties and the Islamic mortgage company Amlak Finance.
Gold price set to surge
LONDON: Traders and analysts expect gold
to break above $1,500 this year as the precious
metal notched up its strongest annual performance since 2007.
Gold recorded a fifth straight month of gains
in December, driven by a weaker dollar and
global economic uncertainty.
Spot gold rose 0.6 per cent to $1,411.86 an
ounce on Friday, a 29pc annual gain and a fifth
straight month of gains, the longest stretch of
monthly increases since late 2001. US gold
climbed 0.5pc to $1,412.50 an ounce.
The metal’s price is expected to increase
further particularly if the dollar extends its
decline, the US economy remains unable to
generate enough jobs to lower unemployment
and Europe’s debt crisis is not diffused.
The precious metals complex has had a stellar run this year, led by palladium’s 95pc rise,
in a broad commodities rally which has pushed
up the 19-commodity Reuters-Jefferies CRB
index up 15pc.
The dollar fell 0.4pc against a basket of currencies, having fallen by 12pc against the yen
and by more than 9pc versus the Swiss franc
this year.
“The gold price remains well supported by a
weaker dollar and solid investment demand,”
said BNP Paribas precious metals strategist
Anne-Laure Tremblay.
“We expect the gold price rally to continue
into 2011 on the back of strong fundamentals,
including inflationary pressures, notably in
China, ample liquidity and concerns about the
value of the dollar,” she added.
“It is still a positive picture for metals next
year. There is sufficient demand from investment perspective to maintain a relatively bullish trend, in gold in particular,” said Investec
Australia trading head Darren Heathcote.
Tempering some of the enthusiasm, holdings
in the SPDR Gold Trust, the world’s largest gold-backed exchange-traded fund, fell to
1,280.722 tonnes by December 30, its lowest
since early June.
Spot palladium rose 0.6pc to $790.28 an
ounce, after rising to a nine-year high of
$795.47 on Thursday.
Spot silver was the second-best performer
in precious metals, up 82pc on the year. It was
trading up 0.6pc at $30.62, retreating from a
30-year peak of $30.88 hit on Thursday.
n A saleswoman arranges gold jewellery at a showroom in Kolkata, India ... price ‘to surge’