Royal Dutch Shell’s Nigerian division has warned that it may permanently shut down a 150,000 barrels per day pipeline along the Niger Delta, after complaining that it was losing billions of dollars a year from rampant thefts and vandalism, which have climbed to “unprecedented” levels in the last weeks, reported Reuters.
China has provisionally overtaken the U.S. as the world’s largest net importer of oil, said the Financial Times on Tuesday, after the U.S. posted its lowest import figures since 1992 on the back of booming domestic oil production.
After last week’s inconclusive Italian general elections, as well as the United States’ failure to prevent steep automatic spending cuts, markets will be looking to see how central banks respond. Despite some speculation on further easing, the European Central Bank is unlikely to announce any policy changes when it meets on Thursday and economists have warned that the Bank’s current policy stance won’t be enough if the eurozone crisis is aggravated.
Monday, March 4
Swiss citizens on Sunday voted to impose some of the world’s strictest rules on executive pay, forcing public companies to give shareholders a binding say on remuneration. However, critics say the results could make Switzerland less attractive to multinational corporations.
Official results showed that 67.9 percent of voters had backed the so-called “fat cat initiative”, one of the highest approval rates ever for a popular initiative.
Italy’s president Giorgio Napolitano is considering the creation of a second technocratic government to run the country, amid signs that the nation’s key parties would not be able to reach an accord over last week’s election results, The Telegraph reported on Sunday.
The U.K. government is hoping to raise as much as $98,000 by selling off part of its vintage wine collection, which is normally served to foreign heads of state and prime ministers at 200 or more events a year, reported Reuters.
India announced on Thursday it would seek to impose an additional tax on the country’s wealthiest individuals as well as large business. Asia’s third largest economy has been hurt by both global and domestic factors and is expected to grow 5 percent this year, far below its previous projection of 7.6 percent.
Presenting the federal budget for the financial year starting April 1, Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Thursday vowed to cut India’s deficit as he unveiled new taxes targeting the rich as well as big businesses.
Broad U.S. “sequester” spending cuts that take effect beginning Friday will hurt growth in the world’s largest economy and destabilise a fragile global economic recovery, the International Monetary Fund said on Thursday, warning that the U.S.’s biggest trading partners would be hardest hit.
The IMF added that it will likely trim its growth forecast for the United States and the global economy if the $85 billion in automatic spending cuts, also known as sequestration, take effect on Friday.
Iraqi officials are still nowhere close to reaching an agreement with the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region regarding oil payments owed to the central government, reported Reuters on Wednesday, with the impasse causing a delay in the approval for the national budget that was first drafted last October.
Prominent business leaders in Italy have expressed alarm and fury at the nation’s political gridlock; and have urged politicians to put aside their differences in order to form a grand coalition government that can deal with the nation’s immediate pressing issues.
“The real economy cannot wait for political machinations,” said Giorgio Squinzi, the usually mild-mannered head of Italian business lobby Confindustria, warning that the upcoming six months could essentially determine Italy’s fate.
