Nothing too unusual about that. His company, China Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC), has built most of the latest mills in China. But the latest project Shen is eyeing is in Western Australia.
Shen’s problem is he wants to build it cheaply and quickly, something he can only do with imported Chinese labour. To underscore the capabilities of his company, China’s largest industrial infrastructure builder, he upped his offer by saying he could build a city in the Pilbara that could house 400,000-500,000 people.
“Labour is a key issue for us,” he told the Australian China Business Council (ACBC) Business Dialogue in Shanghai last week. “The facilities in Australia mining areas are often inadequate. We could build a town for 300,000-500,000 people with proper facilities,” he said, indicating this would help mining companies better exploit the vast resources in the region and add to Australia’s wealth. The idea would be to bring in cheap Chinese labour purely for the building period, then hand it over to Australian operators, leaving legacy infrastructure for decades ahead.
Oil washes ashore in the port of Dalian, China, 20 July 2010. Photograph: Jiang He/Greenpeace /EPA
Chinese authorities stepped up their efforts to disperse a major oil slick in the Yellow Sea yesterday by mobilising 800 fishing boats to help the clean-up operation.
The flotilla will join the 24 specialist ships that have been spraying dispersal agents, soaking up crude with panels of absorbent felt and using a floating barrage to prevent the slick from contaminating the beaches near Dalian.
Investigators have also launched a probe into the pipeline explosion that caused the seepage on Friday night and has subsequently forced the authorities to restrict access to Dalian Xingang oilterminal.
A 300,000-tonne crude oil tanker, owned by Singapore Pacific Petroleum which was unloading its cargo at the time of the accident, has been held for checks.
The domestic media said there have been safety concerns at the port for some time.
An environmental protection bureau study on the petrochemical industry in 2006 identified five projects at the Dalian Xingang Port as potential risks, according to Global Times.
Economic activity in the north-eastern port has been seriously disrupted. Six “very large crude carriers”, with about 12m barrels of oil, were expected to be diverted, possibly to South Korea or other terminals in China with the capacity for such large vessels. Ships carrying imported corn have also been forced to dock elsewhere.
Thousands of firefighters have doused the flames and port engineers have staunched the leak, but the clean-up mission will take at least four more days, according to the domestic media.
Officials said the dispersal operation was making progress despite rough seas. Considerably smaller in scale than the BP leak in the Gulf of Mexico, the slick has reportedly shrunk by more than a third from its peak of 50 square kilometres.
But local reporters said the crude was evident on nearby beaches, where patches of sand and rocks were coated in a layer of oil.
The leak is likely to add to persistent calls for tighter environmental regulation in China. The need for improved standards was also highlighted by a toxic spill from a copper mine in Fujian month that poisoned a major river, killed countless fish and threatened the drinking supplies of downstream communities.
The director of the Environmental Inspection Office, Zou Zhimin, told the local media that the state council – China’s cabinet – have arranged inspections of safety standards at petrochemical sites across the country.”
BP accused of ignoring internal report of Deepwater leak
Just as nightmare appears over, and cap on leaking well is holding, British firm’s official gives damaging testimony
Should a hurricane strike the Gulf of Mexico this weekend, work on cleaning up the oil slick and blocking the well would be disrupted. Photograph: Dave Martin/AP
BP came under fresh attack last night amid accusations that it had ignored internal safety reports of a leak on the Deepwater Horizon rig and had not used industry best practice for avoiding oilspills.
The news comes just as BP officials were hoping that their long nightmare was starting to be over as the new cap on the leaking oil well appeared to be holding firm and working well.
There had been concerns that the cap might damage the stricken well and allow oil to burst out of the seabed. However, BP officials said there was no evidence of oil from the damaged well forcing its way through cracks in the seabed. “We do not have any anomalies or evidence that we do not have integrity [of the well],” BP’s senior vice-president, Kent Wells, told reporters.
But, while the capping of the well may be going well, developments onshore continued to prove what an enormous task BP faces in trying to repair its public image. In Louisiana an investigative hearing into the leak heard testimony from a BP official who said the firm had ignored warnings ahead of the disaster.
Ronald Sepulvado, a BP well site leader, said he had reported a leak on a critical safety device at the rig to more senior company officials, but it seemed his warnings had not been passed on to the government regulating body, the Minerals Management Service.
“I assumed everything was OK, because I reported it to the team leader and he should have reported it to the MMS,” he told the hearing. The leak was on a control pod connected to the blowout preventer on the rig, whose failure proved critical in causing the disaster.
A congressional committee in Washington heard testimony from Gale Norton, interior secretary under former president George W Bush. Norton said BP had ignored rules put in place in 2003. “If regulations on the books and industry best practices had been followed properly, there might not have been a blowout,” she said. “It appears that BP violated all those regulations that were on the books.”
BP officials know that their best hopes lie in permanently sealing the well. A relief well being dug alongside is almost finished. “The relief well is exactly where we want it,” said Wells. The relief well is set to intercept the damaged well at the end of July.
But before then BP will attempt to shoot drilling mud into the damaged blowout preventer, to seal the well from the top. A previous attempt using this method failed. Wells said that the company was seeking permission to make the effort, possibly this week.
However, bad weather is building in the Caribbean and over the Atlantic, which could become a violent storm by the weekend, meteorologists said. A storm in the Gulf of Mexico could disrupt all efforts. “We certainly are going to keep a very close eye on this system,” said Dan Kottlowski, a hurricane expert at the website Accuweather.
Finally plugging the well would go some way to ending the damage to BP’s reputation globally. But this respite is unlikely to come soon. Mother Jones, a leftwing magazine, reported an unlisted BP phone number for politicians in California to ring for tickets to sporting events and music concerts.
The magazine said that BP had given away more than $300,000 (£196,000) worth of tickets in 10 years
THERE are fears the long-anticipated crash in the dry bulk market has arrived, as the Baltic Dry Index freefall continued for the 30th consecutive day to its lowest level in 13 months, as shipowners prepared to take delivery of record numbers of new panamax and capesize bulk carriers in the second half of 2010.
“I think it could get fairly ugly,” said a prominent Europe-based operator of dry bulk tonnage, who declined to be named.
“Percentage wise, [rates] can probably come off another 50%, to a bit above operating cost levels,” he added, with stronger demand for dry bulk commodities only to return with cheaper transportation costs.
Declining shipments ofiron ore and coal to China (which employ nearly half the world’s bulk carrierfleet) have seen panamax and capesize earnings collapse in the past six weeks, losing around 65% in value.
Capesize rates alone on the major Brazil-China route today fell to under $30,000 per day, compared with nearly $84,000 per day in late May.
Darkening an already bleak picture is what some analysts are calling a tsunami of newbuilding tonnage against a deteriorating outlook for commodities shipments forecast to rise 8% to 3.2bn tonnes this year.
Some 23 capesize vessels are set for delivery each month until the end of the year, according to fresh forecasts, which allow for 20% to be delayed. That compares with average monthly deliveries of 16 in the first five months of 2010, which saw the fleet grow by more than 23%, to over 1,000 vessels.
I guess it obviously helps to have a “team”…lolll…Most of this info is already here on PWA but not put together chronologically…The SEC HAD a site where one could watch insider buying and selling…Early on when I went to verify that shares had indeed been sold the side had in effect been taken down…I subscribed to this site and received email alerts on certain stocks I was watching….The moment I saw that it had “in effect” been taken down, that was confirmation enough for me there was info nobody wanted the public to see!!!
I went through most of this info last night on twitter and quite a few people chimed in…They are very ANGRY…Keep the pressure on folks…End game~just another transfer of wealth and fitting the agenda for Climate-gate.
As we speak, the oil in the Gulf of Mexico still spews. As a matter of fact, it is flowing wide open. Yesterday, they removed the second dome they had said was there to contain the flow. They say the replacement for this one will be attached in four to ten days. You would think they they would have the replacement dome available before they remove the current one, but that is not the plan.
We mentioned in our article “Bombshell Expose’”, there is evidence these domes are a research experiment intended to collect methane crystals and data, not necessarily to contain the flow of oil and gasses.That is definitely part of it, judging by the live feed. A lot of instruments, meters and what appears to be memory cards, as well as the admission the dome has Methane Crystals building up inside. The article about Carbon storage and the need to research Methane Crystals being done at UChicago Argonne, indicates this is the opportunity to collect those Crystals.
It was also the opportunity to use the stockpiles of Corexit dispersants.
All the usual big players and a few radicals with start-up companies made fortunes on all ends of this disaster, from stocks, to clean-up and biofuel investments, Federal grants and Obama’s agenda included.
There were multiple agencies, both Federal and private who neglected or purposely overlooked warning signs. Many who were entrusted with inspection and oversight never even read the permit application, or design. They subbed out inspections to companies who did not have the capabilities to carry out an inspection.
The Gulf itself is targeted to be an Algae farm and all the big players are now rushing into start-ups and investing in biofuels.
Our oil, refining, gas and coal industries are under attack. He is not transforming the world off of fossil fuels, just the USA. O is contributing to offshore drilling, refining and mining in other countries. He is redistributing our wealth. Not among Americans, though. He’s transferring out of the country to Brazil, Venezuela, Nigeria, China, Russia, Indonesia & other “less fortunate” countries.
Before I get ahead of myself, I’d like to put the events in a chronological order, from beginning to current.
Change in Currency Policy Switches Focus of Summit to Other Members, but Some U.S. Lawmakers Remain Skeptical
BY BOB DAVIS
WASHINGTON—China’s announcement that it will let its currency appreciate puts it in a strong position going into a summit of the Group of 20 on Saturday, but does little to ease pressure from the U.S. Congress.
The bulk of the session of the G-20 industrialized and developing nations will be devoted to strengthening global growth. China can argue it is doing its bit for the major initiative, known as “rebalancing.”
Under the plan, the U.S. and other big trade-deficit countries have committed to increase their savings and import less, while the big trade-surplus countries—China, Germany and Japan—have pledged to do
the opposite. The latter are supposed to plot ways they will grow more through domestic consumption and less through exports.
The U.S., and to a lesser degree Japan, India, Brazil and other member countries, had been arguing for months that an undervalued Chinese currency destabilizes growth. A cheaper yuan encourages China to rely more on exports, undermining other export nations, especially at a time when big consuming countries aren’t likely to buy as many imports as they once did because of weaker economies.
“China is saying to the rest of the G-20, ‘It’s your move,’ ” says Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. “It defuses any bombs that might have been thrown in their direction at the G-20.”
The focus now will shift to Germany and Japan, which are expected to explain policy changes they are planning.
“We’ll want to see from the other surplus countries a demonstration of a credible path toward increasing internal demand,” said a senior U.S. official, who noted the U.S. would be under pressure to show it was putting in place policies to address sky-high budget deficits.
Summary: The World Trade Organization has changed the world in the past decade by welcoming China and transforming national fortunes in Cambodia and Saudi Arabia. It provides the catalyst that political leaders need to reform.
PETER D. SUTHERLAND is Chair of BP p.l.c. andGoldman Sachs International. He was Director General of the GATT from 1993 to 1995 and Founding Director of the WTO.
No visitor to Phnom Penh, Beijing, or Riyadh these days can fail to sense change, optimism, and new economic dynamism. Cambodia, China, and Saudi Arabia are on the move, and mostly for the better. Why? For one thing, because all three countries — along with Croatia, Georgia, Taiwan, Vietnam, and many others — have joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in the past few years.
The power of the WTO to aid national transformation is easily forgotten. All too often, many developing countries measure their success in the WTO’s Doha Round of trade negotiations by the extent to which they avoid obligations to open up their economies. And in polite conversations in Geneva, the potential of WTO disciplines to encourage radical market, institutional, and regulatory reform is a politically incorrect topic. It is the countries that have joined the WTO over the past decade that have drawn the most benefit from global trade rules. Older members, which did not need to negotiate their entry, have probably gained the least.
The WTO has changed the world in the past decade by welcoming China. And if it has changed national fortunes, in Cambodia and Saudi Arabia, for example, it is thanks to its accession procedures. Compared with the terms of bilateral free-trade areas, the terms of WTO membership amount to a revolution. The process is now lengthier than ever. China applied to the WTO’s predecessor (the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, or GATT) in 1986 and joined the WTO in 2001, Cambodia applied in 1994 and joined in 2003, and Saudi Arabia joined in 2005 after 12 years of preparation and negotiation.
SONIPAT, India, May 14 (UPI) — The revival of the long-dormant Policy Planning Division of India’s Ministry of External Affairs in September through the initiative of Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor is a positive step for a country that wants to climb up the rungs of global status and power.
Policy planning bureaus have played a vital role in foreign ministries of great powers by providing broad direction, outlook and blueprints that percolate through the veins and arteries of the system.
The famous Cold War doctrine of containment, for instance, was the brainchild of George Kennan, the first director of Policy Planning in the U.S. State Department. His “X” article in the journal Foreign Affairs (July 1947) recorded his acute observations on the wellsprings of Soviet conduct and laid out the parameters of a global response to the Soviet Union’s “expansive tendencies.”
Oil washes ashore in the port of Dalian, China, 20 July 2010. Photograph: Jiang He/Greenpeace /EPA
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_a.png?x-id=0a52155e-48ff-4b79-9155-a974d70f1f41)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_a.png?x-id=1fd7ccba-f2b7-41e7-9edc-856783d2c15a)
