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A.M. Costa Rica's Second news page |
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José, Costa Rica, Monday, Jan. 19, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 12
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Expats can tell their friends and family in the Great White North that the temperatures here are in the teens, too. Never mind that there is a slight difference between the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales. Early today the temperature in Cartago was 15.4 C (59.7 F), and the automatic weather station in San José reported a temperature of 17.4 C (63.3 F). The chilly weather has been amplified by winds of from 10 to 20 kph, which are not as strong as last week. The Institution Meteorológico Nacional said that windy weather will continue through the first few days of the week due to high pressure in the Caribbean. Gusts of up to 85 kph (about 53 mph) are expected in the mountains and in areas of the Central Valley and the north Pacific, said the weather service. Other areas of the Pacific will see clear skies, said the forecast. The Caribbean and the northern zone will see partly cloudy conditions and perhaps some rain Tax agency to resume credit card bites By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A court has allowed the tax agency to resume collecting 2 percent of credit card transactions that pass through local banks. The Tribunal Contencioso Administrativo lifted the freeze it had imposed in November, according to the Ministerio de Hacienda, which said it would begin collecting the money immediately. The ministry said that the 2 percent would be applied to income taxes. Just about any use of credit cards is subject to the bite. The amount actually is closer to 1.78 percent of any transaction that is covered by sales tax because the ministry has agreed to not take a bite of sales tax. Consumers will not see anything different when they pay with a credit card. The deductions take place at the bank level. Commercial groups have protested loudly, which is why the ministry found itself in court. Most businesses already have to report their income periodically and make advanced payments on income tax. The ministry said what officials call a retention will not involve those businesses that are on a simplified sales tax plan. That includes a lot of bars who pay taxes when they purchase their products. The retention also will not be made for payments for public transportation or of those taxpayers who do not have to report periodically. Crooks now offer cell phone rescue By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Crooks have applied their successful extortion racket involving stolen cars to stolen cell phones. For years owners of cars that have been stolen have been given the chance to buy back the vehicle when crooks call them. Sometimes the deal is legitimate. But frequently the crooks just want to get the owner alone somewhere when he or she is carrying money. Considering the number of holdups and thefts, the illicit market for hot cell telephones probably is glutted. That may be why a woman who was a robbery victim Jan. 11 got the chance to buy back her cell telephone. A caller invited her to pay 50,000 colons, nearly $100 to do so. In this case the crook had the cell telephone and surrendered it upon payment of the money at a restaurant in the center of San José. The woman had contacted the Judicial Investigating Organization, and agents witnessed the exchange and then made an arrest for extortion and possession of stolen property. Our reader's opinion
Prostitution is not thriving in CubaDear A.M. Costa Rica: Your article might put some tourists to Cuba in jeopardy. Based on my visits to Habana, and my professional interest in prostitution and illicit drug use (I conducted street ethnographic research on both for many years in the U.S.), I can tell you that unless there has been a major policy switch in Cuba since my last visit three years ago, street prostitution, robberies, and drug use are very infrequent. I would not call any of them "thriving." Cuba is a dictatorship, and like some others, it has less street crime than do many democracies. Both victimless crimes -- prostitution and illicit drug consumption -- are punished severely. An example on the drug side is that until only a few years ago, Cuba would not allow meetings of Narcotics Anonymous. The police shut down the first meeting held in La Habana, telling the participants to go home since there was no drug use in Cuba. In contrast, there are well over a hundred AA groups, each meeting several times a week. Today, there is one N.A. group in La Habana, and the members have been told they can meet only as long as they do not put a sign outside the meeting place. Based on my experience, the Cuban government is likely to make a few test cases of tourists who engage in visible crime, to maintain their existing puritanical standards. This does not mean prostitution doesn't exist there. It means only that it is certainly not a thriving industry, and carries high risks for arrest and incarceration. There is a general practice of the media (including your source for this article) to glamorize prostitution tourism by claiming it is more prevalent, including here in Costa Rica. Yes, prostitution tourism exists here, but in a more orderly and less dangerous fashion than it does in a few dozen U.S. cities. (Compare, if you will, the area around Parque Morazán to Eighth Avenue and 42nd Street in New York City, as only one example). John French
Heredia
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A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Monday, Jan. 19, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 12 | |
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| Summit of 33 heads of state will cost about $4.3 million,
Solís reports |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A meeting of 33 heads of state, including President Luis Guillermo Solís at the end of the month will cost about $4.3 million, the president said Sunday. However, Solís said that about 90 percent of this tab will be picked up by private industry and international firms. This is the summit of the Community of Latin America and Caribbean State, which styles itself as a competitor to the Organization of American States in Washington, D.C. The organization was founded for that purpose by Hugo Chávez, the late Venezuelan president. Government agencies are pulling all the stops to support the event, which will be centered around Pedregal Centro de Eventos in Belén, Heredia. The Ministerio de Cultura y Juventud has issued a long list of musical events that will entertain visitors. For example the Banda de Conciertos de San José and the marimba of the Escuela Monseñor Luis Leipold in Cañas will perform at the inauguration at 10 a.m. Jan. 28. This is the third summit of the group, and Costa Rica, as |
 Ministerio de Cultura y Juventud photo
Musicians from the famous
marimba group at Escuela Monseñor Luis Leipold practice daily
for the inauguration performance.president for one year, is the host. Participating agencies include the Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo, the Instituto Nacional de Música, the Sistema Nacional de Radio y Televisión, the Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y Culto, the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo al Aire Libre de Punta Islita. |
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Preventative
drainage This project on Ruta 239 is designed to bring mud and water under the right-a-way instead of having heavy rains wash away the road. Workmen are supposed to finish up today after having worked the weekend at Alto de Quitirrisí on the route to Pursical. The site has been the location of a number of landslides, too. |
 Consejo
Nacional de Vialidad photo
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| Lawmakers set in motion the great cat hunt at the
legislative complex |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
An army of cats has taken over the legislative complex, and some lawmakers set up a system to capture and castrate them over the weekend. There has been no report on the success of the mission yet, but the cats are known to be clever. Marcela Guerrero Campos, the lawmaker who has presented an animal welfare bill, is the person who brought the cat situation to light last week. She said that some street cats found their way into the |
legislative
buildings some years ago and have thrived on garbage and
food provided by workers there. Their numbers have multiplied. The cats also have access to the vast numbers of rodents that also make the legislative buildings their home. Some animal welfare organizations were going to organize a capture over the weekend to catch, evaluate and castrate the legislative cats. The plan also is to set up an area inside the legislature where the cats could live safely. |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Monday, Jan. 19, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 12 | |||||
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| Furor over vice minister will result in a hearing in the
legislature |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Despite the resignation of a vice minister, lawmakers will consider their investigation of any offer made to Ana Lorena Brenes Esquivel. She is the nation's lawyer and has issued several opinions that directly contradict the aims of the Luis Guillermo Solís administration. The former vice minister is Daniel Soley Gutiérrez. He resigned his post as vice minister of the Presidencia Saturday. Last week the Spanish-language La Nación revealed that Soley had met with Ms. Brenes. She is the procuraduría general de la República. The newspaper reported that Soley offered the woman an ambassadorship if she would quit her job. She has more than a year to go in the legal position, basically that of the government's lawyer. The implication was that the president wanted to appoint someone who would issue legal opinions the way he wanted. The revelation caused an uproar among lawmakers. Sunday the minister of the Presidencia, Melvin Jiménez, said he would be happy to appear before lawmakers to answer questions. |
Jiménez
told Henry Mora, the president of the
legislature in a letter
that the public had an absolute right to know the details of
the
encounter between Soley and Ms. Brenes. So far Soley has not said if he was acting on behalf of Jiménez or the president when he met with Ms. Brenes. The issue is important because it goes to the core of the promise by the administration to act with total transparency. Ms. Brenes issued an opinion that the Costa Rican Constitution prevents the naming of Jiménez as minister of the Presidencia. He is a Lutheran bishop, and the Constitution forbids the appointment of clergy. In a politically motivated decision, the Sala IV constitutional court sided with the president, but one magistrate said that Jiménez was barred from holding the job. Ms. Brenes also did not agree that the president had the power to lift a veto that had been imposed years earlier by then-president Óscar Arias Sánchez. That involved the occupation of a street at the Plaza de la Democracia by the artisans market. That lifting of the veto is being appealed to the Sala IV by the municipality. Solis later lifted a veto by former president Laura Chinchilla that allowed a proposed revision of the labor code to go into effect. Then he issued a decree freezing some aspects that were considered politically controversial until the legislature studied the matter. That action also is being challenged in court. |
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A.M. Costa Rica's Fifth
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| Europeans seeking leader of foiled terrorist attack By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Much of Europe was tense and on high alert Sunday as Belgium's justice minister says the alleged mastermind in last week's foiled terror attack remains at large. Koen Geens told Belgian television that the suspect was not among four people arrested in Greece, where he was believed to have fled. But Belgian prosecutors still plan to ask Greece to extradite one of those arrested in connection to the thwarted terror strike. Belgian media have named the wanted mastermind of the plot as Abdelhamid Abaaoud. The 27-year-old Belgian of Moroccan descent is suspected of leading an Islamic extremist cell in the eastern town of Verviers. Authorities say the cell was about to launch a major terrorist attack on police targets before officers raided their hideout Thursday and killed two in a fierce gun battle. Belgium sent military troops into its streets Saturday for the first time in 35 years, in a push to tighten security. Meanwhile, the two brothers who gunned down 12 people in the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris have been buried in secret, unmarked graves in France. French authorities said that Cherif Kouachi was buried just before midnight Saturday in a cemetery in the Paris suburb of Gennevilliers, even as his family was kept away. The gravesite was not marked so that it does not become a pilgrimage site for Islamists. His older brother, Said, was secretly buried a day earlier in the northeastern city of Reims. Obama to deliver speech amid backdrop of terrorism By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
President Barack Obama is preparing to deliver his annual State of the Union address at a time of heightened vigilance in Washington and beyond following terrorist attacks in France. The ceremonial pageantry of Tuesday’s presidential speech before a joint session of Congress comes against a backdrop of ramped-up security on both sides of the Atlantic. In recent days, there have been a shoot-out in Belgium, police raids in Germany, arrests in Greece, and stepped-up security across Europe, all following the attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Security efforts must adapt to an evolving threat, said Rob Wainwright, who heads the European Union law enforcement agency Europol. “We are seeing a very determined response by our national governments, national police authorities, and at institutions like Europol urgently reviewing ways that we can better support counter-terrorist services everywhere, and the better exchange of intelligence, in the tracking of terrorist financing, and illicit firearms, and in particular monitoring terrorist activities online," Wainwright said. For Obama, who hopes to work with a new Republican-controlled Congress on an agenda that includes domestic priorities, the fast-paced international developments are forcing greater attention to security matters at home and abroad. “This phenomenon of violent extremism, the ideology, the networks, the capacity to recruit young people, has metastasized and it is widespread, and it has penetrated communities around the world," the president said. "This is a problem that causes great heartache and tragedy and destruction, but it is one that ultimately we are going to defeat," he added. With terrorist sleeper cells believed to exist in numerous countries and the possibility of the Charlie Hebdo incident rallying extremists across the globe, the Obama administration and other governments are asking not whether another attack will be attempted, but when and where. More taxes on wealthy proposed by U.S. president By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
U.S. President Barack Obama wants to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans and the largest financial firms, which he says will strengthen the middle class. The proposals, outlined in a White House press release, will likely not pass in the Republican-controlled Congress, but sets the stage to highlight the differences in the Democratic and Republican parties as the campaigning begins to rev up for next year's presidential election. The president will announce the proposals Tuesday in his annual State of the Union address on Capitol Hill. Obama says he wants to make sure the rich pay their fair share of taxes by closing the capital gains loophole on trust funds, which he says allows hundreds of billions of dollars to escape taxation each year. In fact, the top 40 percent of incomes pays about 85 percent of the U.S. taxes now under the progressive Internal Revenue Service schedule. Obama also is proposing to raise the top capital gains rate to 28 percent, which he notes was the rate decades ago under a conservative Republican president, Ronald Reagan. The president also wants the biggest financial firms to pay what he says is their fair share of taxes by proposing a fee on those firms, making it more costly for them to borrow heavily. While Republican leaders have said they share the president's desire to reform the nation's complicated tax code, they have long been opposed to many of the proposals the president will outline Tuesday. For example, most Republicans want to lower or eliminate the capital gains tax and similarly want to end taxes on estates not expand them. Obama wants the money from the wealthy citizens and financial firms to be placed into a series of measures aimed at helping middle-class Americans, including tripling the child care tax credit that would help 5.1 million families cover child care costs for 6.7 million children, and a new $500 second earner credit to help cover the additional costs faced by families where both spouses work, benefiting 24 million couples. The president also wants to provide free tuition to students for two years of community college. It's Seahawks vs. Patriots in Feb. 1 Super Bowl By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots have claimed their spots for the National Football League's Super Bowl. The Seahawks advanced Sunday in a dramatic 28-22 overtime victory over the Green Bay Packers. They rallied from a 16-point halftime deficit, scoring twice in the final two minutes and nine seconds to get to overtime where quarterback Russell Wilson connected with Jermaine Kearse for the winning 35-yard touchdown. New England had an easier path Sunday, dominating the Indianapolis Colts 45-7. Quarterback Tom Brady threw three touchdown passes, setting a new record for passing yards in postseason play, while running back LeGarrette Blount added three touchdowns to New England's total. The Super Bowl Feb. 1 in Glendale, Arizona, will be watched by millions of people around the world as the Seahawks try to win their second consecutive championship. Brady will be playing in his sixth career Super Bowl, tying the record for most by a single player. He led the Patriots to championships in 2002, 2004 and 2005, and was twice named the game's most valuable player. Members of Congress make quick trip to Cuba By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
A U.S. congressional delegation is in Cuba in the first such visit since President Barack Obama announced last month that Washington would normalize relations with the island nation. The six-member group of Democrats, led by Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, arrived Saturday in Havana. Leahy said the group wanted to explore opportunities for greater cooperation and encourage Cuban officials to address issues of real concern to the American people and their representatives in Congress. "We've all been here before," Leahy said. "We're all very interested in what happens next, and so I hope we're going to find out." Sens. Richard Durbin of Illinois, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island are on the trip, as are Reps. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Peter Welch of Vermont. They return to Washington today. Meanwhile, the office of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has confirmed that he plans to lead a trade mission to Cuba in the coming term. Cuomo spokeswoman Melissa DeRosa said the visit would be one of several such trips promoting New York. Details of the trip will be announced later, she said. The Obama administration Friday began to implement rule changes aimed at loosening travel and trade restrictions. However, an end to the decades-old U.S. embargo against Cuba would require an act of Congress. Long-missing Mars probe found in satellite image By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The European Space Agency says a British-built space probe that disappeared more than a decade ago on Mars has been found. The British space agency said in a statement Friday that the Beagle 2 spacecraft "has been found partially deployed on the surface of the planet, ending the mystery of what happened to the mission." The agency said the partial deployment would explain why no signal or data was received from the Beagle because full deployment of all the solar panels was needed to transmit data and receive commands from Earth. The agency said there was clear evidence of the lost lander in satellite images taken by the U.S. space agency NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Officials said the find showed that the entry, descent and landing sequence for Beagle 2 worked and the lander did successfully touch down on Mars on Christmas Day 2003. Britain's Beagle 2 was carried to the red planet on ESA's Mars Express. The Beagle was to report back from Mars using instruments designed to help search for signs of life, but nothing was heard after it was dropped off to make its landing. British planetary scientist Colin Pillinger, who was the driving force behind the mission, died last year at the age of 70. Beagle 2 was named after the ship Charles Darwin sailed when he formulated his theory of evolution. Swiss financial executive defends move to float franc By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The director of the Swiss National Bank has defended a decision to allow the value of the Swiss currency to float freely against the euro. Thomas Jordan said in an interview published Friday in Le Temps and Neue Zurcher Zeitung that bank officials knew ending the fixed exchange rate might affect financial markets but that the change was necessary to keep control of the country's long-term monetary policy. He said the cap price was designed as a temporary measure when it was implemented in September 2011. The surprise move Thursday sent the value of the Swiss franc up 30 percent against the euro. Some financial institutions experienced large trading losses as a result of the Swiss bank's decision. The Wall Street Journal reported Citigroup Inc. and Deutsche Bank AG each suffered losses of $150 million. Analysts said the largest victim appeared to be a major U.S. retail foreign exchange broker, FXCM Inc. The company lost $225 million. Jordan said telegraphing the Swiss bank's intention was impossible because it would have opened the door for speculators. Ethnic differences said to affect breast cancer By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The chances of surviving breast cancer may depend on whether someone is black or white, Asian or Hispanic. A new study finds that survival is not entirely dependent on diagnosing the disease at an early stage or on access to quality care. Steven Narod and his team at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto analyzed the medical records of 452,000 women in the U.S. who were diagnosed with breast cancer between 2004 and 2011. They found that black women have a higher risk of death seven years after being diagnosed with stage one breast cancer when the tumor is small and most likely to be successfully treated, compared to non-Hispanic white women and other racial and ethnic groups, including women from South Asia. "For women with breast cancers of the same size, black women are more likely to experience spread of the cancer to the lymph nodes or other organs than white women," Narod said, adding that the data showed "Japanese women experienced much better survival than white women." "Cancers are not more common in young, black women," he said, "but those that do get breast cancer are more likely to have an aggressive course than white women and much more likely than a Chinese or Japanese woman." The results also showed that black women were less likely to be diagnosed when the cancer is in an early stage, and that they are more likely to have small tumors that spread throughout the body. More than 90 percent of the women who were diagnosed with stage 1 breast cancer survived seven years, but Narod says the proportion who died was about 9 percent higher for black women than for white women. The researchers noted that other factors play a role in surviving breast cancer: wealth, lifestyle and diet, access to health care and following doctors' orders. These factors may also help explain the differences in survival, but Narod said this study proves race and ethnic background are also important. Breast cancer, the most common cancer in women worldwide, killed an estimated half million women in 2011, according to the World Health Organization. While Narod's study tracked African American women in the U.S., he said it's likely that women in sub-Saharan Africa are also at risk for an aggressive type of breast cancer, although no study has been done that includes that group. Narod said he would like to compare data from both those populations, along with black women elsewhere, such as in the Caribbean. He said such a study would help researchers learn what is influencing the outcome, genetics or different environments and lifestyles. Narod holds a research chair in breast cancer and is also a professor of public health at the University of Toronto. The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Tunnel train service back to normal under Channel By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Train services have resumed through the Channel Tunnel, after a smokey truck fire forced its closure. Services resumed early Sunday but tunnel operator Eurotunnel has warned of delays of between 30 and 60 minutes because only one tunnel will be open. Police say a truck fire at the French end of the tunnel was the source of the smoke Saturday. No injuries were reported. Eurostar, which runs the trains that go through the passage under the English Channel, said the smoke was detected in the north tunnel. European nations have been on high alert since last week's terrorist attacks in Paris. Mali reports no new cases of ebola for 42 days By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Mali has declared itself ebola-free. Health Minister Ousmane Kone made the announcement Sunday, saying there have been no new cases in 42 days, the World Health Organization's timeframe for declaring the end of an epidemic. A new World Health report says Mali moved quickly to contain an outbreak when the first case was reported in October in a 2-year-old girl from Guinea. It said, in all, six people in Mali died from the disease. World Health reported last week that the ebola outbreak in three other West African countries, Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, is starting to wane. But it warns that the epidemic is still not over and that there are places where the virus is spreading. More than 8,400 people worldwide, most of them in West Africa, have died as a result of the current outbreak, the largest on record. Pope leaves Philippines after Mass for six million By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Pope Francis has ended his tour of Asia after a week-long trip that included a visit to Sri Lanka and the Philippines. The pope flew back to Rome today, a day after delivering a Mass to around six million people in Manila's Rizal Park and surrounding streets, surpassing the five million record set by Pope John Paul II at the same park in 1995. Millions of Filipinos gathered under a steady rain in Manila's Rizal Park and surrounding areas on Sunday to hear the Mass. During his homily, Francis urged Filipinos to reject social structures which perpetuate poverty, ignorance and corruption, a theme he stressed when he spoke to President Benigno Aquino and other officials Friday. "So He reminds us of the importance of protecting our families and those larger families, we are the church, God's family and the world of human family. Sadly in our day the family although often needs to be protected against insidious attacks and programs contrary to all that we hold true and sacred, all that is most beautiful and noble in our culture,'' he said. The pontiff’s visit to the Philippines, home to 80 million Roman Catholics, is the first since the 1995 trip by John Paul. The Philippines has the largest Catholic population of any country in Asia. Philippine authorities assembled a security force of nearly 50,000 soldiers and police to protect Pope Francis. The two other popes to visit the Philippines were both targets of assassination attempts. |
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2015 and may
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| A.M. Costa Rica's sixth news page |
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Whoops! Caution:
Slippery when wet
“Caution, slippery when wet” could be plastered on signs all over my yard (and probably should be), and I would probably still end up where I was an hour ago – flat on my bum, soaking wet, with grass
But I was talking about the wet-slipperies. We live on a hillside, so when I head to the garden, I head downhill. Not that I can’t slip while going back uphill, and I have, but it’s more likely to happen when going down. Understand, I do have steps on the slope, but they don’t seem to help much. Sometimes I blame my tripping feet on the dogs, especially Bravo, a particularly large and rambunctious German shepherd. He is particularly fond of bumbling around and giving me a push from behind, or getting ahead of me and then stopping suddenly so that I run into him. Either way, he has more fun from the game than I do, but today, it was all me. So, here is “all me,” not gardening, but lying on the bed with a heating pad wondering if I should exchange it for an ice pack. All this while my husband, Metric Man, sighs and offers me scant comfort. He has that “I told you to be careful” look on his face. The truth is, I am careful. Stuff just seems to happen. All it takes is putting your foot down a bit wrong or finding something in your path, like a dog or a chicken. Sometimes, it just happens. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to wash the mud off my gardening clothes.
If you would like to suggest a topic for this column, simply send a letter to the editor. And, for more garden tips, visit the Arenal Gardeners Facebook page. |
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Pge 7: Oil glut seen as way to curtail shale production By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Since 2007, U.S. crude oil production in the United States has nearly doubled, thanks mainly to new technologies used in the extraction of shale oil. The recent rapid fall in the price of oil is a result of simple supply and demand, said market analyst Dominic Haywood of Energy Aspects, a research consultancy in London. “Production grew by about 1 million barrels per day year on year” because of rising U.S. output, especially in 2014, from shale producers, he said. A plunging price would normally prompt the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to slash production in order to boost the price. Instead, the cartel chose in November to keep its daily production quota at 30 million barrels per day. The aim is to flush out high-cost oil producers who rely on a soaring oil price to fund their operations, Haywood said. “OPEC are a low-cost producer," he said. "And as a low-cost producer in a falling price environment, you should not be the one that cuts production — it should be the high-cost producers. And there are various high-cost producers out there. The U.S. shale producers are one contingent of that group.” Speaking Tuesday, the United Arab Emirates’ energy minister, Suhail Al-Mazrouei, said rising North American shale oil output was unsustainable and needed to be curbed. "We are telling the market and other producers to be rational, to be like OPEC and look at growth in the international market," he said. With more oil producers entering the industry in recent years, OPEC is battling to retain control of the market, said analyst Abhishek Deshpande of investment bank Natixis. “They really are trying to test the mettle of the other non-OPEC producers such as the U.S. and Russia, which are producing almost the same amount of oil as Saudi Arabia,” he said. Oil giant BP announced 300 job cuts in its North Sea operations Thursday. In the United States, the number of new shale-drilling projects has declined. Analysts say extraction projects in Canada’s tar sands are particularly vulnerable to the falling oil price. “Lots of these projects were modeled and sanctioned on an oil price of between $90 and $110 per barrel," Haywood said. "So the economics are no longer what they were.” Major oil producer Iran based its government budget on oil prices of $100 a barrel. President Hassan Rouhani said Tuesday that Iran would withstand the economic pain of falling prices — and he appeared to accuse longtime rival Saudi Arabia of plotting against Tehran. “Those who have planned the oil price reduction against some countries should know that they will regret it,” Rouhani said. Analysts predict oil prices are unlikely to rise over the coming year, creating a financial headache for some producers but relief for many consumers. |
