Bill Trott News

Tropical Storm Barry formed on Thursday with heavy rains expected across the north-central U.S. Gulf Coast, the National Hurricane Center said.Barry, the second named storm of the 2019 Atlantic hurricane season, was located about 95 miles (150 kilometers) south-southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River at about 11 a.m. EDT with maximum sustained winds of 40 miles (65 km) per hour, the Miami-based weather forecaster said. (Reuters, Reporting by Swati Verma in Bengaluru Editing by Bill Trott)

The Pentagon on Friday said it had successfully tested its anti-ballistic missile system off the west coast of Hawaii, increasing the capacity to knock down missiles targeting the United States and its allies from rogue states like North Korea and Iran.The intercepting missile, which is being developed by the United States and Japan, was launched from the USS John Finn on Friday after radar on the destroyer detected and tracked the medium-range ballistic target missile.In August the Pentagon was given the mandate to pursue more options for defeating U.S.-bound North Korean missiles by using radar and more missiles to spot and shoot down…

U.S. liquefied natural gas company Tellurian Inc said on Wednesday it remains on track to begin construction of its Driftwood LNG export terminal in Louisiana in the first half of 2019 and begin operations in 2023.Tellurian President and CEO Meg Gentle said in the company's second-quarter earnings release that Tellurian is on schedule to announce its partners in the Driftwood project in the third or fourth quarter.Driftwood is one of more than two dozen LNG export projects under…

Italian oil major expects to invest $1.795 billion in three offshore Mexican oil fields by 2040, according to a development plan approved by Mexico's oil regulator on Tuesday.The plan covering the Amoca, Mizton and Tecoalli shallow water fields is the second one approved by the regulator, known as the National Hydrocarbons Commission (CNH), following a landmark 2013 energy opening that has led to more than 100 oil and gas contracts being awarded in a series of auctions.Eni sees initial crude oil production of 8…

The United States accused North Korea on Thursday of breaching a U.N. sanctions cap on refined petroleum by making illicit transfers between ships at sea, according to a document seen by Reuters, and demanded an immediate end to all sales of the fuel.The United States submitted the complaint to the U.N. Security Council North Korea sanctions committee. The charge of a sanctions breach comes as Washington engages North Korea in a bid to convince Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons.The North Korea U.N. mission did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the U.S. accusation.

Eike Batista, the former mining and oil magnate who was once Brazil's richest man, was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison for bribing Rio de Janeiro state's disgraced ex-governor, according to a court document published on Tuesday.Batista's conviction and sentencing by federal judge Marcelo Bretas are the latest in a wave of graft investigations that have sent scores of powerful businessmen and politicians to jail.The eccentric former billionaire's meteoric rise and fall mirrored the recent fortunes of Brazil, where the commodities boom faded as his energy, mineral and logistics empire fell apart earlier this decade.His swashbuckling attitude and confident forecasts of a prolonged golden era for Brazil evaporated just as Latin America's largest economy suffered its worst recessi

Dominion Energy Inc said on Tuesday it had no plans to renegotiate any of its liquefied natural gas sales contracts, a day after India's oil minister said state-owned gas processor GAIL (India) Ltd was renegotiating deals with Dominion and another U.S. producer. "The characterization of contract renegotiations is false ... and Dominion Energy does not intend to renegotiate contract terms in the future," the company said in a statement. India's oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan told lawmakers on Monday that GAIL was renegotiating purchase contracts with Dominion Energy and Cheniere Energy Inc…

Chilean forestry exports will total $5.3 billion by value in 2016, 3 percent less than last year, as supply has increased and the economies of key export markets remain sluggish, an industry body said on Tuesday. The Chilean Wood Corporation (Corma) said in a statement that exports in 2017 would remain steady or rise slightly to the $5.3 billion to $5.4 billion range. "The 3 percent fall in the total amount is due principally to declines in international prices for the principal forest products, while there has been an increase in exported volumes," Corma President Fernando Raga said in a statement. Corma predicted prices for long fiber products would begin to rise in the second half of 2017.

Hurricane Matthew, the fiercest Caribbean storm in nearly a decade, strengthened as it barreled toward the southeastern United States on Thursday after killing at least 140 people, mostly in Haiti, on its deadly northward march. As Matthew blew through the northwestern Bahamas on Thursday en route to Florida's Atlantic coast, it became an "extremely dangerous" hurricane carrying winds of 140 miles per hour (220 kph), the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. That made it a Category 4 hurricane and it was likely to remain so as it approached the United States…

The Houston Ship Channel re-opened to some vessel traffic on Tuesday afternoon, the U.S. Coast Guard said, after an early morning tanker fire prompted closure of the waterway. The U.S. Coast Guard Houston Vessel Traffic Service said it would commence with tow vessel transit outbound from Old River and San Jacinto River. That would be followed by inbound movements, it said. The Houston Ship Channel links the busiest U.S. petrochemical port to the Gulf of Mexico. Four Houston-area refineries were unable to receive crude oil from tankers on Tuesday after a portion of the channel was shut by an early-morning fire aboard an empty tanker. The fire began shortly after midnight CDT (0500 GMT) aboard the 810-foot (247-meter) tanker the Aframax River and was extinguished within a few hours.

China has agreed to scrap export subsidies on a range of products from metals to agriculture and textiles, the United States said on Thursday, in a step by Beijing to reduce trade frictions with Washington. China is to end a program known as its "demonstration bases-common service platform," which provides export subsidies to Chinese companies in seven economic sectors, the U.S. trade representative's office said. Some industry figures were skeptical about the deal's impact, especially regarding steel, which has been a flashpoint with Chinese overcapacity pressuring U.S. suppliers. One source knowledgeable about the agreement said it was not comprehensive enough to do much to help the U.S. steel industry, given its focus was only on specialty products.

Brazil's Vale SA, the world's No. 2 mining company, said on Thursday that partner Mitsui & Co Ltd has no plans to revise the terms of a coal venture project in Mozambique, as reported by a newspaper. Rio de Janeiro-based Vale said in a securities filing that a recent decision to reduce the accounting value of assets in the project "does not directly impact Mitsui's investment decision" in the asset, adding that both companies are working to conclude long-term financing for the venture. Earlier in the day, Brazil's Valor Econômico newspaper cited unnamed sources in reporting that Mitsui was seeking to revise terms of the venture with Vale after the Brazilian miner wrote off $2.4 billion in assets in Mozambique.

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump told the New York Times he would consider stopping U.S. oil purchases from Saudi Arabia unless the Saudi government provide troops to fight Islamic State. Trump's comment on Friday was included in a lengthy foreign policy interview published by the newspaper on Saturday and came in response to a question about whether, if elected president, he would halt oil purchases from U.S. allies unless they provided on-the-ground forces against Islamic State. "The answer is, probably yes," Trump said, according to a transcript. Trump has said the United States should be reimbursed by the countries it provides protection, even those with vast resources such as Saudi Arabia, a top oil exporter.

Oil companies have paid Mexico's oil regulator nearly $80 million for seismic data ahead of an auction for deep water fields, suggesting robust interest in the tender despite a lasting slump in the price of crude. Thirteen companies, including Exxon Mobil, BP and BHP Billiton, have paid a total of 1.38 billion pesos ($78 million) to date for licenses to use deep water data, according to a document from national oil regulator CNH seen by Reuters. Company executives say the sum reflects only a fraction of their spending in the past year to acquire geological data ahead of the Dec. 5 auction, which will feature 10 largely unexplored blocks in the Gulf of Mexico.

U.S. President Barack Obama and Southeast Asian leaders turned their attention to China on Tuesday on the second day of a summit intended to improve commercial links and provide a united front on maritime disputes with Beijing. After a first day discussing trade and economic issues at the Sunnylands resort in California, Obama and his Association of Southeast Asian Nations counterparts were to try to arrive at a common position on the South China Sea, where China and several ASEAN states have conflicting claims. Not all the 10 ASEAN nations agree on how to handle the disputes and U.S. officials want a statement calling for China to follow international law and handle disputes peacefully.

A Royal Caribbean cruise ship forced to turn back early after being battered by an Atlantic storm was expected to return to its New Jersey port at 9 p.m. on Wednesday (0200 GMT Thursday), bringing with it 4,500 rattled guests and 1,600 crew, cruise line officials said. The Anthem of the Seas ship departed Saturday for what was supposed to have been a seven-night cruise. On Sunday it encountered a storm with high winds and 30-foot (9 meter) waves off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.

A Brazilian federal court on Thursday ordered the suspension of activities at Vale SA's Port of Tubarão because of pollution concerns, halting the world's largest iron ore exporter's ability to ship more than a third of its output. The ruling by the court in Vitoria was made as part of a police investigation at the giant man-made port as Vale comes under increasing pressure over its environmental record in Brazil after a dam burst at a mine run by its Samarco joint venture in October, killing at least 17 people.

A backlog of tankers off the shores of the U.S. Gulf Coast that swelled in the final quarter of 2015 is easing, with the volume of crude waiting to discharge declining by more than half in just a month's time. There currently are 27 vessels offshore in the U.S. Gulf Coast waiting to discharge an estimated 15 million barrels of crude, compared to 36 million barrels at the start of December, ClipperData said on Tuesday. There are typically 10 million to 12 million barrels of oil waiting to discharge at any one time, Clipper said. The decline comes as December crude imports are on track to hit their highest weekly average since September 2013, so far averaging roughly 7.9 million barrels per day, according to data from the Energy Information Administration.

The Houston Ship Channel was re-opened after a burning tanker prompted a nearly three-hour shutdown of a two-mile-long (3.20-km-long) section of the largest petrochemical port in the United States. The fire was extinguished nearly 90 minutes after it started, but the channel remained closed for nearly another 90 minutes as firefighters monitored the air to ensure no toxic fumes lingered, Coast Guard Petty Officer 1st Class Andrew Kendrick said. "Initially it was a big fire, but it came down pretty quickly," he said. Earlier on Monday, flames were seen shooting from the tanker Navigator Europa, moored outside the Targa LPG export terminal, according to a source and Reuters vessel tracking data. A representative for Targa Resources Corp did not respond to a phone call seeking comment.

A burning tanker in the Houston Ship Channel on Monday prompted the U.S. Coast Guard to close a two-mile-long (3.20-km-long)section of the largest petrochemical port in the United States. The fire was extinguished nearly 90 minutes after it started, but the channel remained closed as firefighters monitored the air to ensure no toxic fumes lingered, Coast Guard Petty Officer 1st Class Andrew Kendrick said. "Initially it was a big fire, but it came down pretty quickly," he said. Kendrick confirmed that the tanker was loading ethylene when the fire started, and said no injuries had been reported. Ethylene is a chemical used in making plastic. He said a few outbound ships were waiting to move, and a tugboat was waiting to go further into the channel.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates will launch a multi-billion-dollar clean energy research and development initiative on Monday, the opening day of the U.N. climate change summit in Paris, GreenWire reported Friday. Gates and a group of developing and developed countries will agree to double their research and development budgets to boost clean energy deployment and work collaboratively, according to GreenWire, an energy and climate trade publication, citing government and business officials familiar with the agreement. Access to clean energy technology will play a key role in a global agreement to combat climate change. More than 190 countries will negotiate a new pact in Paris from Nov. 30 to Dec. 11. Gates will join Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, U.S.

A lawyer for the family of a missing crew member from the El Faro cargo ship, which sank off the Bahamas in a hurricane two weeks ago, said he filed a $100 million lawsuit on Wednesday against the owners of the ship. The lawsuit on behalf of the estate of Lonnie Jordan, one of the 33 crew members presumed dead, was filed in Jacksonville, Florida, court against Tote Services Inc and Tote Maritime Puerto Rico, attorney Willie E. Gary told reporters outside the Duval County courthouse, where he was surrounded by relatives of the crew.

Deep seas may complicate efforts to find the sunken U.S. cargo ship lost off the Bahamas during Hurricane Joaquin, a federal safety investigator said, as a search and rescue mission for 32 missing crew stretched into a sixth day. A U.S. National Transportation Safety Board team arrived on Tuesday in Jacksonville, Florida, the port the El Faro departed from last week en route to San Juan, Puerto Rico. The ship disappeared in what maritime experts have called the worst cargo shipping disaster involving a U.S.-flagged vessel in more than 30 years.