Jane Baird News

The world's largest ship fuel supplier OW Bunker said it would file for bankruptcy as soon as possible to the probate court in Aalborg in the northern part of Denmark. OW Bunker said on Thursday it has discovered fraud by senior employees in its Singapore-based subsidiary. "As a result of the internal investigation, it has been decided to report two key employees in the Singapore-based subsidiary Dynamic Oil Trading," the company said in a statement. (Reporting by Ole Mikkelsen; editing by Jane Baird)

Brent crude fell below $86 a barrel on Friday on news of strong supply from Middle Eastern OPEC producers and as a confirmed case of Ebola in New York spooked global equities markets. Iraq increased its oil supply in October, and Libya's production remained high, despite deep instability in both countries. Brent crude for December fell $1.02 a barrel to a low of $85.81 and was trading around $85.90 by 1205 GMT. U.S. December crude fell 85 cents to $81.24 a barrel. On Thursday Brent crude prices rose sharply on news of lower supply from Saudi Arabia…

Plunging global oil prices may turn hopes for cheap liquefied natural gas supplies from the United States into a costly disappointment for Asian buyers who have already invested billions of dollars in long-term contracts. The 26 percent price slide since June to $85 a barrel exposes cracks in the assumption by utilities and industrial companies from Japan to India that cheap U.S. LNG would muscle into high-value Asian energy markets from 2016. Oil prices form the backbone of LNG trade to Asia, because exporters outside the United States typically tie 25-year supply deals to crude oil prices. If prices continue to fall, these suppliers from Qatar to Australia will regain their edge over upstart U.S. producers. "From the buyer's view, $80 oil makes oil-linked supplies less expensive ...

The European Commission proposed a ban on imports of fish from Sri Lanka for not tackling illegal fishing properly and lifted a ban on fish imports from Belize following the reform of its vessel inspection practices. The Commission on Tuesday also lifted warnings on Fiji, Panama, Togo and Vanuatu, saying they had implemented concrete measures to combat illegal fishing. The four countries thus avoided being placed on the "red list" of nations that are not allowed to sell fish to the 28-nation European Union, the world's biggest fish importer. "Our policy of resolute cooperation is yielding results," EU Maritime Affairs Commissioner Maria Damanaki said in a statement. "Five countries receive today our appreciation for getting serious on illegal fishing.

Top container shipping companies A.P. Moller-Maersk and MSC Mediterranean Shipping Co cleared the last regulatory hurdle to launch a vessel-sharing pact, but companies that use their services voiced concerns, particularly in China. The tie-up won U.S. approval on Wednesday after four out of five commissioners at the Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) voted not to seek further information from the two shippers about the impact of the alliance on exporters and ports, one of the commissioners told Reuters. Maersk said the approval had been the last it needed from regulators around the world, including in China and the European Union, and that the alliance would begin operations in January.

World oil prices resumed a months-long rout on Tuesday to close at their lowest in more than two years, pressured by reduced economic and demand growth forecasts. U.S. crude oil prices fell faster than European Brent, reversing a weeks-long compression in the Brent/WTI spread amid signs that U.S. refiners are starting to buy cut-priced West African or Mediterranean crudes, re-opening a once common arbitrage. The International Monetary Fund cut its global economic growth forecasts for the third time this year, warning of weaker growth in core euro zone countries, Japan and Brazil. And German industrial output fell in August at its steepest rate since January 2009. "The IMF forecast is weighing on (demand) sentiment," said Phil Flynn, an analyst for the Price Futures Group in Chicago.

Piracy will increase in the Gulf of Guinea as Nigeria prepares for an election next February in order to funnel ransom money into campaign financing, intelligence experts told a shipping conference in Copenhagen on Tuesday. Risk Intelligence, which advises private shipping companies and governments on security, said two "mother ships" belonging to pirates are currently located just south of Nigeria and five seafarers are know to be held hostage onshore. "Ahead of general elections, kidnap-for-ransom and attacks on offshore targets increase," Managing Director Hans Tino Hansen told Reuters at a special session on maritime crime and the effects on growth and development in Africa.

A landmark deal to use British taxpayers' money to build a 16 billion pound ($25.6 billion) nuclear power station has triggered opposition from a quarter of EU policy-makers, who want to overturn approval from the top European regulator, EU sources said. The European Commission, the EU executive, said last month it would approve the British scheme involving French utility EDF , confirming a Reuters report. A copy of the draft decision seen by Reuters shows the Commission has accepted the plan with some changes that would ensure the British government and British taxpayer would get a bigger share of any windfall profits and EDF a smaller take.

Global miner BHP Billiton is considering listing a planned spin-off company in London as well as in Sidney and Johannesburg, the company said in a letter to shareholders. BHP announced in August it would spin off some base metals and coal assets worth an estimated $16 billion and said at the time the new company would be headquartered in Perth and listed in Australia, with a secondary listing in South Africa. Some UK-registered shareholders have expressed concerns about the lack of a London listing, however. "Since the announcement, we have been able to engage extensively with investors and other stakeholders," BHP said in the letter to shareholders.

Iraq said it filed a lawsuit against Greek shipping company Marine Management Services (MMS) for its role in the export of crude from the Kurdistan region, which Baghdad says is illegal. The case is the latest move by Baghdad to deter customers and thwart independent exports of crude from the autonomous Kurdistan region. The federal government claims sole authority to manage sales of all the oil in Iraq. The Iraqi oil ministry said on Thursday that MMS operated five vessels that had transported oil on behalf of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) from a Turkish port.

Long-range clean tanker rates were softer on Wednesday as business was slow, with weaker sentiment keeping rates under pressure. Larger Long-Range 2 or LR2, 75,000 tonne shipments on the Middle East Gulf to Japan (MEG-JPN) route were at W115.50 or $21,207 a day on Wednesday. That compared with W116.00 or $21,380 a day on Tuesday and W118.83 or $22,618 a day last Wednesday. "The LR2 market in the East has come down another 2.5 points this week as we are now looking at W115 for MEG-JPN," broker Fearnleys said on Wednesday. That compared with W117.10 or $11,470 a day on Tuesday and W123.55 or $13,653 a day last Wednesday. Rates for medium-range (MR) tankers for 37,000 tonne cargoes on the TC2 route from Rotterdam to New York were W117.75, or $7,442 a day.

Korea Gas Corp. has approached long-term suppliers of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to defer up to 10 autumn cargos to winter, showing it is lumbered with excess supply and pulling out of spot markets, industry sources said. High stocks and weak demand prompted state-run Kogas, the world's biggest corporate buyer of LNG, to offload a number of cargos this summer through a combination of time-swap deals and by deferring deliveries from suppliers. Deferrals were first meant to include only summer cargos…

Miner and commodity trader Glencore has expressed interest in iron deposits in Guinea, a presentation obtained by Reuters shows, although the company said it had not pitched for a stake in Simandou, the country's largest deposit. Glencore is the latest mining major looking to invest in iron ore assets in Guinea. Most interest is focused on Simandou, one of the world's biggest deposits. Any potential investors in Simandou are treading carefully, however. Israeli-owned BSG Resources, which was stripped of its license to develop part of Simandou following a Guinean corruption investigation, is seeking arbitration and has threatened to sue companies that invest in its former license area.

Yug Rusi, a Russian grain exporter and sunflower oil producer, is seeking to sell its terminal at Ukraine's Kherson port, two traders told Reuters. The privately held company, whose name means South of Russia, declined to comment. One source said that the terminal is a small one that can load vessels with up to 10,000 tonnes of vegetable oil or up to 15,000 tonnes of grain. Russian companies are expected to try and exit Ukrainian investments as relations between the countries have become increasingly strained after Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in March. "It does not look good for the time being, being Russian and having assets in Ukraine," one of the sources said.

By extracting a $13 million penalty and imposing tough restrictions on future oil trading by Arcadia and others, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) this week sent a powerful signal that laws against market manipulation still have teeth. The case challenges a now famous view expressed in 1991 by commodities lawyer Jerry Markham that manipulation of commodity futures prices had become an unprosecutable crime. "Under present law the crime of manipulation is virtually unprosecutable, and remedies for those injured by price manipulation are difficult to obtain," Markham wrote in an article published in the Yale Journal of Regulation.

Ivory Coast weather over the past week indicated mixed prospects for its main cocoa crop, with overcast weather and no rain potentially hurting development of plants in most regions, but good sunny conditions in others. In the world's top cocoa producer, farmers said that sunshine was crucial in this period of development of the main crop to help the growth of flowers and small pods now emerging on trees. The size of the crop will depend on the number of flowers that turn into small pods. The marketing season for the Ivorian mid-crop, which began on April 1, is tailing off, meanwhile. In the western region of Soubre, at the heart of the cocoa belt, farmers reported no rainfall and a lack of sunny spells for a second consecutive week.

A tanker carrying crude oil from Iraqi Kurdistan is just one day away from arriving at a U.S. port, according to ship tracking satellites, despite Washington's long-standing concern over independent oil sales from the autonomous region. The United Kalavrvta tanker, which left the Turkish port of Ceyhan in June carrying oil delivered via a new Kurdish pipeline, is due to dock in Galveston, Texas on Saturday, Reuters AIS Live ship tracking shows. A sale of Kurdish crude oil to a U.S. refinery would infuriate Baghdad, which sees such deals as smuggling, and raises questions about Washington's commitment to preventing oil sales from the autonomous region.

Port operator APM Terminals, a unit of Denmark's A.P. Moller-Maersk, said it would sell a big U.S. container terminal to infrastructure investor Alinda Capital Partners and a British private pension fund. The companies, in a joint statement on Tuesday, did not disclose the price that Alinda and Universities Superannuation Scheme Limited will pay for APM Terminals Virginia, the deep-water terminal in Portsmouth, Virginia. The terminal, which APM describes on its website as the largest privately owned terminal in North America…

Traders in the Brent oil market have started to use a word that was almost forgotten in the last four years - "contango" in industry jargon, which could also be described as "music to the ears of sellers". The market has not seen a prolonged contango time structure - with front prices lower than future prices - since at least 2010. Back then, oil traders racked up hundreds of millions of dollars by storing fully loaded cargoes at sea. With each week and month that the oil was in storage, it gained in price. The opposite time structure - backwardation - then prevailed, up until this week when it reversed back to contango. This led some analysts to predict a repeat of the 2008-2009 bonanza. Bank of America Merrill Lynch said it even saw a "super-contango" returning.

Container shipping companies were urged to raise Asia-U.S. freight rates by at least $600 per 40-foot container (FEU) with effect from Aug. 1, their organisation TSA said on Wednesday. Members of the TSA (Transpacific Stabilization Agreement) include 15 of the world's biggest container shipping lines such as Denmark's Maersk Line, a unit of A.P. Moller-Maersk , privately owned Switzerland-based Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), French privately held CMA CGM, China's COSCO, Korea's Hanjin Shipping and others.

The world's biggest container shipping company Maersk Line, a unit of A.P. Moller-Maersk, said it planned to raise freight rates on routes from Asia to northern Europe by $450 per 20-foot container (TEU). The new rates will take effect from Aug. 1, the company told Reuters in an email on Friday. A container freight derivatives broker said most of the ten biggest container shipping companies are aiming for higher rates from Aug. 1, even though some have not issued statements. Higher rates on the busiest freight routes between Asia and northern Europe would help companies…

Italian oil and gas group Eni said it signed a deal to explore for hydrocarbons in the Republic of Congo's coastal basin, expanding its foothold in sub-Saharan Africa's No. 4 oil producer. At a signing ceremony in capital Brazzaville, new Eni Chief Executive Claudio Descalzi signed the deal for onshore and deep-water exploration acreage with Energy Minister Andre Raphael Loemba, the company said in a statement on Sunday. Eni could not immediately be reached to provide any further details. The Italian oil major, which has been active in Congo since 1968, said in February it had discovered fields with estimated reserves of 1.2 billion barrels of oil and 30 billion cubic metres of gas in Congo's Marine VII offshore block.

An ordinary, long-scheduled journey of an oil drilling rig into Arctic waters is turning into a major political exercise, attracting international scrutiny and creating a dilemma for Exxon Mobil Corp. Exxon, the top U.S. oil major and the world's most valued oil company, is bringing the rig, called West Alpha, from Norway to the Russian Arctic. It is hoping for a major discovery in the Kara Sea with Russian partner Rosneft Oil Co. The journey has begun just as the United States has slapped the toughest sanctions yet on Russia, including on Rosneft, over escalating violence in Ukraine. Further sanctions are likely after the downing of a Malaysia Airlines' plane in eastern Ukraine.