In a statement to the stock exchange dated January 4, Hong Kong-listed China Haisheng Juice Holdings Co said it is paying Wall Street bank Morgan Stanley $7 million to settle lawsuits in the UK and China over hedging contracts.
The out-of-court settlement effectively ends the dispute as the companies have agreed to end legal proceedings over yuan-dollar hedges they had been fighting in courts in the UK and China since last April.
A win for the Wall Street bank?
Following US-based independent shale jockey Chesapeake Energy's announcement this week that French major Total will buy a 25% stake in its vast Barnett Shale acreage leasehold in north Texas for $2.25 billion, analysts far and wide have weighed in with pretty much a universal thumbs-up on the deal.
They've analyzed the metrics -- the price per Mcfe of proved reserves and production, future production growth potential and other key numbers -- and come up smelling roses on all fronts. And some are starting to question a widely-held industry anticipation, raised last month after ExxonMobil said it would buy independent XTO Energy for $41 billion, that industry should soon expect a wave of corporate acquisitions of gassy shale companies.
In the tally of the economic toll allegedly wrought by Tiger Woods and his national parade of paramours, one oil biggie is taking a low-key stance, and who can blame them?
Chevron, "title sponsor" of the Chevron World Challenge with the Tiger Woods Foundation, is mum about whether it plans to continue its affiliation with the Woods foundation, which according provides educational and youth development scholarships, according to the web site.
The study announced by Cambridge Energy Research Associates last week, laying out what it sees as a projected cutback in production due to ongoing cutbacks in capital spending, gets a little more support in the real world every day.
What CERA is writing about hasn't stopped. The CERA report came out Friday, March 27. In the 7-day period surrounding that release, the following developments have been recorded, to help support CERA's theory:
Readers of The Barrel may have noticed the box to the right with Platts' "Tweets" from its new service. We believe that the new Platts' Twitter service can help keep you abreast of various news events over the course of the day.
The three latest Tweets will be posted on this page. But if you want to see more, please check it out here.
It's official--the Golden Age of Refining is kaput.
It's not even 10 a.m. on a Thursday, and here's what has been announced so far today.
There are New Year best wishes -- then there is wishful thinking.
As the air falls out of crude oil prices and 2009 gets forecast by many economists as one of deep recession, you can almost hear the fingers-crossed, wishful thinking from Brazil's Petrobras in their electronic holiday greeting card sent round the world -- as if their PR crew had been goaded into keeping things upbeat. "Happy new era, with good news," said Petrobras's English-language subject line.
I'm participating in a webcast with some of my Standard & Poor's colleagues later this week. As I was preparing slides for it, I wanted to highlight some of the large-scale capital projects that have been delayed because of the combination of lower prices, weaker refining margins and the credit crunch.
I figured I had enough for the slide when I got to five. To find five, I had to go back all of...one week.
Chevrolet's gasoline-sipping plug-in hybrid, the Chevrolet Volt, got an inadvertent introduction on the Web Monday.
A series of pictures of both the car and the development team leaked out, and set off a mini-frenzy among auto bloggers. You can see them here. The off-the-cuff conclusion is that for such a futuristic vehicle, it looks pretty pedestrian.
Twitter Updates
follow PlattsOil on Twitter