Abu Dhabi retail gold sales down 25%
Today: UAE. Retail gold sales dropped by about 25% in March in Abu Dhabi compared with the same period last year, an industry executive said this week.
Tushar Patni, managing director of Ajanta Jewellery added that if the price of the precious metal stays over AED100 (US$27.4) per gram then it could force closure of some retail outlets.
“Currently the price of gold is at AED110 and I expect that it will stay at this level which spells bad news for many of the smaller retailers here who will be forced out of the market,” Patni, who manages the largest retailer of 22 carat gold in the capital of the United Arab Emirates, told Reuters. Read more
Mines prof sees potential in energy crisis
The current fuel and energy crisis is only going to get worse, but at the same time, it will produce job, career and business opportunities for those with the imagination to see them, a Colorado School of Mines professor says.
Dr. Roel Sneider, the W.M.Keck Distinguished Professor of Basic Exploration Science at the Golden university, made that assessment for members of the Evergreen Rotary Club at their June 13 meeting.
“Many foreign companies are taking advantage of these opportunities right now,” Sneider said, “and we are lagging behind them.” Read more
Utah, Colorado rival OPEC oil reserves, lure Chevron, Exxon, Shell
Colorado and Utah have as much oil as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Nigeria, Kuwait, Libya, Angola, Algeria, Indonesia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates combined.
That’s not science fiction, according to Bloomberg News. Trapped in limestone up to 200 feet (61 meters) thick in the two Rocky Mountain states is enough so-called shale oil to rival OPEC and supply the U.S. for a century.
Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp., the two biggest U.S. energy companies, and Royal Dutch Shell Plc are spending $100 million a year testing new methods to separate the oil from the stone for as little as $30 a barrel. A growing number of industry executives and analysts say new technology and persistently high prices make the idea feasible.
“The breakthrough is that now the oil companies have a way of getting this oil out of the ground without the massive energy and manpower costs that killed these projects in the 1970s,” said Pete Stark, an analyst at IHS Inc., an Englewood, Colorado, research firm. “All the shale rocks in the world are going to be revisited now to see how much oil they contain.” Read more
U.S. Says 400-Billion Barrel Bakken Oil Field a ‘Myth’
Reports circulating on the Internet tell of an oil field spanning parts of western North Dakota and eastern Montana where 400 billion barrels of oil supposedly are just waiting to be tapped. However, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) tells Cybercast News Service that those huge estimates are “a myth.”
A USGS report issued in April estimates that there are between 3 billion to 4.3 billion barrels of oil in what is referred to as “the Bakken Formation” — well below the 400 billion barrels discussed on the Web, but up from the previous estimate of 151 million barrels made in 1995. Read more
