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
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
