Mexico’s newly inaugurated president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, AMLO, is turning up the heat on foreign oil companies to show results before he holds new auctions.
Thanks to ExxonMobil’s run of success in oil exploration offshore Guyana, the country is on a path to becoming a Latin American powerhouse, Wood Mackenzie said. The super-major announced its tenth Guyana discovery this week, increasing the discovered recoverable resource in its Stabroek Block to more than five billion barrels.
Brazil's domestic crude oil output rose for the first time in five months in October as production from the subsalt region continued to grow and fewer floating production units were idled by maintenance shutdowns during the month.
Brazilian sugar companies are increasing their capacity to produce ethanol in the face of depressed global sugar prices and government policies expected to boost demand for the biofuel. A shift to ethanol in the 2018-19 season slashed Brazil’s sugar output by 9 million tons to a 12-year low and more switching to the biofuel next season could help to wipe out a global surplus weighing on sugar prices.
Qatar said it will quit OPEC to focus on gas in a swipe at Saudi Arabia, the de facto leader of the oil exporting group which is trying to show unity in tackling an oil price slide. Doha, one of OPEC’s smallest oil producers but the world’s biggest liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporter, is embroiled in a row with OPEC members Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has approved two financing packages worth a total of US$ 130 million in support of a program to modernize the Argentine-Uruguayan bi-national hydroelectric power plant in Salto Grande and a program to boost the competitiveness of the productive and tourism sectors of that region, made up of the departments of Concordia and Federacion in the Argentine province of Entre Ríos and Salto department in Uruguay.
Oil prices surged in early trading on Monday after the United States and China agreed on a truce in their trade conflict and ahead of a meeting by producer club OPEC this week that is expected to result in a supply cut.
President-elect and former army captain, Jair Bolsonaro, has named a Navy admiral as his Mining and Energy minister. The appointment marks the eighth member of the armed forces to Bolsonaro's government and the 20th Minister appointed so far.
The Brazilian economy accelerated sharply in the third quarter as record-low interest rates and a one-off government-led boost helped it bounce back from the impact of a nationwide truckers’ strike. Gross domestic product rose 0.8% from the second quarter and 1.4% from the third quarter of 2017, government statistics agency IBGE said on Friday.
Oil prices edged lower on Friday due to concerns of oversupply and a strong dollar. The two benchmarks, North Sea Brent LCOc1 and U.S. crude CLc1, still have had their weakest month in more than 10 years in November, losing more than 20% as global supply has outstripped demand.