标题: Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Sept 2, 2013 [打印本页] 作者: choi 时间: 9-5-2013 15:56 标题: Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Sept 2, 2013 (1) Brian Bremner, So Much for Russia. Rising energy production in the US is testing Russia' economic model. Will Vlamidir Putin survive the challenge? http://www.businessweek.com/arti ... mericas-energy-boom
Quote:
"Russia is still the world’s biggest overall energy exporter: It’s the No. 1 oil producer and No. 2 in gas after the U.S. However, the country’s known oil reserves—primarily between the Ural Mountains and the Central Siberian Plateau—are enough to sustain current production levels for just 20 years, according to a study in December by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) * * * Untapped oil and gas reserves in eastern Siberia and the Arctic will take massive investments to explore.
"he [Putin] took over at the start of the last decade (he served as president from 2000 to 2008 and premier for four years after that) * * * Through 2008, Putin oversaw an average of 7 percent growth in gross domestic product and a huge expansion in Russia’s middle class. * * * Russia’s phenomenal run of prosperity would have been an ideal time to diversify the economy beyond energy, a goal that harks back to the days of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. Instead, energy’s share of the economy actually increased; as of late 2012, oil and gas accounted for about 70 percent of exports, compared with less than 50 percent in the mid-1990s, providing half of the government’s revenue and roughly 17 percent of GDP, according to the EBRD. Gazprom alone represents 14 percent of the Russian stock market’s total capitalization. Russia’s energy dependency problem became impossible to ignore in 2009 as the global recession crushed oil prices, which fell to $34 a barrel from a precrisis high of $147. Russia’s economy contracted almost 8 percent, the steepest drop among the G-20 industrialized nations that year. Since 2010, the economy hasn’t come close to hitting the 5 percent to 6 percent mark that Putin has said it needs to close the gap with leading developed nations.
"What he [Putin] didn’t anticipate was that US oil production—thanks to horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technology, in which pressurized water and chemicals are blasted into rocks to release energy—would increase 46 percent. That equals the entire output of Nigeria, estimates Daniel Yergin, vice chairman of consulting firm IHS.
"Russia’s worry is twofold: An expanding supply of affordable LNG, which is transported by ship, is forcing Gazprom[, which ships by pipeline to European customers] to either cut prices or lose share. (Weird and surprising fact: As American utilities shift to gas, displaced US coal is flooding into European markets. The US may supplant Russia as the world’s No. 3 coal exporter by yearend, according to Goldman Sachs.) Second, the Russian gas giant is under pressure to adopt spot-market pricing instead of tying its prices to oil.
Note:
(a) This is the cover story.
Note:
(a) summary underneath the title in print: Self-made men and princelings argue for reform in ever louder voices
(b) Shai Oster http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shai_Oster
(an American journalist for Bloomberg; "born in Jerusalem and speaks Hebrew, French, Mandarin and English. He lives in Hong Kong with his wife Alisha Alexander")
(i) Shai. Kveller, A Jewish twist on parenting, undated http://www.kveller.com/jewish_names/display.php?k=795
(Meaning: Gift or Present; Gender: Both; Origin: Hebrew)
(ii) The Swedish surname (Öster) and German surname (Oster) are from "Swedish öster, Middle Low German and Middle High German oster ‘eastern.’"
(c) founders He di and QIN Xiao of Boyuang Foundation
(d) "A decade later, he [HE Di] stepped down from UBS and set up the foundation. 'The goal was to be one of the voices to cause the debate. Maybe in 10 years we’ll be like Brookings,' says He. The Brookings Institution was set up by a philanthropist in 1916 to analyze public policy."
(i) Brookings Institution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brookings_Institution
(Formation 1916; Headquarters Washington, DC; founder, philanthropist Robert S. Brookings (1850–1932))
(ii) The English surnames Brookings (more comon than Brookins) /Brookins/Brook/Brooke:
"name for someone who lived by a stream, from a derivative of Old English broc ‘stream’"
Brooke, as a variant of Brook, "preserves a trace of the Old English dative singular case, originally used after a preposition (eg ‘at the brook’)."
Dictionary of American family Names, by Oxford University Press
Quote: "A modern economy can’t grow without copper. One way to get that metal is to dig holes in the ground; the other is from scrap. Since the mid-1990s, China has taken both approaches, with scrap accounting for more than half of all Chinese copper production every year (peaking at 74 percent in 2000). Because China is still a developing economy, it doesn’t throw away enough stuff to be self-sufficient. Thus, for the last decade it’s imported more than 70 percent of the scrap copper it uses. Meanwhile, the US, which throws away far more scrap metal than it can ever use, has become the world’s most attractive market for the savvy Chinese buyer.