Space Travel News  
ENERGY TECH
China invests 40 billion dollars in Iran oil, gas: minister

New BP boss off to Russia to mend fences with Moscow: report
London (AFP) July 31, 2010 - Incoming BP boss Bob Dudley will next week fly to Moscow to meet shareholders of its Russian joint venture TNK-BP, as relations thaw between the two companies, the Financial Times said Saturday. The visit will be Dudley's first trip to Russia since being forced to flee the country in 2008 when he was head of TNK-BP amid a bitter battle between BP and its Russian partners over control of the venture, the paper said. Dudley will travel with Tony Hayward, BP's outgoing chief executive and the pair will also meet senior government officials, according to a person familiar with the visit, the FT added. BP declined to comment.

The visit is likely to include discussion of the sale of BP assets in Venezuela to TNK-BP, the business daily said. BP on Tuesday said it was seeking to raise 30 billion dollars (23 billion euros) from asset sales to help meet the costs of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, which led the group to also say that Hayward would depart on October 1. Hayward, who is to remain a BP board member until November 30, has meanwhile been nominated as a non-executive director of TNK-BP.
by Staff Writers
Tehran (AFP) July 31, 2010
Iran's main economic partner China has invested around 40 billion dollars in the Islamic republic's oil and gas sector, a senior Iranian official said on Saturday.

Deputy Oil Minister Hossein Noqrehkar Shirazi also said that Tehran's oil exports to China fell by 30 percent in the first six months of 2010 compared with the corresponding period last year.

"The volume (of Chinese investment) in upstream projects is 29 billion dollars," Noqrehkar Shirazi told Mehr news agency, adding that Beijing had signed contracts worth another 10 billion dollars in petrochemicals, refineries and oil and gas pipeline projects.

He said China has also put forward proposals to participate in building seven new refineries in Iran.

Iran, OPEC's second largest oil exporter, has a dilapidated refining sector, forcing it to import petroleum products such as gasoline to meet domestic needs.

Noqrehkar Shirazi said that Chinese imports of Iranian oil fell in the first half of the year.

"Although Iran is still among top 10 oil exporters to China, it is the only country which in the first six months of 2010 has seen its exports to China falling," he said.

"The volume of oil exports to China in the first six months of this year decreased to less than 9.02 million tonnes or 66.12 million barrels. This shows a 30 percent decrease" over the first half of 2009, he added.

In recent years, China has filled the gaps in Iran's energy sector left by Western firms forced out by international sanctions.

In 2009, China became Iran's premier trading partner, with bilateral trade worth 21.2 billion dollars against 14.4 billion dollars three years earlier.

Commercial ties between the two countries were almost non-existent 15 years ago, amounting to just 400 million dollars.

According to official data, Western sanctions opened the way for Chinese companies, which last year directly supplied Iran with 13 percent (7.9 billion dollars) of its imports.

Iranian estimates also suggest that an equivalent amount was imported indirectly through the United Arab Emirates in 2009.

China backed the fourth set of UN sanctions against Iran over its contested nuclear programme, but Beijing has consistently urged the world powers to resolve the crisis diplomatically.

On Friday, it also opposed the latest unilateral sanctions on Iran imposed by the European Union.



Share This Article With Planet Earth
del.icio.usdel.icio.us DiggDigg RedditReddit
YahooMyWebYahooMyWeb GoogleGoogle FacebookFacebook



Related Links
Powering The World in the 21st Century at Energy-Daily.com



Memory Foam Mattress Review
Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily
XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News


ENERGY TECH
Does The Gulf Oil Spill Mean The End Of Deep Sea Drilling
Hanover, Germany (SPX) Jul 29, 2010
Since disaster struck the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico on 20 April 2010, up to nine million litres of crude oil have been gushing into the sea every day. It remains to be seen whether the recently installed 40-ton cap can really stop the majority of the oil flowing from the wellhead, 1500 metres under the sea. The spill will only be stopped definitively when th ... read more







ENERGY TECH
Sea Launch Signs Agreement With EchoStar

ISRO To Launch GSLV With Cryo Engine Within An Year

Ariane 5 Is Ready For Its Payload Integration

NASA Tests Launch Abort System At Supersonic Speeds

ENERGY TECH
Rocks On Mars May Provide Link To Evidence Of Living Organisms Roughly 4 Billion Years Ago

Martian Dust Devil Whirls Into Opportunity's View

DLR Investigates The Existence Of Liquid Salt Solutions On Mars

Curiosity Rover Grows By Leaps And Bounds

ENERGY TECH
Japan experts call for robot expedition to moon

Chandrayaan-2 Payloads To Be Decided Next Month

GRAIL Spacecraft Takes Shape

Caltech Team Finds Evidence Of Water In Moon Minerals

ENERGY TECH
Pounding Particles To Create Neptune's Water In The Lab

Course Correction Keeps New Horizons On Path To Pluto

Scientists See Billions Of Miles Away

System Tests, Science Observations And A Course Correction

ENERGY TECH
Planets In Unusually Intimate Dance Around Dying Star

Detector Technology Could Help NASA Find Earth-Like Exoplanets

NASA Finds Super-Hot Planet With Unique Comet-Like Tail

Recipes For Renegade Planets

ENERGY TECH
Using Rocket Science To Make Wastewater Treatment Sustainable

U.S. students win rocket challenge in U.K.

Private spacecraft nearing first test drop

Boeing enters commercial spacecraft race

ENERGY TECH
China Contributes To Space-Based Information Access A Lot

China Sends Research Satellite Into Space

China eyes Argentina for space antenna

Seven More For Shenzhou

ENERGY TECH
WISE Discovers Over 90 Near-Earth Objects

'Sample return' space missions examined

Fascinating Images From A New World

Rosetta Triumphs At Asteroid Lutetia


The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2010 - SpaceDaily. AFP and UPI Wire Stories are copyright Agence France-Presse and United Press International. ESA Portal Reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement,agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by SpaceDaily on any Web page published or hosted by SpaceDaily. Privacy Statement