<a href=www.iribnews.com>iribnews.com 10:08:43 AM Singapore, June 6 - Oil prices rose in Asian trading on Friday on anticipation of a production cut when OPEC meets next week, dealers said. At 11:30 am (0830 GMT), New York's benchmark Light Sweet crude oil for July delivery was trading at 30.80 dollars a barrel, up from its overnight close of 30.74 dollars. The 11 members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) are due to meet on June 11 in Doha, Qatar to decide whether to cut production. "Concerns over a possible cut in production by OPEC as well as talk that Venezuela may cut production has weighed heavily on the market, pushing prices consistently higher," a local trader said. He said OPEC's decision and other factors may help push oil past 32 dollars a barrel. "Prevailing concerns over historically low stocks in the us aswell as news that the north Iraqi oil fields may not be able to produce much for two months due to looting has also supported the rise in the prices," said a dealer.

<a href=www.iol.co.za>IOL, May 16 2003 at 06:12AM By Sid Astbury

Sydney - So long in coming, so sublime to behold, the euphoria that suffused East Timor's independence day almost a year ago has burned away like the morning mists on the hills that ring Dili, the new nation's sparkling seaside capital.

Helping lance the irrational exuberance of that day was rioting in December that took the lives of at least two young demonstrators and which left houses and businesses smouldering.

Also conspiring to deliver a painful dose of reality were the daily departures from Comoro Airport of the United Nations staff that had shepherded the half-island to freedom.

The 800 000 East Timorese are finally rid of their colonial masters - the Portuguese had been in charge for 400 years, the Indonesians for 24 - but independence is still a notional concept.

The border with the Indonesian province of West Timor is patrolled by the 3 800 UN peacekeepers that give the dirt-poor territory its security backbone.

The annual budget of the left-leaning administration of Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri is $77-million (about R610-million), 40 per cent of which is foreign aid.

Alkatiri has promised the mostly Roman Catholic East Timorese that true independence will come when oil and gas revenues from fields in the Timor Sea start rolling in next year.

From $7-million in 2004, the value of oil money sluicing through government coffers should rise to $300-million in 2013.

The cash comes courtesy of the Timor Sea Treaty, which gives Dili 90 per cent of petroleum revenues from one part of the Timor Sea and Canberra the remaining 10 per cent.

It's a huge windfall that could either underpin the prosperity of the world's newest nation or tip it into a cycle of massive corruption and revolving door governments - witness Nigeria and Venezuela.

"The equitable, sustainable, and transparent management of petroleum revenues is a heavy responsibility," Alkatiri has admitted. "The East Timorese desperately need the revenues."

They do indeed: with an annual average income of less than $500, they are the poorest people in South East Asia.

The East Timorese are in some ways worse off than they were when the Portuguese simply upped and left in 1975. Then, the territory was self sufficient in food, but is now reliant on imports of rice - despite over half the workforce being in agriculture.

Coffee, the biggest cash crop and only sizeable export, was being harvested at an annual rate of 45 000 tons before Indonesian troops carriers ran up Dili's beaches. This year, the coffee harvest should reach just 10 000 ton.

But optimism that East Timor will make a good go of independence has yet to fracture.

The December riots, described by President Xanana Gusmao as a little local difficulty unlikely to be repeated, did not prove the first of a series.

The administration in Jakarta, despite sending gunships into Dili harbour unannounced in the hours before independence, has caused little trouble to its counterpart in Dili over the past 12 months.

Paul Dibb, an academic at Canberra's Australian National University, has complimented the East Timorese on not riling their former masters.

"The Indonesians see the taking away of their East Timor province as an enormous humiliation - even though they clearly brought it upon themselves," Dibb wrote recently. "The East Timorese leadership know they must learn to live with a strongly resentful giant neighbour."

Another phenomenon the East Timorese must accept is the withering of international interest in their fate.

Before independence, Foreign Minister Ramos Horta said he would like to see East Timor become "almost an Australian protectorate".

He is likely to be disabused. Canberra is keen to get its relationship with Dili onto an equal footing, where there is no sentimentality and no residual special treatment.

An indication of this new climate came last month when Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock rejected a plea by Gusmao that the 1 600 East Timorese who hold temporary visas be allowed to stay in Australia.

Ruddock said it was "a little disingenuous" of Gusmao to appeal to East Timorese stuck in refugee camps in West Timor to return home but not extend the same entreaty to those availing themselves of Australia's hospitality.

That the relationship was going to be businesslike rather than patron-client was underlined when giant Australian phone company Telstra shocked the East Timorese by not extending its contract to run the territory's telecommunications system.

Expatriates in Dili may moan about creeping corruption, burdensome taxation and the high-cost economy, but the transition to self-rule has gone better than most expected. - Sapa-DPA

By Nesa Subrahmaniyan

Singapore, May 5 (<a href=quote.bloomberg.com>Bloomberg) -- Asian gasoil and jet-fuel markets face a glut after a shorter-than-expected war in Iraq left Saudi Aramco, the world's biggest oil company, and rival Kuwait Petroleum Corp. with unwanted supplies stored for military use.

Cargoes of diesel and jet kerosene are likely to head to Asia in the next two months as Middle East refiners look for buyers, according to a Bloomberg News survey of five oil refiners and traders. Kuwait Petroleum, which halted shipments of the fuels to Asia before the U.S.-led invasion, may resume exports this month.

``Oil products were stored for strategic purposes and now obviously, there's no need for that,'' said Abdallah Kharma, deputy head of international trading at China Aviation Oil (Singapore) Corp. Normal exports from the countries would be supplemented by fuel from reserves, he said.

An increase in supply of jet fuel would come after Asian airlines cut flights because of a viral outbreak that reduced travel demand. Severe acute respiratory syndrome has killed more than 400 people and infected more than 6,200, mostly in China and Hong Kong.

Asia's consumption of jet fuel, a type of kerosene, may decline between 5 percent and 10 percent between April and June compared with a year earlier, according to a Bloomberg survey last month of five oil trading companies, airlines and refiners.

SARS

The demand drop seems to be exacerbated because of SARS,'' said Katsunori Watanabe, director of research at Nihon Unicom Corp., a futures trading company in Tokyo. Jet fuel consumption is down in Asia by almost 20 percent.''

Asian carriers such as Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd. and Singapore Airlines Ltd. slashed a total of more than 650 weekly flights last month.

Fuel prices may also be hit by the decline in crude oil costs. Middle East oil producers pumped more crude in the first quarter to offset supply disruptions from Venezuela, crippled by a strike, and from Iraq during the U.S.-led invasion.

As Venezuelan and Iraqi supplies return to the market, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries is trying to rein back those additional barrels to avoid a glut. The group said it will reduce output by 2 million barrels a day starting June 1 in an effort to stem a drop in prices.

Brent crude oil prices on London's International petroleum Exchange, which mirror Persian Gulf crude price movements, have fallen more than 27 percent since their March 12 peak.

Fuels

Jet-fuel and gasoil prices in Asia have fallen even faster. Prices of jet fuel declined by 34 percent in Singapore, Asia's biggest oil trading center, to $28.75 a barrel on Friday from this year's high of $43.35 on Feb. 10, according to Bloomberg data.

Diesel, or gasoil, used to fuel tanks and trucks, has fallen 30 percent to $29.05 a barrel from this year's high of $41.70 a barrel on March 10.

Kuwait, which has bases for U.S. and U.K. troops, may restart exports in May that were suspended earlier in case the supplies were needed by the military, Nader Sultan, chief executive of state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corp., said in an April 15 interview. Kuwait produces about 120,000 barrels of jet fuel a day.

Naphtha supplies from the Middle East have also risen because the raw material for gasoline and chemicals was produced at the same time as the gasoil. State-owned Kuwait Petroleum, which normally sells naphtha to customers under annual contracts, sold 100,000 tons in the spot market for loading in April, a company official said earlier.

Saudi Aramco officials declined to comment on reports that it offered two cargoes in the spot market in April. Naphtha prices delivered to Japan have declined 44 percent to $218.13 a ton from this year's high of $388.50 a ton on March 10, according to Bloomberg data.

Demand

I don't think there will be a problem with supply, the problem is going to be demand,'' said Kharma of China Aviation. The picture is not going to be great, probably end-May, end-June because I think we have quite a bit of products coming out.''

In the first quarter, shipments from the Middle East slowed because a war premium boosted freight rates in the region as the U.S. geared up to attack Iraq.

The freight rate between the Arabian Gulf and Japan, measured in World Scale points, an industry benchmark, has fallen 6.8 percent to 275 on Friday after rising to a one-year high of 295 on April 14.

``The shipping rates will come down now and the war risk premium will come down,'' lowering the rate at which fuels can be profitably shipped to Asia, China Aviation's Kharma said. Last Updated: May 4, 2003 12:01 EDT

theadvertiser.news.com.au 4may03

PETROL prices are tipped to drop under 80c a litre this week for the first time in seven months.

Unleaded fuel yesterday was down as low as 82.3c, the cheapest since November. This is more than 15c a litre cheaper than the 97.9c peak charged on the eve of Easter a little more than a fortnight ago.

The fall represents a saving of about $9 on filling up a typical family sedan.

The savings could grow, according to experts.

"It is quite possible, at the bottom of the discounting cycle, prices will fall below the 80c mark," RAA spokeswoman Wendy Bevan said.

A combination of factors had pushed petrol prices down in recent weeks, Ms Bevan said.

These included:

 CERTAINTY of oil supply, following the ending of the Iraq war.

 THE end of strikes in Venezuela and a return to full production there.

 A 12.5 per cent increase in the value of the Australian dollar against the US dollar in the past six months.

On Friday the Australian dollar was at US63.15c, the highest level in three years. These factors had combined to force the wholesale price down 2c a litre last week, with the savings expected to be passed on to the petrol pump from tomorrow.

"This is welcome news for motorists," Ms Bevan said.

"The oil market is now confident that there is a plentiful, if not over-supply of oil for the short-term.

"The last time the price of crude oil was around $US25 a barrel was November and pump prices went as low as 78.9c a litre. The Australian dollar, however, was not as strong against the US dollar then so it is certainly possible for prices to fall below 80c again."

Motor Trade Association executive director Ian Horne agreed.

"With all the factors in place, there is no reason why unleaded fuel prices couldn't fall below 80c," he said.

"How long they would stay that low, however, is another thing."

nzoom.com

Oil prices rose on Monday, weighing up the prospect of a return of Iraqi crude exports to the world market against possible supply curbs by Opec to avert a potential price crash.

US crude futures for May in New York rose 49 cents to $US28.63 a barrel while benchmark Brent crude oil in London rose 25 cents to $US25.00.

Oil prices have fallen about 30% from pre-war peaks near $US40 as US and British forces quickly secured a majority of Iraq's oil infrastructure in the south of the country and traders predicted a fairly swift end to hostilities.

But any resumption of Iraq's vital crude exports will be up to an interim authority in Baghdad in conjunction with the United Nations.

Some analysts forecast that diplomatic wrangling will keep Iraqi barrels off themarket for months, but a senior US engineer said on Monday that Iraq's giant Kirkuk oilfields could start pumping within weeks.

The northern fields are capable of producing up to 900,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Iraq's pre-war production of roughly 2.5 million bpd.

"It's a definite possibility that could be just a few weeks away," said Tom Logsdon, a senior member of the US Army Corps of Engineers charged with repairing Iraq's oilfields.

Logsdon said the southern oilfields, where output was up to 2.1 million bpd before the war began on March 20, could be up and running in less than three months.

"Depending how quickly workers come on line, we estimate we will have between 330,000 and 1,000,000 bpd being produced within 12 weeks from now," said Logsdon.

Iraq's crude could hit world markets just as demand wanes in the second quarter, a seasonal slump between winter demand for heating oil and the peakconsumption of gasoline during summer.

Compounding the demand downturn, many commercial airlines have slashed routes due to the spread of the flu-like SARS virus around the globe.

At the same time, supplies from Opec producers are running almost two million bpd above the group's self-imposed ceiling, to counter supply disruptions from Venezuela, Nigeria and Iraq.

"The industry is now facing the prospect of too much oil in the months ahead unless Opec reins in some of its recent output increase," the London-based Centre for Global Energy studies said in a report.

The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is planning an emergency meeting later this month or in early May to discuss tightening compliance to current output quotas or even possible curbs to formal limits.

The International Energy Agency said last week that a big volume of Opec crude was sitting on the water waiting to hit consumer shores, but warned that it would be imprudent for producers to cut supplies too soon as fuel stockpiles in industrialised nations remain well below normal levels.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Friday that South America's biggest oil producer was ready to back any proposed Opec supply cut to support prices in the group's target band of $US22 to $US28 a barrel for Opec's reference basket of seven crudes.

Opec's basket price stood at $US25.40 on Thursday, compared with a monthly average of $US31.54 in February.