TPT September 2012

Global Marketplace

Total commenced its activities in Iraq in the 1920s with the discovery of the Kirkuk field. In the 1970s, the French company brought the Buzurgan and Abu Ghirab fields on stream. Since then, Total E&P Iraq has maintained an Iraqi presence by conducting technical studies and training local engineers. › On 7 June, in Oslo, British Prime Minister David Cameron and his Norwegian counterpart Jens Stoltenberg signed the “Energy Partnership for Sustainable Growth” that elaborates an earlier memorandum of understanding that Norway’s Statoil will invest $27.8bn in developing Britain’s Mariner and Bressay oil fields in the North Sea. The Mariner field is believed to hold recoverable resources of between 300 and 500 million barrels of oil equivalent, while recoverable resources at the Bressay field are estimated at 200 to 300 million barrels. Statoil and Centrica – the parent company of British Gas – are the dominant players in North Sea oil and gas. As partners they also envisage joint exploitation of the Arctic’s vast energy riches and cooperation on renewable energy and carbon capture and storage (CCS), an experimental technology for trapping exhausts from polluting power plants. Norway, Europe’s second-biggest gas supplier behind Russia, meets more than a third of British gas needs by way of two dedicated subsea pipelines.

Automotive Even as China’s car sales slow at home, its low-priced exports to emerging markets are surging “Roads in countries like Algeria, Brazil, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia and South Africa are increasingly dotted with cars from manufacturers like Geely, Great Wall Motors and Chery.” Chinese companies, all. Keith Bradsher, writing from Beijing in the New York Times , was making the point that China’s car exports to emerging markets are booming. These exports were up 21 per cent in the first five months of this year; in May, they were up 43 per cent from May 2011. But China is shipping just a few thousand cars a year to the European Union, and virtually none to the US. Mr Bradsher, the Times ’s Hong Kong bureau chief, noted the irony that, for more than a decade, automakers around the world have been nervously awaiting the day when China would start exporting sizable numbers of cars to the West. Now it seems they mistook the real threat. Less affluent buyers from Santiago to Baghdad are starting to buy low- priced Chinese cars as alternatives to used cars, motorcycles, and low-end models sold by the multinationals. (“Chinese Cars Make Valuable Gains in Emerging Markets.” 5 July)

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September 2012