India’s monthly oil demand fell the most since May 2003 as the government’s crackdown on high-value currency notes continued to reverberate through the country’s US$2 trillion economy.
Fuel consumption fell 4.5 per cent to 15.5 million tonnes in January from 16.2 million tonnes a year ago, the oil ministry’s petroleum planning and analysis cell said. Diesel use, which accounts for about 40 per cent of total fuel demand in India, dropped 7.8 per cent to 5.8 million tonnes, the biggest decline since September. Gasoline consumption fell the most since June.
Expansion in the world’s fastest-growing major economy is under pressure after the prime minister Narendra Modi in November withdrew high-value currency notes in a country where almost all consumer payments are in cash. Growth in GDP may slow to 6.5 per cent in the year through March from 7.9 per cent the previous year, according to an economic survey presented by the finance minister’s advisers.
“This decline in demand is due to demonetisation,” according to Tushar Tarun Bansal, a director at Ivy Global Energy. “I would expect this decline to be a one off and dissipate from February. This should result in a slower demand growth for diesel in the first quarter in 2017.”
India imports more than 80 per cent of its crude requirement and the International Energy Agency expects it to be the fastest-growing consumer through 2040. In most areas people are spending the same amount on fuel that they did before the money crackdown, although some rural areas and small businesses are still affected, according to Bansal.
Petcoke consumption fell for the first time in more than a year, declining about 9.9 per cent to 1.95 million tonnes. Petrol consumption fell 0.6 per cent to 1.8 million tonnes. Liquefied petroleum gas use expanded 16.4 per cent to 2 million tonnes, while jet fuel demand increased 17.8 per cent to 627,000 tonnes.
* Bloomberg
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Florida: The critical Sunshine State
Though mostly conservative, Florida is usually always “close” in presidential elections. In most elections, the candidate that wins the Sunshine State almost always wins the election, as evidenced in 2016 when Trump took Florida, a state which has not had a democratic governor since 1991.
Joe Biden’s campaign has spent $100 million there to turn things around, understandable given the state’s crucial 29 electoral votes.
In 2016, Mr Trump’s democratic rival Hillary Clinton paid frequent visits to Florida though analysts concluded that she failed to appeal towards middle-class voters, whom Barack Obama won over in the previous election.
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Iran's dirty tricks to dodge sanctions
There’s increased scrutiny on the tricks being used to keep commodities flowing to and from blacklisted countries. Here’s a description of how some work.
1 Going Dark
A common method to transport Iranian oil with stealth is to turn off the Automatic Identification System, an electronic device that pinpoints a ship’s location. Known as going dark, a vessel flicks the switch before berthing and typically reappears days later, masking the location of its load or discharge port.
2. Ship-to-Ship Transfers
A first vessel will take its clandestine cargo away from the country in question before transferring it to a waiting ship, all of this happening out of sight. The vessels will then sail in different directions. For about a third of Iranian exports, more than one tanker typically handles a load before it’s delivered to its final destination, analysts say.
3. Fake Destinations
Signaling the wrong destination to load or unload is another technique. Ships that intend to take cargo from Iran may indicate their loading ports in sanction-free places like Iraq. Ships can keep changing their destinations and end up not berthing at any of them.
4. Rebranded Barrels
Iranian barrels can also be rebranded as oil from a nation free from sanctions such as Iraq. The countries share fields along their border and the crude has similar characteristics. Oil from these deposits can be trucked out to another port and documents forged to hide Iran as the origin.
* Bloomberg
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