Rebels in eastern Libya said on Friday they now controlled most of the oil fields east of the town of Ras Lanuf, and said they would honour oil deals as long as they were in the interest of the people.
Be careful what you wish for. After an ambiguous start, Western leaders have broadly welcomed the wave of protest and revolutions sweeping North Africa and parts of the Middle East. But beneath the words of encouragement about people taking charge of their own destiny, there is a growing and vital concern – the security of our oil and gas supplies.
The world is going to become richer and richer as developing economies play catch up over the coming years, according to Willem Buiter, chief economist at Citigroup.
Oil production in Libya is expected to shut down completely and could be lost for a prolonged period of time, Bank of America Merrill Lynch said on Thursday.
Libya's secretive sovereign wealth fund has $32 billion in cash with several U.S. banks each managing up to $500 million, and it has primary investments in London, a confidential diplomatic cable shows.
Young demonstrators hurled rocks and fire bombs at riot police as clashes broke out Wednesday in Athens during a mass rally against austerity measures, part of a general strike that crippled services and public transportation around the country.
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia announced financial support measures, worth an estimated SR135bn ($36bn), in a bid to avert the kind of popular unrest that has toppled leaders across the region and is now closing in on Libya’s Muammer Gaddafi.
Most too graphic to show, the images are filmed in hospitals and morgues and on the bloodstrewn streets of Libya's cities and towns.
[[wysiwyg_imageupload:1805:]]By Jeff Rubin
Why is the Arab world convulsing with social and political unrest when triple digit oil prices should be bringing enormous wealth to the region? The answer may be that the link between energy inputs and food prices suddenly makes soaring oil prices a double-edged sword in the world’s largest food importing region.
The instability in the Arab world claimed its first oil-rich victim over the weekend with the uprising in Libya. That's bad news for the bevy of international oil firms that have set up shop in the cloistered North African nation over the years, most notably Eni, the Italian oil giant.
