The risk-return receipts off unconventional [gas resources] are actually very compelling."

Globe says Manzoni takes the Buckee out of Talisman

2008-12-15 06:57 ET - In the News

The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday edition that Talisman Energy today is not Jim Buckee's Talisman. The Globe's Norval Scott quotes John Manzoni, the former BP PLC executive who took the helm in September, 2007, as saying: "There is quite a lot of change in how we run the company. My style is quite different from Jim's."

For 15 years, Talisman was synonymous with Mr. Buckee, an occasionally brilliant and always controversial astrophysicist who took the company to the far corners of the planet, fought publicly with social activists and ran the head office as his personal domain. Under Mr. Manzoni, who has set out to remake Talisman, the company is more inclusive. Talisman still operates in 16 countries, and recently expanded into Iraqi Kurdistan. Mr. Manzoni has his eye on Canada.

He spent his first year in Calgary drafting a strategy to focus on long-term unconventional gas prospects in North America. Now, he must show some results for shareholders. "The old strategy had, in some senses, run its course," said Mr. Manzoni. "One's got to be slightly cautious about following a fad, but it's more than a fad. The risk-return receipts off unconventional [gas resources] are actually very compelling."

Oil spikes as OPEC readies cut

Oil spikes as OPEC readies cut

PABLO GORONDI
Monday, December 15, 2008
Oil prices were up sharply near $49 (U.S._ a barrel Monday as investors anticipated OPEC will announce a large production cut at its meeting this week.

By midday in Europe, light, sweet crude for January delivery was up $2.47 to $48.75 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. On Friday, the contract fell $1.70 to settle at $46.28.

In London, January Brent crude rose $2.06 to $48.47 on the ICE Futures exchange.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which accounts for 40 per cent of global supply, has signalled it plans to announce a substantial reduction of output quotas at its meeting Wednesday in Algeria.

“The extent of such cuts is still unclear and this uncertainty has been a source of continuing volatility in futures markets,” said a report by analysts at KBC Market Services in Great Britain.

On Monday, the Nymex contract was trading in a relatively wide range between $45.92 and $49.00.

Olivier Jakob of Petromatrix in Switzerland noted that trading volumes last week showed a “sharp rebound” for Nymex crude, “close to double the volume seen in the two previous weeks” and near the highest levels seen this year, above 700,000 contracts a day.

Iranian Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari was quoted Sunday on his ministry's web site saying that Iran would push for a production cut of 1.5 to 2 million barrels per day.

Analysts have questioned whether OPEC members will follow through with any announced cut.

“They're talking about a severe cut, but the question is their discipline,” said Christoffer Moltke-Leth, head of sales trading at investment firm Saxo Capital Markets in Singapore. “Unless they really surprise the market, this cut may not support the price much.”

Oil has jumped from a four-year low earlier this month of $40.50 a barrel on expectations that an OPEC output reduction could be the catalyst to stabilize the oil price, which has fallen 65 per cent since July.

“For the first time in several weeks, there are signs that crude prices might have bottomed out and could be heading upward again,” KBC Market Services said.

Investors largely ignored OPEC's 1.5 million barrels a day output cut in October, focusing instead on a slowing global economy that's hurt crude demand.

More bad macro-economic and company news from the U.S. and Europe over the coming weeks will likely push oil prices lower, Mr. Moltke-Leth said.

“I expect crude to continue its slide and I don't think OPEC is going to prevent that,” he said. “Demand destruction in the major economies will still very much be on the agenda. We could go as low as $30 a barrel.”

Petromatrix's Mr. Jakob said that while no new data was expected this week to show a global rise in appetite for crude, the impact of the OPEC meeting on the supply side likely would be considerable.

“There is no data available to point to an improving demand, but this week will be focused on the supply side and the global supply and demand for the first half of 2009 will need to be rewritten on Thursday after the OPEC decision,” he said.

In other Nymex trading, gasoline futures rose 5.40 cents to $1.1317. Heating oil gained 7.48 cents to $1.5682 a gallon while natural gas for January delivery jumped 9.7 cents to 5.585 per 1,000 cubic feet.

© Copyright The Globe and Mail

Markets love the White House

Markets love the White House

RTGAM






If you were sitting on the edge of your seat on Friday morning, with visions of double-digit percentage losses at major stock market indexes, you weren't alone. The vote in the U.S. Senate on Thursday night against the $14-billion (U.S.) bailout for the Big Three auto makers triggered scenarios of massive corporate failures and millions of additional job losses - not to mention the potential loss of more U.S. pride and another U.S. city (Detroit).


However, just as the $700-billion rescue plan took a couple of attempts to succeed, investors clued in pretty fast that the auto bailout plan was not about to be shelved without another push. Soon after markets opened with steep, though hardly disastrous, losses, the White House said it would consider helping the auto makers with a slice of the $700-billion rescue plan that was originally earmarked for financial firms.


The markets loved the idea - and were even willing to ignore the other bad news for the day: Bernard Madoff, a former Wall Street icon, had been charged in connection to a $50-billion Ponzi scheme. The Dow Jones industrial average closed at 8629.68, up 64.59 points or 0.8 per cent. The broader S&P 500 closed at 879.74, up 6.15 points or 0.7 per cent.


Although General Motors Corp. shares ended the day down 4.4 per cent, that was a marked recovery from the start of trading, when the shares had been down more than 30 per cent. Ford Motor Co. did even better, rising 4.8 per cent.


In other moves, Intel Corp. rose 5.3 per cent, JPMorgan Chase & Co. rose 3.3 per cent and Citigroup Inc. rose 1.7 per cent.


In Canada, the S&P/TSX composite index closed at 8515.45, up 123.55 or 1.5 per cent. This was an even bigger rebound than in the United States, given that the index began the day down more than 3 per cent. Auto parts manufacturer Magna International Inc. fell a mere 0.2 per cent after being down nearly 12 per cent at the start of trading.


Financials were generally strong, with Royal Bank of Canada up 2.5 per cent and Bank of Nova Scotia up 2.1 per cent. Energy stocks were mixed, after the price of crude oil plunged, then recovered slightly and ended at $46.28 a barrel, down $1.70. Suncor Energy Inc. fell 3.5 per cent and EnCana Corp. fell 0.5 per cent, but Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. rose 2.7 per cent.

Copyright 2001 The Globe and Mail

I'm back from Vegas-and Stocks Ready To Plunge

Greenback a cure for commodities?

Thursday, December 11, 2008
Here's Allan Robinson's At The Bell which you'll find in Friday's newspaper:The U.S. dollar tumbled yesterday between 1 and 4.7 per cent against the world's major currencies and that could be good for U.S.-dollar-denominated commodity prices.

The main beneficiary of the swing during the past few days has been gold, which is once again trading above $800 (U.S.) an ounce. Oil prices have also shown some signs of strength.WHAT ARE THE EXPECTATIONS?But the question shell-shocked investors in commodities must be asking is whether the flight to safety that has pushed the U.S. dollar higher, and commodities lower, over the past few months is over?

“This has been the sharpest and steepest downturn in aggregate in commodity and energy prices ever,” said Bart Melek, global commodity strategist for BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc. “In terms of magnitude it's not much different; it's the speed of it.”Much of the pullback is a result of the trade finance cutbacks and de-leveraging by banks and hedge funds as a result of the credit crisis because the commodity price declines are far in excess of the supply and demand fundamentals, he said.

“We still have more pain coming, but I don't see a lot of downside remaining.”However, base metals and bulk commodities could remain under pressure for much of 2009 with only a modest turnaround expected in the latter part of the year, according to BMO Nesbitt Burns. Large segments of the nickel, zinc, aluminum and copper markets are operating below their cost of production, it said.

The rise in oil during the past few days is a result of the stronger dollar and talk of production cuts by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, said Robert Tebbutt, vice-president of Peregrine Financial Group Canada Inc.As far as the equity markets' ability to look ahead goes, the only major index up strongly during the past month is China's CSI 300 index, which has climbed 13.6 per cent.

That could bode well for commodities.So it looks like the beleaguered manufacturing sector at least can expect continued relief from declining costs. The producer price index scheduled for release today is forecast to have declined 2 per cent in November, compared with a 2.8-per-cent drop in October, according to a survey of economists by Bloomberg.

That would mark the fourth consecutive monthly decline.



Wall Street poised to plunge

SARA LEPRO
Friday, December 12, 2008
NEW YORK — A dejected stock market headed for a plunge at the opening of trading Friday as the Senate's rejection of a $14-billion (U.S.) lifeline for the auto industry intensified investors' concerns about a deepening recession.

The defeat of the bailout bill late Thursday has prompted calls from lawmakers for the Bush administration to use a portion of the $700-billion financial rescue package to prop up the struggling companies. The bill failed after the United Auto Workers refused to meet Republican demands for big wage cuts.

General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC have said they could run out of cash within weeks without government help. Ford Motor Co., which would also be eligible for aid under the bill, has said it has enough cash to make it through next year.

The failure of the bill is feeding investors' concerns about job losses. More evidence of the ravaged labour market came late Thursday, as Bank of America Corp. said it expected to cut as many as 35,000 jobs over the next three years, including some from investment bank Merrill Lynch & Co., which it agreed to buy in September.

Dow Jones industrial average futures dropped 310, or 3.61 per cent, to 8,287. Standard & Poor's 500 index futures fell 40.40, or 4.62 per cent, to 834.10, while Nasdaq 100 index futures fell 45.00, or 3.78 per cent, to 1,145.00.

Meanwhile, more glum economic data is expected Friday. The Commerce Department will release its retail sales report for November at 8:30 a.m. (ET). The Labour Department is expected to release the producer price index for November at the same time. Later Friday morning, the Commerce Department will issue its report on business inventories for October.

The Commerce Department is expected to report that retail sales fell in November for a fifth straight month despite a surge of shoppers over the Thanksgiving weekend. The report is a closely watched gauge considering that consumer spending drives more than two-thirds of the U.S. economy.

The reports will follow a bleak report from the Labour Department Thursday that said initial jobless claims rose to the highest level in 26 years last week.

Job losses have become investors' primary concern in recent weeks, as companies across many sectors, including AT&T Inc., DuPont, Dow Chemical Co., and Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc., have announced thousands of layoffs. Analysts don't expect the announcements to end any time soon.

If one of the automakers declared bankruptcy, some estimate as many as 3 million U.S. jobs could be lost next year.

In premarket trading, Ford shares dropped 44 cents, or 15 per cent, to $2.46, while GM plummeted $1.31, or 32 per cent, to $2.81.

Bond prices were mixed Friday. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite its price, fell to 2.51 per cent from 2.63 per cent late Thursday. The yield on the three-month T-bill was unchanged from late Thursday at 0.02 per cent. The bill has been in great demand because of the safety it offers investors.

The U.S. dollar rose against other major currencies, while gold prices fell.

Light, sweet crude fell $2.58 to $45.40 in electronic premarket trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Overseas, Japan's Nikkei stock average plunged 5.56 per cent. In afternoon trading, Britain's FTSE 100 was down 3.92 per cent, Germany's DAX index was down 4.80 per cent, and France's CAC-40 was down 5.35 per cent.

© Copyright The Globe and Mail