OAKLAND, Calif. — Radiation detectors originally intended to thwart terrorists smuggling nuclear bombs into the country have been put to another use at this sprawling port across the bay from San Francisco.
Three Customs and Border Protection officers used the equipment to screen Japanese cargo plucked by cranes as high as 24-story buildings from the NYK Aquarius, a massive cargo ship. Semi trucks hauling the containers passed slowly between two government trucks mounted with radiation detectors that resembled white cabinets.
If the lights flashed, it would mean the equipment detected unusual levels of radioactivity in the cargo. A white light means gamma radiation was detected; a red light indicates neutron radiation.
But on this day, like every day thus far, no dangerous cargo was found.
Although the government agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security, checks every cargo container coming from Japan since radiation began escaping from a damaged nuclear power plant in Fukushima, its officers have found no radioactively contaminated seafood, auto parts or electronics. The officers waved the Aquarius’s cargo through.
“To date, we have not held one container for contamination,” said Richard F. Vigna, a director of field operations for Customs and Border Protection. “There hasn’t been anything.”
The federal government operates a vast web of radiation screening at the nation’s seaports, airports and border crossings. Originally installed after the Sept. 11 attacks, the system is now also being used to make sure no contaminated Japanese imports reach store shelves.
The agency expects to keep working at the nation’s ports despite a government shutdown, if one occurs.
The heightened scrutiny increased for Japanese products immediately after the Fukushima nuclear plant’s troubles started. Typically, ship cargo goes through at least one round of radiation screening before being cleared to leave the port. But as a precaution, containers from Japan now get multiple checks.
The radiation screening program, which cost billions of dollars to put into effect, is operated by Customs and Border Protection. Radiation is just one concern for the agency, which also seizes drugs, detains illegal immigrants and eradicates invasive insects that stow away on incoming ships and airplanes.
But these days, attention is focused on the lights of the radiation detector. Should any contaminated products slip through, they could pose a health hazard, and would more than likely set off a panic among consumers, some of whom are already skittish about eating Japanese sushi. Only dairy products and produce from near the Fukushima plant have been banned outright by the Food and Drug Administration.
Scanning imports is a huge undertaking because of the volume of goods involved. Japan alone ships $120 billion in cars, electronics and other products to the United States annually.
Customs and Border Protection also has to balance the potential impact on commerce. Delays could mean lost money for shippers and the businesses that depend on supplies from Japan.
Michael Zampa, spokesman for APL, a container shipping company, said there were some initial backlogs in Los Angeles because of the expanded inspections, but they seemed to have eased.
“There was some delay, but it’s what you would expect with any new process,” he said.
The biggest excitement at the Port of Oakland came one day last week when a trucker ran over a traffic cone that then became stuck between his vehicle’s tires. The officers had to stop him to pull it out. Another driver balked at driving through the detectors because she feared that she would be subjected to radioactivity, as if she were going through an X-ray machine. The machines, in fact, do not emit radiation; they only measure it. Another driver took her place.
The offloaded containers get a second inspection when they leave the port. All trucks, no matter the origin of their cargo, must drive through radiation detectors resembling yellow gates at each terminal’s exit.
Earlier that day, in a nearby booth where officers monitor the port’s gate, an automated voice barked “gamma alert, gamma alert.” The equipment detected abnormal radiation on a passing truck. Although ominous sounding, such alerts are actually routine.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Setback in Rosneft Deal Suggests BP Misread Russia
LONDON — For major oil companies these days, geopolitical acumen is as essential as deepwater engineering. Just ask the British oil giant BP.
The company’s ambitions in Russia were dealt another setback Friday when an arbitration tribunal upheld an injunction that indefinitely blocks its share-swap agreement with the state-owned oil company Rosneft.
BP’s chief executive, Robert W. Dudley, might still be able to salvage the approximately $7.8 billion Rosneft deal. But Friday’s ruling may indicate how seriously Mr. Dudley misread Russian politics in striking that agreement — or was overtaken by developments that even the most expert Kremlinologist might not have been able to anticipate.
Either way, the ruling puts new pressure on BP to appease its partners in a separate and private joint venture in Russia, a group of billionaires who opposed the Rosneft deal. That group won the injunction two weeks ago from an arbitration tribunal in Sweden, arguing that the deal with the state-owned oil giant had breached their own shareholder agreement with BP in their partnership, called TNK-BP.
BP said in a statement on Friday that the ruling was simply a deferral and that the company would continue with arbitration hoping for a favorable final ruling. But the statement also said, “we will now also be exploring possibilities for a reasonable commercial solution with all parties.”
The Russian billionaires in TNK-BP, who do business as a group known as AAR, issued a statement on Friday calling the tribunal’s ruling “fair, balanced and thoughtful.”
“We will be pleased to continue to cooperate with the tribunal and will provide any additional information and evidence it requires during the next stage of the hearings,” Stan Polovets, AAR’s chief executive, said in the statement.
Prospects looked decidedly better for BP back in mid-January, when Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia presided over the signing ceremony for the Rosneft agreement. The deal called for the companies to invest in each other through a stock swap representing about 5 percent of BP and 9.8 percent of Rosneft, and to also jointly explore new oil fields in the Russian Arctic.
Robert W. Dudley was named BP chief after the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico.Michael Stravato for The New York Times Robert W. Dudley was named BP chief after the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
It seemed a strategic victory for Mr. Dudley, the American who rose to the top post at BP after the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year.
On taking that job in October, he quickly sold more than $22 billion of BP assets to help pay claims and cleanup costs and to focus on the company’s most lucrative operations. Then came the deal with Rosneft, which looked to be Mr. Dudley’s first bold move to help the company expand in new directions.
But now, with the suspended Rosneft deal having cost the company more time and investor support than planned, Mr. Dudley will probably find himself facing hard questions when BP holds its annual shareholder meeting in London on Thursday.
One of the hardest things to explain might be how he could have stumbled in Russia, after having spent five years in Moscow running the TNK-BP joint venture from 2003 to 2008. Or why he had not anticipated the tough tactics the TNK-BP partners might employ. After all, Mr. Dudley’s previous Russian experience led to his being forced into hiding in 2008 after disputes with the government and those same partners led to the revocation of his work visa.
This time, it had appeared that Mr. Dudley and BP might have protection from higher-ups. Rosneft’s chairman, Igor I. Sechin, is also a powerful deputy prime minister.
A senior BP official with knowledge of the company’s work in Russia said BP lawyers had understood that the agreement with Rosneft was “on the edge” of violating the TNK-BP shareholder agreement. But the deal also appeared to coincide so strongly with Russia’s national interest that the company assumed the Kremlin would discourage the Russian shareholders in TNK-BP from making trouble. The BP official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk on the record.
It turned out to be a bad bet on BP’s part. Even at the Jan. 14 signing ceremony, according to one person who was present, Mr. Putin had mentioned in a quiet aside that the AAR group was known to be litigious. What had seemed a passing remark proved to be predictive.
The AAR billionaires began threatening to sue almost immediately.
“BP assumed that any difficulties with the local shareholders would be resolved at a local level,” Christopher Weafer, the chief analyst at Uralsib bank, said in an interview. “That hasn’t happened. At least it hasn’t happened yet. It has to happen now.”
Oil analysts, too, say that Mr. Sechin, BP’s patron, may not have been as powerful as the company had hoped — or that if he was sufficiently powerful in January, he no longer is.
Dmitri A. Medvedev, the president of Russia, recently ordered ministers to step down from the boards of state-controlled companies, citing conflicts of interest. The change will deprive Mr. Sechin of his position at Rosneft, unless he resigns as deputy prime minister instead.
Mr. Putin, too, now seems to be distancing himself from the BP-Rosneft deal. In March, he told Russian journalists at a news conference that Mr. Dudley had not warned him of the possible legal challenge from the Russian oligarchs.
“I was completely in the dark,” he said, according to the newspaper Vedemosti. “When I met with BP’s director he didn’t say a word about this,” Mr. Putin said, referring to Mr. Dudley.
How that account agrees with his aside at the signing ceremony about AAR litigiousness, only people in Mr. Putin’s inner circle might ever know.
The AAR partners, for their part, have argued that the deal with Rosneft would significantly impinge on their rights because the TNK-BP venture would be sidelined from future growth opportunities in Russia.
Mr. Weafer and other analysts in Moscow conjecture that the AAR partners could be positioning themselves to sell their stakes in TNK-BP, possibly to Rosneft. That would effectively nationalize TNK-BP, which is Russia’s third-largest oil company after Lukoil and Rosneft.
The AAR partners have denied using the legal challenge to try to negotiate a sale of their shares.
Some investors would welcome the Rosneft deal despite its problems, according to Keith Bowman, an analyst at the brokerage firm Hargreaves Lansdown. From that viewpoint, any link with Rosneft would make it easier for BP to win future exploration contracts in Russia, the world’s largest oil-producing country.
And yet, despite Mr. Dudley’s tempestuous history with the TNK-BP partners, that venture has been a financial success for BP to date. Through it, BP’s operations in Russia have become as important to the company as those in the United States. After contributing about $6 billion in cash and assets to the founding of the TNK-BP venture in 2003, BP has since then made $14.3 billion in dividends from it — it still retains 50 percent of the assets.
And so even as BP fights with the oligarchs over the Rosneft deal, the TNK-BP joint venture is itself an important part of the British company’s portfolio. “There’s hardly a day when we don’t have to remind ourselves how valuable this business is,” said a senior BP employee who declined to be identified because the company does not officially comment on its disagreements with the TNK-BP shareholders.
Still, the Rosneft deal, hanging in the balance, is all about future growth through new oil exploration. Which is why it probably remains as important to BP and Mr. Dudley as it did in January.
“Any natural resources company’s biggest aim is to access new resources,” said Philip H. Weiss, an analyst with Argus Research in New York. “It’s a bit more important for BP because of the questions hanging over them in the gulf.”
The company’s ambitions in Russia were dealt another setback Friday when an arbitration tribunal upheld an injunction that indefinitely blocks its share-swap agreement with the state-owned oil company Rosneft.
BP’s chief executive, Robert W. Dudley, might still be able to salvage the approximately $7.8 billion Rosneft deal. But Friday’s ruling may indicate how seriously Mr. Dudley misread Russian politics in striking that agreement — or was overtaken by developments that even the most expert Kremlinologist might not have been able to anticipate.
Either way, the ruling puts new pressure on BP to appease its partners in a separate and private joint venture in Russia, a group of billionaires who opposed the Rosneft deal. That group won the injunction two weeks ago from an arbitration tribunal in Sweden, arguing that the deal with the state-owned oil giant had breached their own shareholder agreement with BP in their partnership, called TNK-BP.
BP said in a statement on Friday that the ruling was simply a deferral and that the company would continue with arbitration hoping for a favorable final ruling. But the statement also said, “we will now also be exploring possibilities for a reasonable commercial solution with all parties.”
The Russian billionaires in TNK-BP, who do business as a group known as AAR, issued a statement on Friday calling the tribunal’s ruling “fair, balanced and thoughtful.”
“We will be pleased to continue to cooperate with the tribunal and will provide any additional information and evidence it requires during the next stage of the hearings,” Stan Polovets, AAR’s chief executive, said in the statement.
Prospects looked decidedly better for BP back in mid-January, when Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia presided over the signing ceremony for the Rosneft agreement. The deal called for the companies to invest in each other through a stock swap representing about 5 percent of BP and 9.8 percent of Rosneft, and to also jointly explore new oil fields in the Russian Arctic.
Robert W. Dudley was named BP chief after the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico.Michael Stravato for The New York Times Robert W. Dudley was named BP chief after the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
It seemed a strategic victory for Mr. Dudley, the American who rose to the top post at BP after the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year.
On taking that job in October, he quickly sold more than $22 billion of BP assets to help pay claims and cleanup costs and to focus on the company’s most lucrative operations. Then came the deal with Rosneft, which looked to be Mr. Dudley’s first bold move to help the company expand in new directions.
But now, with the suspended Rosneft deal having cost the company more time and investor support than planned, Mr. Dudley will probably find himself facing hard questions when BP holds its annual shareholder meeting in London on Thursday.
One of the hardest things to explain might be how he could have stumbled in Russia, after having spent five years in Moscow running the TNK-BP joint venture from 2003 to 2008. Or why he had not anticipated the tough tactics the TNK-BP partners might employ. After all, Mr. Dudley’s previous Russian experience led to his being forced into hiding in 2008 after disputes with the government and those same partners led to the revocation of his work visa.
This time, it had appeared that Mr. Dudley and BP might have protection from higher-ups. Rosneft’s chairman, Igor I. Sechin, is also a powerful deputy prime minister.
A senior BP official with knowledge of the company’s work in Russia said BP lawyers had understood that the agreement with Rosneft was “on the edge” of violating the TNK-BP shareholder agreement. But the deal also appeared to coincide so strongly with Russia’s national interest that the company assumed the Kremlin would discourage the Russian shareholders in TNK-BP from making trouble. The BP official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk on the record.
It turned out to be a bad bet on BP’s part. Even at the Jan. 14 signing ceremony, according to one person who was present, Mr. Putin had mentioned in a quiet aside that the AAR group was known to be litigious. What had seemed a passing remark proved to be predictive.
The AAR billionaires began threatening to sue almost immediately.
“BP assumed that any difficulties with the local shareholders would be resolved at a local level,” Christopher Weafer, the chief analyst at Uralsib bank, said in an interview. “That hasn’t happened. At least it hasn’t happened yet. It has to happen now.”
Oil analysts, too, say that Mr. Sechin, BP’s patron, may not have been as powerful as the company had hoped — or that if he was sufficiently powerful in January, he no longer is.
Dmitri A. Medvedev, the president of Russia, recently ordered ministers to step down from the boards of state-controlled companies, citing conflicts of interest. The change will deprive Mr. Sechin of his position at Rosneft, unless he resigns as deputy prime minister instead.
Mr. Putin, too, now seems to be distancing himself from the BP-Rosneft deal. In March, he told Russian journalists at a news conference that Mr. Dudley had not warned him of the possible legal challenge from the Russian oligarchs.
“I was completely in the dark,” he said, according to the newspaper Vedemosti. “When I met with BP’s director he didn’t say a word about this,” Mr. Putin said, referring to Mr. Dudley.
How that account agrees with his aside at the signing ceremony about AAR litigiousness, only people in Mr. Putin’s inner circle might ever know.
The AAR partners, for their part, have argued that the deal with Rosneft would significantly impinge on their rights because the TNK-BP venture would be sidelined from future growth opportunities in Russia.
Mr. Weafer and other analysts in Moscow conjecture that the AAR partners could be positioning themselves to sell their stakes in TNK-BP, possibly to Rosneft. That would effectively nationalize TNK-BP, which is Russia’s third-largest oil company after Lukoil and Rosneft.
The AAR partners have denied using the legal challenge to try to negotiate a sale of their shares.
Some investors would welcome the Rosneft deal despite its problems, according to Keith Bowman, an analyst at the brokerage firm Hargreaves Lansdown. From that viewpoint, any link with Rosneft would make it easier for BP to win future exploration contracts in Russia, the world’s largest oil-producing country.
And yet, despite Mr. Dudley’s tempestuous history with the TNK-BP partners, that venture has been a financial success for BP to date. Through it, BP’s operations in Russia have become as important to the company as those in the United States. After contributing about $6 billion in cash and assets to the founding of the TNK-BP venture in 2003, BP has since then made $14.3 billion in dividends from it — it still retains 50 percent of the assets.
And so even as BP fights with the oligarchs over the Rosneft deal, the TNK-BP joint venture is itself an important part of the British company’s portfolio. “There’s hardly a day when we don’t have to remind ourselves how valuable this business is,” said a senior BP employee who declined to be identified because the company does not officially comment on its disagreements with the TNK-BP shareholders.
Still, the Rosneft deal, hanging in the balance, is all about future growth through new oil exploration. Which is why it probably remains as important to BP and Mr. Dudley as it did in January.
“Any natural resources company’s biggest aim is to access new resources,” said Philip H. Weiss, an analyst with Argus Research in New York. “It’s a bit more important for BP because of the questions hanging over them in the gulf.”
NATO Says Strikes Killed Rebels; Oil Output Gap May Persist
NATO confirmed its airstrikes mistakenly killed Libyan rebels using tanks against Muammar Qaddafi’s forces near the eastern oil port of Brega, as anti- government fighters in the besieged western city of Misrata battled to hold their positions under heavy fire.
A North Atlantic Treaty Organization commander said two of its strikes hit tanks operated by rebels April during clashes northeast of Brega. Rear Admiral Russell Harding countered criticism from the rebels, saying that coalition forces hadn’t previously seen rebels operating tanks, which have been used by Qaddafi’s army to attack civilians.
“It is not for us -- trying to protect civilians of whatever persuasion -- to improve communications with those rebel forces,” Harding, the deputy commander of the NATO mission, told reporters yesterday in Naples, Italy. He offered no apology, though NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen later said: “I strongly regret the loss of life.”
The rebels’ six-week drive to topple Qaddafi’s 42-year rule has reached a military impasse as regime forces outgun the opposition and protect their military hardware, such as tanks and armored vehicles, from NATO jets by moving it into cities. Clashes continued in Misrata, Libya’s third-largest city, where rebels have been fighting to keep government forces from controlling the critical road leading to the port, the Associated Press reported.
Oil Rises
Oil output from Libya has dropped by about 1.3 million barrels a day to a “trickle,” the Paris-based International Energy Agency said last month. Oil production would still be less than a third of its pre-conflict level even if the rebels took control of the country’s oil fields, Nomura Holdings Inc. said in a report.
Crude oil climbed above $112 in New York for the first time in 30 months. Crude oil for May delivery rose $2.49 to $112.79 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the highest settlement since Sept. 22, 2008. Futures advanced 4.5 percent this week and are 32 percent higher than a year ago.
Elsewhere in the region, Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh yesterday ruled out mediation by Persian Gulf countries that have offered to seek a compromise between his regime and a growing protest movement. Hundreds of thousands protested against Saleh in the capital, Sana’a, and in the southern city of Taiz security forces fired bullets and tear gas at a funeral procession, Hussein al Suhaili, an activist, said by telephone.
Syrian Demonstrators Killed
In Syria, authorities cracked down on a demonstration yesterday that drew tens of thousands in the southwestern city of Daraa. Witnesses and human rights activists said at least 25 people were killed and hundreds injured when the security forces fired on demonstrators, the Associated Press reported, while state TV said 19 members of the security forces were killed by gunmen.
In Libya, NATO jets have struck 23 targets in the last two days, including an air-defense facility near the Qaddafi stronghold of Sirte, Harding said. The alliance has hit T-72 tanks, armored vehicles, rocket launchers and ammunition dumps as its operations “steadily increase,” he said.
Rebel officials have complained that NATO isn’t doing enough to hit government forces. Contrary to Harding’s description, the number of NATO “strike sorties,” those looking for targets, declined to 54 on April 7 from 73 a day earlier. The total number of aircraft missions, including those enforcing the no-fly zone, declined to 155 from 164.
Changing Qaddafi Tactics
Harding said the alliance is grappling with changing tactics by the regime, whose forces have taken to driving civilian vehicles, and by the confusion on the ground that makes it difficult to distinguish between pro- and anti-Qaddafi troops and civilians. He cited running battles on the highway between Brega and Ajdabiya.
“The situation in the area is still very fluid, with tanks and other vehicles moving in different directions, making it very difficult to distinguish who may be operating them,” he said. “If someone wants to define that as a stalemate, that’s fine.”
The U.S. Treasury said yesterday that it has imposed financial sanctions on Libya’s prime minister, Ali al-Mahmoudi Al Baghdadi, its oil minister, finance minister, Qaddafi’s chief of staff, the director of the internal security office, and two groups associated with Qaddafi’s children, the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation and the Waatasemu Charity Association.
Mourners
Crowds rallied in the rebel stronghold Benghazi to mourn those killed in the Brega strike. At least five fighters were killed and more than 20 injured, AP said.
U.S. Army General Carter Ham, who commanded the opening phase of the allied military operation, told a U.S. Senate committee April 7 that the conflict is in a stalemate and the use of NATO air power is “increasingly problematic.” He cited the rebel-held city of Misrata as the main failure of NATO policy, saying air strikes haven’t been able to end the siege.
The situation in Misrata poses a challenge to NATO’s mandate to protect civilians. Fighting between Qaddafi’s forces and rebels in the city was “heavy” yesterday, according to Agence France-Presse.
‘Fear and Dead Bodies’
Former Libyan Energy Minister Omar Fathi bin Shatwan, who fled to Malta on a fishing boat April 1, described Misrata in an interview April 7 as a city where “there is no food or medicines, there is nothing but fear and dead bodies all over the place.”
An aid ship reached the city’s port April 7 and its cargo of food, medicine and water purification equipment was unloaded yesterday, according to an e-mail from Patrick McCormick, a spokesman for UNICEF, which provided medical supplies. The port area was reported to be secure enough to unload the cargo, according to Naeema al-Gasseer, a crisis operations manager with the UN’s World Health Organization.
Two surgeons from the Arab Medical Union, who arrived on the ship, performed five operations yesterday at a medical center now provided with electricity and water, al-Gasseer said in an e-mail.
A vessel chartered by the International Committee of the Red Cross is scheduled to arrive today, and a Turkish charity planned to send an aid ship to the city next week, AP reported.
Oil Fields
Foreign workers have fled from Libya’s oil fields since anti-government protests broke out in mid-February and escalated into armed conflict, meaning the country’s oil output would remain below a third of its previous level in the immediate aftermath of a cease-fire, Michael Lo, a Hong Kong-based analyst, wrote in the Nomura report.
“If all the Libyan national oil company-operated fields were to join the rebels and production goes into full swing, total production can likely reach only 450,000 barrels a day, 28.5 percent of pre-crisis levels,” according to Lo.
“The remaining fields were operated by independent oil companies, who have fled the country,” he wrote. “The shortage of human capital makes it difficult to bring all the fields back into production.”
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon plans to convene a meeting of representatives of Arab, African, Muslim and European nations in Cairo on April 14 to “enhance coordination” of efforts to end the conflict in Libya, UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said yesterday. Also, NATO foreign ministers are scheduled to meet April 14 and 15 in Berlin to discuss Libya. The Libya “contact group” of nations participating in a broader alliance is due to hold its first meeting next week in Doha, Qatar.
A North Atlantic Treaty Organization commander said two of its strikes hit tanks operated by rebels April during clashes northeast of Brega. Rear Admiral Russell Harding countered criticism from the rebels, saying that coalition forces hadn’t previously seen rebels operating tanks, which have been used by Qaddafi’s army to attack civilians.
“It is not for us -- trying to protect civilians of whatever persuasion -- to improve communications with those rebel forces,” Harding, the deputy commander of the NATO mission, told reporters yesterday in Naples, Italy. He offered no apology, though NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen later said: “I strongly regret the loss of life.”
The rebels’ six-week drive to topple Qaddafi’s 42-year rule has reached a military impasse as regime forces outgun the opposition and protect their military hardware, such as tanks and armored vehicles, from NATO jets by moving it into cities. Clashes continued in Misrata, Libya’s third-largest city, where rebels have been fighting to keep government forces from controlling the critical road leading to the port, the Associated Press reported.
Oil Rises
Oil output from Libya has dropped by about 1.3 million barrels a day to a “trickle,” the Paris-based International Energy Agency said last month. Oil production would still be less than a third of its pre-conflict level even if the rebels took control of the country’s oil fields, Nomura Holdings Inc. said in a report.
Crude oil climbed above $112 in New York for the first time in 30 months. Crude oil for May delivery rose $2.49 to $112.79 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the highest settlement since Sept. 22, 2008. Futures advanced 4.5 percent this week and are 32 percent higher than a year ago.
Elsewhere in the region, Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh yesterday ruled out mediation by Persian Gulf countries that have offered to seek a compromise between his regime and a growing protest movement. Hundreds of thousands protested against Saleh in the capital, Sana’a, and in the southern city of Taiz security forces fired bullets and tear gas at a funeral procession, Hussein al Suhaili, an activist, said by telephone.
Syrian Demonstrators Killed
In Syria, authorities cracked down on a demonstration yesterday that drew tens of thousands in the southwestern city of Daraa. Witnesses and human rights activists said at least 25 people were killed and hundreds injured when the security forces fired on demonstrators, the Associated Press reported, while state TV said 19 members of the security forces were killed by gunmen.
In Libya, NATO jets have struck 23 targets in the last two days, including an air-defense facility near the Qaddafi stronghold of Sirte, Harding said. The alliance has hit T-72 tanks, armored vehicles, rocket launchers and ammunition dumps as its operations “steadily increase,” he said.
Rebel officials have complained that NATO isn’t doing enough to hit government forces. Contrary to Harding’s description, the number of NATO “strike sorties,” those looking for targets, declined to 54 on April 7 from 73 a day earlier. The total number of aircraft missions, including those enforcing the no-fly zone, declined to 155 from 164.
Changing Qaddafi Tactics
Harding said the alliance is grappling with changing tactics by the regime, whose forces have taken to driving civilian vehicles, and by the confusion on the ground that makes it difficult to distinguish between pro- and anti-Qaddafi troops and civilians. He cited running battles on the highway between Brega and Ajdabiya.
“The situation in the area is still very fluid, with tanks and other vehicles moving in different directions, making it very difficult to distinguish who may be operating them,” he said. “If someone wants to define that as a stalemate, that’s fine.”
The U.S. Treasury said yesterday that it has imposed financial sanctions on Libya’s prime minister, Ali al-Mahmoudi Al Baghdadi, its oil minister, finance minister, Qaddafi’s chief of staff, the director of the internal security office, and two groups associated with Qaddafi’s children, the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation and the Waatasemu Charity Association.
Mourners
Crowds rallied in the rebel stronghold Benghazi to mourn those killed in the Brega strike. At least five fighters were killed and more than 20 injured, AP said.
U.S. Army General Carter Ham, who commanded the opening phase of the allied military operation, told a U.S. Senate committee April 7 that the conflict is in a stalemate and the use of NATO air power is “increasingly problematic.” He cited the rebel-held city of Misrata as the main failure of NATO policy, saying air strikes haven’t been able to end the siege.
The situation in Misrata poses a challenge to NATO’s mandate to protect civilians. Fighting between Qaddafi’s forces and rebels in the city was “heavy” yesterday, according to Agence France-Presse.
‘Fear and Dead Bodies’
Former Libyan Energy Minister Omar Fathi bin Shatwan, who fled to Malta on a fishing boat April 1, described Misrata in an interview April 7 as a city where “there is no food or medicines, there is nothing but fear and dead bodies all over the place.”
An aid ship reached the city’s port April 7 and its cargo of food, medicine and water purification equipment was unloaded yesterday, according to an e-mail from Patrick McCormick, a spokesman for UNICEF, which provided medical supplies. The port area was reported to be secure enough to unload the cargo, according to Naeema al-Gasseer, a crisis operations manager with the UN’s World Health Organization.
Two surgeons from the Arab Medical Union, who arrived on the ship, performed five operations yesterday at a medical center now provided with electricity and water, al-Gasseer said in an e-mail.
A vessel chartered by the International Committee of the Red Cross is scheduled to arrive today, and a Turkish charity planned to send an aid ship to the city next week, AP reported.
Oil Fields
Foreign workers have fled from Libya’s oil fields since anti-government protests broke out in mid-February and escalated into armed conflict, meaning the country’s oil output would remain below a third of its previous level in the immediate aftermath of a cease-fire, Michael Lo, a Hong Kong-based analyst, wrote in the Nomura report.
“If all the Libyan national oil company-operated fields were to join the rebels and production goes into full swing, total production can likely reach only 450,000 barrels a day, 28.5 percent of pre-crisis levels,” according to Lo.
“The remaining fields were operated by independent oil companies, who have fled the country,” he wrote. “The shortage of human capital makes it difficult to bring all the fields back into production.”
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon plans to convene a meeting of representatives of Arab, African, Muslim and European nations in Cairo on April 14 to “enhance coordination” of efforts to end the conflict in Libya, UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said yesterday. Also, NATO foreign ministers are scheduled to meet April 14 and 15 in Berlin to discuss Libya. The Libya “contact group” of nations participating in a broader alliance is due to hold its first meeting next week in Doha, Qatar.
India magnate refuses to abandon dream city
On 23,000 acres of scrubby hills surrounding the Warasgaon dam’s backwaters, a Mumbai construction magnate dreams of building a city.
Ajit Gulabchand has begun with a Mediterranean-inspired waterfront promenade. The clutch of hotels, restaurants and serviced flats that together resemble a film set are already drawing day trippers from Pune, an information technology hub, and overnight guests from Mumbai.
From this fanciful start, Mr Gulabchand, chairman of Hindustan Construction, aims to form a full-blown, living city, with a population of 300,000, business parks for clean industries such as software and animation studios, schools and recreational facilities.
With this project, known as Lavasa, Mr Gulabchand hopes to offer a blueprint for how India can cope with the pressures on its cities: forming well-planned urban centres to absorb a tide of rural migrants, and providing centres for businesses. The first phase is expected to cost $3bn.
“We need more cities,” he told the Financial Times in an interview. “India is going to urbanise over the next 30 to 40 years very rapidly. We must create a replicable model of creating cities or neighbourhoods, which India will require in abundance.”
Services to shine at Lavasa
Living in a city run by a company may not appeal to everyone in India, but Lavasa developers believe they will be able to do better for their future “citizen-customers” than many Indian cities are currently delivering, writes Amy Kazmin.
With limited political power and revenue-raising capacity, most Indian cities struggle to develop the basic urban infrastructure – such as power, water and roads – and provide services such as rubbish collection, to meet the needs of their burgeoning populations.
Lavasa says it will be able to supply high-quality, reliable infrastructure, and services through mandatory user fees to those living in Lavasa-built dwellings.
Ajit Gulabchand, the chairman of the Lavasa board, says he would eventually like to see a genuinely empowered local self-government that can take decisions on behalf of the city, while the company provides services on a contractual basis.
Initially, the city will remain under the local panchayat – an elected government unit akin to a village council, typically used in rural areas. However, panchayats have no revenue-raising ability and depend on state handouts for small-scale community improvement products.
While those buying into Lavasa properties are required to sign detailed covenants, the company will certainly not be
all-powerful. In the centre of the project, some local villagers have refused to sell their land, and are expanding their homes and businesses, profiting handsomely from the sudden building boom in the area.
But Mr Gulabchand, and Lavasa’s other backers – including Avantha Group and Venkateshwara Hatcheries, the Indian poultry group that recently bought Blackburn Rovers, the English Premier League football club – still face tremendous hurdles.
In November, Jairam Ramesh, environment minister, halted Lavasa’s construction and ordered that the project be razed, saying it had not obtained permission from New Delhi. Lavasa’s backers went to the Mumbai High Court to challenge the order, accusing him of acting in bad faith.
Since then, Mr Ramesh’s ministry – after a court-ordered inspection – has softened its stance, saying Lavasa can resume work on the first phase at once while an environmental assessment is carried out, and plans made to repair environmental damage.
However, when Lavasa sought to withdraw its lawsuit to pave the way for a settlement last week, the court ordered the status quo be maintained until the environment ministry review was completed. That could take months.
Lavasa – with debts of about Rs17bn ($381m) – now faces losses of about Rs50m a day, with no idea of when things will get back on track. A planned $440m stock market listing has been postponed indefinitely.
“Everybody expected the environmental issue to be resolved within a few months, but the road is not yet clear,” said Shailesh Kanani, an analyst at Angel Broking.
When construction resumes, the company faces a bigger question: can a privately developed city – built out of nowhere – appeal to diverse groups of people? Mr Gulabchand is confident it can. The master plan includes housing, office space, schools and a golf course designed by Nick Faldo. All this, in an idyllic hilly setting around a waterfront, he believes will prove a magnet for companies and skilled workers.
“People will migrate and where do you migrate to? You migrate to where there is a good lifestyle and education,” he said. “Businesses also come there, when you have skilled people.”
Certainly early bookings – before the environment ministry’s intervention – were brisk, with the first 1,750 flats, villas and plots almost sold out. Yet Mr Gulabchand insists Lavasa will not merely be an exclusive gated community. Low-cost housing is an integral part of the city plan. “If you are creating a city, it has to be across the socio-economic spectrum, without which the city cannot become vibrant, without which it cannot become an economy,” he says.
Cities built from scratch are not unprecedented in modern India. Jamshedpur, with more than 1.1 m residents, was developed in the early 20th century around the Tata Steel plant. Bhilai, with more than 750,000 people, grew around a Steel Authority of India plant.
Lavasa faces a long road to restore consumer confidence. “The company is going to have to do a lot of hard work,” says Mr Kanani. “People who want to invest will think twice.”
However, the irrepressible Mr Gulabchand is confident Lavasa’s appeal is undiminished. “We are now a household name in this country. Once we are through with this, we will have a better position to sell than we had before.”
Ajit Gulabchand has begun with a Mediterranean-inspired waterfront promenade. The clutch of hotels, restaurants and serviced flats that together resemble a film set are already drawing day trippers from Pune, an information technology hub, and overnight guests from Mumbai.
From this fanciful start, Mr Gulabchand, chairman of Hindustan Construction, aims to form a full-blown, living city, with a population of 300,000, business parks for clean industries such as software and animation studios, schools and recreational facilities.
With this project, known as Lavasa, Mr Gulabchand hopes to offer a blueprint for how India can cope with the pressures on its cities: forming well-planned urban centres to absorb a tide of rural migrants, and providing centres for businesses. The first phase is expected to cost $3bn.
“We need more cities,” he told the Financial Times in an interview. “India is going to urbanise over the next 30 to 40 years very rapidly. We must create a replicable model of creating cities or neighbourhoods, which India will require in abundance.”
Services to shine at Lavasa
Living in a city run by a company may not appeal to everyone in India, but Lavasa developers believe they will be able to do better for their future “citizen-customers” than many Indian cities are currently delivering, writes Amy Kazmin.
With limited political power and revenue-raising capacity, most Indian cities struggle to develop the basic urban infrastructure – such as power, water and roads – and provide services such as rubbish collection, to meet the needs of their burgeoning populations.
Lavasa says it will be able to supply high-quality, reliable infrastructure, and services through mandatory user fees to those living in Lavasa-built dwellings.
Ajit Gulabchand, the chairman of the Lavasa board, says he would eventually like to see a genuinely empowered local self-government that can take decisions on behalf of the city, while the company provides services on a contractual basis.
Initially, the city will remain under the local panchayat – an elected government unit akin to a village council, typically used in rural areas. However, panchayats have no revenue-raising ability and depend on state handouts for small-scale community improvement products.
While those buying into Lavasa properties are required to sign detailed covenants, the company will certainly not be
all-powerful. In the centre of the project, some local villagers have refused to sell their land, and are expanding their homes and businesses, profiting handsomely from the sudden building boom in the area.
But Mr Gulabchand, and Lavasa’s other backers – including Avantha Group and Venkateshwara Hatcheries, the Indian poultry group that recently bought Blackburn Rovers, the English Premier League football club – still face tremendous hurdles.
In November, Jairam Ramesh, environment minister, halted Lavasa’s construction and ordered that the project be razed, saying it had not obtained permission from New Delhi. Lavasa’s backers went to the Mumbai High Court to challenge the order, accusing him of acting in bad faith.
Since then, Mr Ramesh’s ministry – after a court-ordered inspection – has softened its stance, saying Lavasa can resume work on the first phase at once while an environmental assessment is carried out, and plans made to repair environmental damage.
However, when Lavasa sought to withdraw its lawsuit to pave the way for a settlement last week, the court ordered the status quo be maintained until the environment ministry review was completed. That could take months.
Lavasa – with debts of about Rs17bn ($381m) – now faces losses of about Rs50m a day, with no idea of when things will get back on track. A planned $440m stock market listing has been postponed indefinitely.
“Everybody expected the environmental issue to be resolved within a few months, but the road is not yet clear,” said Shailesh Kanani, an analyst at Angel Broking.
When construction resumes, the company faces a bigger question: can a privately developed city – built out of nowhere – appeal to diverse groups of people? Mr Gulabchand is confident it can. The master plan includes housing, office space, schools and a golf course designed by Nick Faldo. All this, in an idyllic hilly setting around a waterfront, he believes will prove a magnet for companies and skilled workers.
“People will migrate and where do you migrate to? You migrate to where there is a good lifestyle and education,” he said. “Businesses also come there, when you have skilled people.”
Certainly early bookings – before the environment ministry’s intervention – were brisk, with the first 1,750 flats, villas and plots almost sold out. Yet Mr Gulabchand insists Lavasa will not merely be an exclusive gated community. Low-cost housing is an integral part of the city plan. “If you are creating a city, it has to be across the socio-economic spectrum, without which the city cannot become vibrant, without which it cannot become an economy,” he says.
Cities built from scratch are not unprecedented in modern India. Jamshedpur, with more than 1.1 m residents, was developed in the early 20th century around the Tata Steel plant. Bhilai, with more than 750,000 people, grew around a Steel Authority of India plant.
Lavasa faces a long road to restore consumer confidence. “The company is going to have to do a lot of hard work,” says Mr Kanani. “People who want to invest will think twice.”
However, the irrepressible Mr Gulabchand is confident Lavasa’s appeal is undiminished. “We are now a household name in this country. Once we are through with this, we will have a better position to sell than we had before.”
Japan Magnitude-7.1 Aftershock Leaves Two Dead, Millions Without Power
Japan’s biggest aftershock since the day of the March 11 earthquake left two dead and millions without power in the areas hit hardest by last month’s tsunami.
The magnitude-7.1 temblor struck at 11:32 p.m. local time yesterday near the epicenter of last month’s quake, the U.S. Geological Survey reported on its website. About 1.9 million households, mostly in Miyagi and Iwate prefectures, remain without electricity as of 1 p.m. today, said Tohoku Electric Power Co., the main supplier to northern Japan.
“Magnitude-7 level aftershocks may continue to occur even as the frequency of aftershocks will likely fall,” said Yoshihiro Hiramatsu, an associate professor specializing in seismology at Kanazawa University. “Aftershocks will continue for a year or so.”
The aftershock hindered efforts by Tokyo Electric Power Co. to prevent hydrogen explosions at its Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant 220 kilometers (137 miles) north of Tokyo. After an evacuation of 15 workers, engineers returned to the plant to pump nitrogen into the No. 1 reactor.
No unusual conditions were observed at the Fukushima Dai- Ichi nuclear station, according to statements by Tokyo Electric and Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. There have been no indications of changes in radiation levels or damage at the plant, Tokyo Electric spokesman Takashi Kurita said today.
Shares Rise
Shares of Tepco, as the company is called, rose 24 percent to 420 yen at the 3 p.m. Tokyo close, its fourth gain in 20 days. The stock has slumped more than 80 percent since the quake on March 11.
“Indications of new leakage or a change in radiation levels will be the only way they’ll tell if there’s further damage,” Murray Jennix, a nuclear engineer who specialized in radioactive containment leaks and teaches at San Diego State University, said in a telephone interview. “You’ve got cracks that could have been made bigger.”
Tokyo Electric injected 800 cubic meters of nitrogen into the No. 1 reactor by 7 a.m. Japan time today, Kurita told reporters at a briefing. The process of feeding nitrogen, the most prevalent inert gas in the atmosphere, into the reactor may take six days, spokesman Yoshinori Mori said yesterday.
“They are manually injecting nitrogen through a very narrow pipe,” Tadashi Narabayashi, a professor of nuclear engineering at Hokkaido University in northern Japan, said by phone yesterday. “High radiation levels in the building are also making it difficult as workers have to keep rotating.”
Tepco is still using emergency pumps to cool the reactors and pools holding spent fuel, four weeks after the initial disaster. Three blasts damaged reactor buildings and hurled radiation into the air last month.
Tohoku Electric
Tohoku Electric said no radioactive water leaked from its Onagawa nuclear station even after being spilt from spent fuel pools and a pumping room. About 11 liters (3 gallons) of radioactive water spilt on the floor because of shaking from the quake, according to the company.
Cooling systems at Onagawa, which was safely shut down after the March 11 quake, were operating normally, he said. Two of three power lines remain disabled to the station, he said.
The company also restored mains power at its Higashidori nuclear plant and restarted three out of six units at thermal plants by 2 p.m. today, the company said.
Power Lost
Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd.’s power switching station at its Rokkasho nuclear fuel plant in northern Japan started receiving power this morning from an outside source, spokesman Yoshinori Ochiai said by telephone. Cooling, containing, and other major functions at the plant are working properly, he said.
East Japan Railway Co. (9020), the nation’s largest rail operator, suspended bullet train services on three of its five lines. The rail company halted the Tohoku, Yamagata and Akita lines, according to a release on its website.
There have been about 900 aftershocks since last month’s temblor, which left more than 27,600 dead or missing and caused an estimated 25 trillion yen ($294 billion) in damage.
Yesterday’s quake struck at a depth of about 49 kilometers, the U.S. Geological Survey reported on its website. A tsunami alert for a possible two-meter wave was canceled by Japan about two hours after the warning was issued. There was a magnitude- 7.9 aftershock on March 11 about half an hour after the temblor last month, according to the USGS.
Yesterday’s quake was “tremendously smaller than the main shock,” said Don Blakeman, a geophysicist in the U.S. National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colorado. “The main shock caused about 80 times more ground movement.”
The main airport near Sendai in northern will reopen on April 13 after being swamped by the tsunami, Transport Minister Akihiro Ohata told reporters in Tokyo today.
The magnitude-7.1 temblor struck at 11:32 p.m. local time yesterday near the epicenter of last month’s quake, the U.S. Geological Survey reported on its website. About 1.9 million households, mostly in Miyagi and Iwate prefectures, remain without electricity as of 1 p.m. today, said Tohoku Electric Power Co., the main supplier to northern Japan.
“Magnitude-7 level aftershocks may continue to occur even as the frequency of aftershocks will likely fall,” said Yoshihiro Hiramatsu, an associate professor specializing in seismology at Kanazawa University. “Aftershocks will continue for a year or so.”
The aftershock hindered efforts by Tokyo Electric Power Co. to prevent hydrogen explosions at its Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant 220 kilometers (137 miles) north of Tokyo. After an evacuation of 15 workers, engineers returned to the plant to pump nitrogen into the No. 1 reactor.
No unusual conditions were observed at the Fukushima Dai- Ichi nuclear station, according to statements by Tokyo Electric and Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. There have been no indications of changes in radiation levels or damage at the plant, Tokyo Electric spokesman Takashi Kurita said today.
Shares Rise
Shares of Tepco, as the company is called, rose 24 percent to 420 yen at the 3 p.m. Tokyo close, its fourth gain in 20 days. The stock has slumped more than 80 percent since the quake on March 11.
“Indications of new leakage or a change in radiation levels will be the only way they’ll tell if there’s further damage,” Murray Jennix, a nuclear engineer who specialized in radioactive containment leaks and teaches at San Diego State University, said in a telephone interview. “You’ve got cracks that could have been made bigger.”
Tokyo Electric injected 800 cubic meters of nitrogen into the No. 1 reactor by 7 a.m. Japan time today, Kurita told reporters at a briefing. The process of feeding nitrogen, the most prevalent inert gas in the atmosphere, into the reactor may take six days, spokesman Yoshinori Mori said yesterday.
“They are manually injecting nitrogen through a very narrow pipe,” Tadashi Narabayashi, a professor of nuclear engineering at Hokkaido University in northern Japan, said by phone yesterday. “High radiation levels in the building are also making it difficult as workers have to keep rotating.”
Tepco is still using emergency pumps to cool the reactors and pools holding spent fuel, four weeks after the initial disaster. Three blasts damaged reactor buildings and hurled radiation into the air last month.
Tohoku Electric
Tohoku Electric said no radioactive water leaked from its Onagawa nuclear station even after being spilt from spent fuel pools and a pumping room. About 11 liters (3 gallons) of radioactive water spilt on the floor because of shaking from the quake, according to the company.
Cooling systems at Onagawa, which was safely shut down after the March 11 quake, were operating normally, he said. Two of three power lines remain disabled to the station, he said.
The company also restored mains power at its Higashidori nuclear plant and restarted three out of six units at thermal plants by 2 p.m. today, the company said.
Power Lost
Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd.’s power switching station at its Rokkasho nuclear fuel plant in northern Japan started receiving power this morning from an outside source, spokesman Yoshinori Ochiai said by telephone. Cooling, containing, and other major functions at the plant are working properly, he said.
East Japan Railway Co. (9020), the nation’s largest rail operator, suspended bullet train services on three of its five lines. The rail company halted the Tohoku, Yamagata and Akita lines, according to a release on its website.
There have been about 900 aftershocks since last month’s temblor, which left more than 27,600 dead or missing and caused an estimated 25 trillion yen ($294 billion) in damage.
Yesterday’s quake struck at a depth of about 49 kilometers, the U.S. Geological Survey reported on its website. A tsunami alert for a possible two-meter wave was canceled by Japan about two hours after the warning was issued. There was a magnitude- 7.9 aftershock on March 11 about half an hour after the temblor last month, according to the USGS.
Yesterday’s quake was “tremendously smaller than the main shock,” said Don Blakeman, a geophysicist in the U.S. National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colorado. “The main shock caused about 80 times more ground movement.”
The main airport near Sendai in northern will reopen on April 13 after being swamped by the tsunami, Transport Minister Akihiro Ohata told reporters in Tokyo today.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Political Divide Poses Risks for Portugal in Bailout Talks
LISBON — Portugal’s request for an international bailout puts European leaders in the difficult position of drafting a package of austerity measures and financial aid that will survive the country’s caretaker government.
European officials are hoping to avoid a repeat of the volatility that occurred in Ireland, where a new Irish government is now seeking to reopen its aid deal and alter the terms.
Financial markets had anticipated Portugal’s need for assistance as its costs of financing had risen to unsustainable levels, and investors generally shrugged off the news on Thursday. The European Central Bank, meanwhile, raised its benchmark interest rate for the first time since 2008, suggesting it was unworried about further economic deterioration and contagion among Europe’s peripheral economies, including Spain.
The latest European call for assistance, which is the third after the rescues of Greece and Ireland last year, comes amid a leadership vacuum in Portugal. The Socialist prime minister who requested the bailout, José Sócrates, is leading a caretaker government until the general election on June 5. He resigned last month after center-right opposition lawmakers, led by the Social Democratic Party, rejected his austerity package.
Although opposition leaders agree on the need for a bailout, reaching consensus will not be easy. Tough austerity measures similar to those recently rejected will almost certainly be demanded by European lenders and, most likely, the International Monetary Fund. Portugal is already struggling with record unemployment and an economy that is expected to contract 1.3 percent this year, according to its central bank.
“From the point of view of being able to negotiate good terms for the Portuguese economy and display a firm commitment that might make the European Commission and the I.M.F. less demanding, this could not have happened at a worse time,” said Pedro C. Magalhães, a professor of politics at the University of Lisbon.
Lisbon’s request for aid also puts additional pressure on other ailing European economies, in particular Spain, which has undertaken austerity measures, a pension overhaul and a cleanup of its banking sector to stay out of danger. Any rescue request from Spain — with an economy larger than that of Greece, Ireland and Portugal combined — could put the European common currency project at risk.
On Thursday, Spain held a successful bond auction, raising 4.1 billion euros ($5.8 billion) at a yield that was little changed from three months ago. Separately, France sold 9.49 billion euros in bonds Thursday, drawing strong demand.
The Spanish sale “confirms that there are no signs of a contagion spreading to Spain at present,” said Chiara Cremonesi, a fixed-income strategist in London for UniCredit. “Spain continues to be perceived by investors as part of the safer periphery countries group.”
In Lisbon, politicians from both sides are expected to meet in the coming days to work out details of their bailout package request. One estimate by a European official put Portugal’s needs at approximately 75 billion euros, but some analysts have suggested that the amount could be as much as 110 billion euros.
Last year, Greece secured a rescue package worth 110 billion euros. Ireland received 85 billion euros.
The cabinet minister in the caretaker government, Pedro Silva Pereira, confirmed the formal rescue request, but would not comment on the amount of aid requested, saying that the next steps would be defined by the European Commission. Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, said the bank had “encouraged Portuguese authorities to ask for support.”
If the pattern of previous bailouts is repeated, it could take several weeks for a team of Brussels officials to discuss the conditions of a bailout with Lisbon, which will ultimately need the approval of European finance ministers.
The negotiations will occur in the midst of an election campaign that will probably be dominated by the question of who is to blame for Portugal’s predicament. The Social Democratic leader, Pedro Passos Coelho, supported the decision to seek outside help, but he and Mr. Sócrates are blaming each other for putting Portugal in a desperate situation.
“What the election campaign is now about is who should assume the responsibility for inviting international creditors into Portugal,” said Diogo Ortigão Ramos, a partner at the law firm Cuatrecasas, Gonçalves Pereira. Mr. Silva Pereira said Portugal’s caretaker government had asked President Aníbal Cavaco Silva to talk to the opposition parties. On Thursday, Mr. Cavaco Silva, in a Facebook message, called for “responsible cooperation” on the part of the opposition parties to help negotiate an acceptable deal.
António Nogueira Leite, an economic adviser to the Social Democratic Party and a professor at the Nova School of Economics and Business in Lisbon, said, “We have to learn from the mistakes in Greece and Ireland and be able to argue for a different treatment, but obviously our room to maneuver has been diminished because we have postponed our call for help for much longer than we should have.”
Portugal’s muddled political situation also raises “problems of legal uncertainty,” notably over whether a dissolved Parliament could approve a rescue agreement, Mr. Magalhães, the politics professor, said. A new government is unlikely to take office before the end of June, with Portugal’s most recent opinion polls suggesting that the June vote could result in a hung Parliament.
Short-term needs must also be resolved. Portugal faces a bond redemption of 4.3 billion euros on April 15.
Some officials suspect Portugal might need to seek bilateral loans from other countries to tide it over. Others say the announcement of the aid request on Wednesday might drive down the cost of short-term borrowing for Portugal and avert a problem.
Portugal is now embarking on what will be its third international bailout since returning to democracy in the 1970s, with previous interventions by the I.M.F. in 1978 and 1983. This time, however, “the sense of punishment will be much stronger because the expectations of citizens are much higher than three decades ago, when Portugal was not even in the E.U.,” said António Vitorino, who was in the Portuguese government that negotiated the 1983 rescue and a former European commissioner.
In 1983, Mr. Vitorino noted, Portugal was able to revive an export-led recovery by significantly devaluing its currency — no longer an option under euro membership. “The money injection that we received had a much stronger short-term effect on our economy than it could have this time,” he said.
Raphael Minder reported from Lisbon and Stephen Castle from Brussels. Jack Ewing contributed reporting from Frankfurt.
European officials are hoping to avoid a repeat of the volatility that occurred in Ireland, where a new Irish government is now seeking to reopen its aid deal and alter the terms.
Financial markets had anticipated Portugal’s need for assistance as its costs of financing had risen to unsustainable levels, and investors generally shrugged off the news on Thursday. The European Central Bank, meanwhile, raised its benchmark interest rate for the first time since 2008, suggesting it was unworried about further economic deterioration and contagion among Europe’s peripheral economies, including Spain.
The latest European call for assistance, which is the third after the rescues of Greece and Ireland last year, comes amid a leadership vacuum in Portugal. The Socialist prime minister who requested the bailout, José Sócrates, is leading a caretaker government until the general election on June 5. He resigned last month after center-right opposition lawmakers, led by the Social Democratic Party, rejected his austerity package.
Although opposition leaders agree on the need for a bailout, reaching consensus will not be easy. Tough austerity measures similar to those recently rejected will almost certainly be demanded by European lenders and, most likely, the International Monetary Fund. Portugal is already struggling with record unemployment and an economy that is expected to contract 1.3 percent this year, according to its central bank.
“From the point of view of being able to negotiate good terms for the Portuguese economy and display a firm commitment that might make the European Commission and the I.M.F. less demanding, this could not have happened at a worse time,” said Pedro C. Magalhães, a professor of politics at the University of Lisbon.
Lisbon’s request for aid also puts additional pressure on other ailing European economies, in particular Spain, which has undertaken austerity measures, a pension overhaul and a cleanup of its banking sector to stay out of danger. Any rescue request from Spain — with an economy larger than that of Greece, Ireland and Portugal combined — could put the European common currency project at risk.
On Thursday, Spain held a successful bond auction, raising 4.1 billion euros ($5.8 billion) at a yield that was little changed from three months ago. Separately, France sold 9.49 billion euros in bonds Thursday, drawing strong demand.
The Spanish sale “confirms that there are no signs of a contagion spreading to Spain at present,” said Chiara Cremonesi, a fixed-income strategist in London for UniCredit. “Spain continues to be perceived by investors as part of the safer periphery countries group.”
In Lisbon, politicians from both sides are expected to meet in the coming days to work out details of their bailout package request. One estimate by a European official put Portugal’s needs at approximately 75 billion euros, but some analysts have suggested that the amount could be as much as 110 billion euros.
Last year, Greece secured a rescue package worth 110 billion euros. Ireland received 85 billion euros.
The cabinet minister in the caretaker government, Pedro Silva Pereira, confirmed the formal rescue request, but would not comment on the amount of aid requested, saying that the next steps would be defined by the European Commission. Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, said the bank had “encouraged Portuguese authorities to ask for support.”
If the pattern of previous bailouts is repeated, it could take several weeks for a team of Brussels officials to discuss the conditions of a bailout with Lisbon, which will ultimately need the approval of European finance ministers.
The negotiations will occur in the midst of an election campaign that will probably be dominated by the question of who is to blame for Portugal’s predicament. The Social Democratic leader, Pedro Passos Coelho, supported the decision to seek outside help, but he and Mr. Sócrates are blaming each other for putting Portugal in a desperate situation.
“What the election campaign is now about is who should assume the responsibility for inviting international creditors into Portugal,” said Diogo Ortigão Ramos, a partner at the law firm Cuatrecasas, Gonçalves Pereira. Mr. Silva Pereira said Portugal’s caretaker government had asked President Aníbal Cavaco Silva to talk to the opposition parties. On Thursday, Mr. Cavaco Silva, in a Facebook message, called for “responsible cooperation” on the part of the opposition parties to help negotiate an acceptable deal.
António Nogueira Leite, an economic adviser to the Social Democratic Party and a professor at the Nova School of Economics and Business in Lisbon, said, “We have to learn from the mistakes in Greece and Ireland and be able to argue for a different treatment, but obviously our room to maneuver has been diminished because we have postponed our call for help for much longer than we should have.”
Portugal’s muddled political situation also raises “problems of legal uncertainty,” notably over whether a dissolved Parliament could approve a rescue agreement, Mr. Magalhães, the politics professor, said. A new government is unlikely to take office before the end of June, with Portugal’s most recent opinion polls suggesting that the June vote could result in a hung Parliament.
Short-term needs must also be resolved. Portugal faces a bond redemption of 4.3 billion euros on April 15.
Some officials suspect Portugal might need to seek bilateral loans from other countries to tide it over. Others say the announcement of the aid request on Wednesday might drive down the cost of short-term borrowing for Portugal and avert a problem.
Portugal is now embarking on what will be its third international bailout since returning to democracy in the 1970s, with previous interventions by the I.M.F. in 1978 and 1983. This time, however, “the sense of punishment will be much stronger because the expectations of citizens are much higher than three decades ago, when Portugal was not even in the E.U.,” said António Vitorino, who was in the Portuguese government that negotiated the 1983 rescue and a former European commissioner.
In 1983, Mr. Vitorino noted, Portugal was able to revive an export-led recovery by significantly devaluing its currency — no longer an option under euro membership. “The money injection that we received had a much stronger short-term effect on our economy than it could have this time,” he said.
Raphael Minder reported from Lisbon and Stephen Castle from Brussels. Jack Ewing contributed reporting from Frankfurt.
Asian Energy Producers Rise on Oil; Japan Manufacturers Drop on Aftershock
Asian stocks swung between gains and losses as energy producers advanced on higher oil prices and manufacturers in Japan fell after a magnitude 7.1 earthquake hit the country less than a month following the nation’s worst temblor on record.
Woodside Petroleum Ltd. (WPL), Australia’s No. 2 oil and gas producer rose 0.9 percent as oil topped $110 a barrel. Fast Retailing Co., operator of the Uniqlo chain of casual clothing, surged 5.4 percent in Tokyo after raising its full-year profit forecast. Nintendo Co., the maker of the Wii game consoles, declined 3.7 percent in Osaka. Nissan Motor Co., Japan’s third- largest carmaker, slipped 1.1 percent.
The MSCI Asia Pacific Index was little changed to 135.35 as of 10:10 a.m. in Tokyo, having lost as much as 0.3 percent earlier. About the same number of stocks advanced as fell in the index. The gauge rose for the past two weeks as Japanese companies resumed production after last month’s quake and Chinese firms posted profits that beat analyst estimates.
“The concern is further disruptions to the economic base of Japan,” said Martin Schulz, who manages $360 million of international equities as a senior portfolio manager at PNC Capital Advisors LLC in Cleveland. The March 11 quake “not only affected the local economy, but also the supply chain of some of the companies that are leaders in the technology industry. The concern is how it would further affect those companies.”
Japan’s Nikkei 225 (NKY) Stock Average was little changed, erasing losses of as much as 0.6 percent earlier. South Korea’s Kospi Index increased 0.3 percent and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 Index both added 0.4 percent.
March 11 Quake
The Nikkei 225 posted its biggest two-day plunge since the 1987 crash on March 14 and March 15 after the quake and tsunami on March 11 killed or left missing more than 27,000 people and prompted radiation leaks at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima nuclear power plant. The benchmark gauge has fallen 8.1 percent since March 10.
The 7.1-magnitude earthquake before midnight yesterday spared the Fukushima plant, although workers struggling to cool radioactive fuel were evacuated, Tokyo Electric said. The aftershock was the second-strongest since the record quake. No unusual conditions were observed at the plant afterward, the utility and Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said in statements.
“Even though it appears there wasn’t that much damage from last night’s aftershock, it’ll lead to investors holding back,” said Juichi Wako, a senior strategist at Tokyo-based Nomura Holdings Inc. “Exporters are likely to be sold as there seems to be a pause in the weakening yen.”
Tokyo Electric gained 2.7 percent, paring its plunge this year to 82 percent.
Budget Dispute
Futures on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index gained 0.1 percent today. The gauge lost 0.2 percent in New York yesterday and the Dow Jones Industrial Average retreated from an almost three-year high as a dispute over the federal budget threatened to shut down the American government.
The MSCI Asia Pacific Index lost 1.7 percent this year through yesterday, compared with gains of 6 percent by the S&P 500 and 1.8 percent by the Stoxx Europe 600 Index. Stocks in the Asian benchmark are valued at 13.2 times estimated earnings on average, compared with 13.7 times for the S&P 500 and 11.3 times for the Stoxx 600.
Woodside Petroleum Ltd. (WPL), Australia’s No. 2 oil and gas producer rose 0.9 percent as oil topped $110 a barrel. Fast Retailing Co., operator of the Uniqlo chain of casual clothing, surged 5.4 percent in Tokyo after raising its full-year profit forecast. Nintendo Co., the maker of the Wii game consoles, declined 3.7 percent in Osaka. Nissan Motor Co., Japan’s third- largest carmaker, slipped 1.1 percent.
The MSCI Asia Pacific Index was little changed to 135.35 as of 10:10 a.m. in Tokyo, having lost as much as 0.3 percent earlier. About the same number of stocks advanced as fell in the index. The gauge rose for the past two weeks as Japanese companies resumed production after last month’s quake and Chinese firms posted profits that beat analyst estimates.
“The concern is further disruptions to the economic base of Japan,” said Martin Schulz, who manages $360 million of international equities as a senior portfolio manager at PNC Capital Advisors LLC in Cleveland. The March 11 quake “not only affected the local economy, but also the supply chain of some of the companies that are leaders in the technology industry. The concern is how it would further affect those companies.”
Japan’s Nikkei 225 (NKY) Stock Average was little changed, erasing losses of as much as 0.6 percent earlier. South Korea’s Kospi Index increased 0.3 percent and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 Index both added 0.4 percent.
March 11 Quake
The Nikkei 225 posted its biggest two-day plunge since the 1987 crash on March 14 and March 15 after the quake and tsunami on March 11 killed or left missing more than 27,000 people and prompted radiation leaks at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima nuclear power plant. The benchmark gauge has fallen 8.1 percent since March 10.
The 7.1-magnitude earthquake before midnight yesterday spared the Fukushima plant, although workers struggling to cool radioactive fuel were evacuated, Tokyo Electric said. The aftershock was the second-strongest since the record quake. No unusual conditions were observed at the plant afterward, the utility and Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said in statements.
“Even though it appears there wasn’t that much damage from last night’s aftershock, it’ll lead to investors holding back,” said Juichi Wako, a senior strategist at Tokyo-based Nomura Holdings Inc. “Exporters are likely to be sold as there seems to be a pause in the weakening yen.”
Tokyo Electric gained 2.7 percent, paring its plunge this year to 82 percent.
Budget Dispute
Futures on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index gained 0.1 percent today. The gauge lost 0.2 percent in New York yesterday and the Dow Jones Industrial Average retreated from an almost three-year high as a dispute over the federal budget threatened to shut down the American government.
The MSCI Asia Pacific Index lost 1.7 percent this year through yesterday, compared with gains of 6 percent by the S&P 500 and 1.8 percent by the Stoxx Europe 600 Index. Stocks in the Asian benchmark are valued at 13.2 times estimated earnings on average, compared with 13.7 times for the S&P 500 and 11.3 times for the Stoxx 600.
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