Zimbabwe central banker stockpiles gold to bolster ZiG currency
The ZiG - short for Zimbabwe gold — is the nation’s sixth attempt at having a functioning local currency in the last 15 years.
A new report by Global Data on the top 2011 oil and gas investment destinations claims as much as 22% of the world’s undiscovered and technically recoverable oil and gas could lie within Arctic territories. Oil and mineral wealth coupled with the opening of new shipping routes are transforming cities and towns in the region.
Apart from the Arctic and Canada’s oil sands where new projects could up current production of 1.7m bpd by another 2.7m bpd, new discoveries in Ghana, Uganda and other parts of Africa which remain largely unexplored are also attracting billions in investment from foreign oil and gas companies.
Offshore Technology reports on the potential of Africa and Canada:
After the giant Jubilee field discovery in 2007, Ghana has emerged as a lucrative region for oil exploration and production.
Total discovered resources in Uganda have reached approximately a billion barrels. Production in the country is expected to reach in excess of 200,000bpd by 2014/15
The total production capacity of the existing oil sands projects in Canada is approximately 1.7 million barrels per day (mbpd). The total production of the oil sands mining and in-situ projects under regulatory review is around 1.4mbpd and the total production of the oil sands mining and in-situ projects that have been announced is around 1.3mbpd.
U105 reports Tuesday the thawing Arctic is opening up new shipping routes along the Siberian coast and Canada’s Northwest passage:
Christian Bonfils, the managing director of Nordic Barents operator Nordic Bulk Carriers, claims it will save him $180,000 in fuel costs. New Arctic voyages are starting all the time. Russian oil company, Novatek is currently carrying a trial shipment of 60,000 tonnes of oil products to China via northern Siberia on the vessel, Perseverance.
Norilsk Nickel, the world’s largest nickel producer, has just broken new ground by carrying ore from the Arctic port of Dudinka to Rotterdam in Holland.
Image is of the Norwegian city of Tromso which lies 350 kilometres inside the Arctic circle.
