BOJ GOVERNOR | Page 2 RENAULT CHIEF | Page 6 Kuroda is Ghosn vows chosen for ‘irreversible’ another term Nissan ties Saturday, February 17, 2018 Jumada II 1, 1439 AH WEAKEST 3 MONTHS SINCE APRIL 2017: Page 12 UK shoppers’ New GULF TIMES Year diets squeeze BUSINESS January retail sales Hackers stole $6mn in attack Oil edges up on equities’ on SWIFT system: Russian central bank Reuters rebound and weak dollar Magnitogorsk, Russia Rebound in global equities producers including Russia have been supports oil; pares gains as dollar restraining production by 1.8mn bar- Unknown hackers stole 339.5mn recovers from 3-year low; soaring rels per day (bpd) to prop up prices. roubles ($6mn) in an attack on US production keeps oil under The arrangement expires at the the SWIFT international payments pressure end of 2018. However, surging US messaging system in Russia last year, production is off setting those eff orts. the Russian central bank said yesterday. Reuters US crude output hit a record The disclosure, buried at the bottom of New York 10.27mn bpd last week, the Energy a central bank report on digital thefts at Information Administration said, Russian banks, is the latest in a string of making it a bigger producer than attempted and successful cyber heists il prices edged higher yester- Saudi Arabia. using fraudulent wire-transfer requests. day as a rebound in the global A little-noticed addition to the US The central bank said it had been sent Oequities market and a weak budget deal approved last week was information about “one successful dollar supported crude’s recovery also expected to further boost US attack on the work place of a SWIFT from last week’s slide. crude production by more than tri- system operator. “The volume of Brent crude was up 57 cents, or pling a tax credit to producers for in- unsanctioned operations as a result 0.8%, at $64.90 per barrel by 11:17am jecting carbon dioxide back into the of this attack amounted to 339.5mn EST (1617 GMT). The global bench- earth to increase output. roubles,” the bank said. mark was on track to end the week up The US rig count, an early indicator The central bank declined to provide more than 3% after a decline of more of future output, last week jumped to further details. than 8% last week. its highest in three years. US West Texas Intermediate Drillers added seven oil rigs in the The disclosure is the latest crude rose 29 cents to $61.65, having week to February 16, bringing the to- in a string of attempted and touched a one-week high of $61.89. tal count up to 798, the highest level successful cyber heists using WTI was set for a weekly gain of since April 2015, General Electric fraudulent wire-transfer about 4% after losing nearly 10% last Co’s Baker Hughes energy services requests week. “Equities and the dollar are fi rm said in its closely followed report propping things up for now,” said Jim yesterday. That was the fi rst time A spokeswoman for SWIFT, whose Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbush since June that drillers added rigs for messaging system is used to transfer & Associates. four consecutive weeks. trillions of dollars each day, said the World shares were set for their best An oil platform with its flame boom lit nine miles off the Long Beach, California (file). US West Texas Intermediate crude The US rig count, an early indica- company does not comment on specific week of gains in six years after two rose 29 cents to $61.65 yesterday, having touched a one-week high of $61.89. tor of future output, is much higher entities. consecutive weeks in the red, while than a year ago when 597 rigs were “When a case of potential fraud is the dollar hit its lowest since 2014. ground to trade 0.3% higher, limiting ties. Also supporting oil prices was a aimed to draft an agreement on a long- active as energy companies have reported to us, we off er our assistance The dollar slipped to a three-year gains in the oil market. statement from the UAE energy min- term alliance by the end of the year. continued to boost spending since to the aff ected user to help secure its low against a basket of currencies A weaker dollar often boosts oil and ister late on Thursday saying oil pro- The Organisation of the Petroleum mid-2016 when crude prices began environment,” said the spokeswoman, yesterday but later regained some other dollar-denominated commodi- ducers led by Saudi Arabia and Russia Exporting Countries and some other recovering from a two-year crash. Natasha de Teran. A central bank spokesman quoted Artem Sychev, deputy head of the regulator’s security department, as saying the hackers had withdrawn US spending bill expands carbon tax credit, boosting oil producers the money and this was “a common scheme, when they take control of a Reuters years to prolong output from traditional oil more than 2bn cubic feet of carbon dioxide from initial traditional drilling, according to the computer.” Housten wells, also is being tested by Oxy and others as each day into traditional oil wells, many of US Department of Energy. Brussels-based SWIFT said late last a way to speed more oil production from shale which came online more than 75 years ago. “This legislation helps to ensure domestic year digital heists were becoming wells. The method harnesses the carbon dioxide energy security,” Vicki Hollub, Oxy’s chief increasingly prominent as hackers A little-noticed addition to the US budget President Donald Trump last week signed the produced during the extraction of oil or from executive, said in a statement. use more sophisticated tools and deal approved last week will help Occidental spending plan into law. electric-power plants, and forces it back into EOR increases a producer’s costs, but because techniques to launch new attacks. Petroleum Corp and other oil producers by It boosts for 12 years an existing tax credit the fields. EOR wells pump consistently for decades, their In December, hackers tried to steal more than tripling a tax credit for injecting to $35 per metric tonne of carbon dioxide That helps drive more oil to the surface. value over time can exceed shale wells, whose 55mn roubles from Russian state bank carbon dioxide back into the earth to increase injected underground, up from $10 per ton. The technique, one of several enhanced oil production quickly tapers off . Globex using the SWIFT system, and crude output. “This will be an economic driver for our recovery (EOR) strategies that can prolong Oxy has not published anticipated financial digital thieves made off with $81mn The tax-credit expansion, although supported nation,” said North Dakota Senator Heidi the productive life of oilfields, underpins benefits from the tax credit’s expansion, and from Bangladesh Bank in February by environmentalists and energy producers, Heitkamp, a Democrat who had pushed for more than 5% of US oil output, or about Wall Street analysts who track the company 2016. had failed to move out of Congress during the the credit’s expansion with a bipartisan group 450,000 barrels per day, according to have not off ered any estimates. SWIFT has declined to disclose the 2016 presidential election. of senators. energy consultancy Advanced Resources But partly because of its carbon operations, number of attacks or identify any Its passage now likely will further boost already ”It will hopefully push a lot of innovative International. Oxy was able to raise its dividend during the oil victims, but details on some cases have surging US oil output in a year that production technologies across a range of industries, not EOR can help firms extract between 30% and price downturn from 2014 to 2016. become public, including attacks on is forecast to hit 11mn barrels per day. just in coal or oil.” 60% of all the oil held in a reservoir. Oxy this week swung to a fourth-quarter profit Taiwan’s Far Eastern International Bank The injection process, used for more than 40 Oxy, Denbury Resources Inc and others inject That’s far more than the 10% usually recovered that met Wall Street’s expectations. and Nepal’s NIC Asia Bank. Powell seeks to bury era of Fed ‘barons’ in tapping wider staff Bloomberg probably a good idea.” Powell, who was Powell’s requests, either by providing formation that might infl uence mon- ter Yellen became chair, some measure Washington sworn in as chairman on February 5, is information themselves or by quickly etary policy. They also had an interest of internal dissent was even encour- by many accounts a voracious reader rounding up the right economists to in managing resources, and requests aged. of economic research. At the same meet with the boss and answer his from policy makers that circumvented In early 2014 the Fed’s internal web- erome Powell is the fi rst Federal time he lacks the academic grounding questions. their offi ces could disrupt that. In his site added an “alternative view” page, Reserve chairman in more than a of PhD economists who have recently With these steps, Powell is taking day, Truman conceded, that sometimes where individual economists can air Jdecade to have any background in led the Fed, such as Ben Bernanke and aim at the last vestiges of the Fed’s an- made for confl ict. their disagreements with offi cial staff the private sector. That could explain Janet Yellen. Perhaps in recognition of cient régime, a system that once gave “You could argue there was tension forecasts and positions.