Nigeria attacks boost oil price

2008-05-28T00:19:00.000-07:00

rude oil prices rose after reports of attacks on a pipeline in Nigeria stoked fresh supply concerns.

US light, sweet crude gained $1.27 cents to reach $133.46, while London Brent added $1.23 to $132.80.

It has been a volatile few sessions for US crude, which peaked at $135.09 on Thursday before falling back to $130.81 in a rush of profit-taking.

Oil prices have doubled in the past year, lifted by supply fears, a weak US dollar and speculators.

Supply fears have been exacerbated by claims from a Nigerian anti-government group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, said it had sabotaged a Royal Dutch Shell pipeline.

Shell said it was investigating the claims.

Nigeria is the world's eighth largest oil exporter and the largest in Africa, but since 2006 militants have targeted the country's oil infrastructure and oil production has been cut by a quarter.

Sensitive market

Oil's record-busting run has also been supported by the stagnating US economy and a weak US dollar that has seen investors sell the currency for oil, which they consider to be a more attractive investment.

"It's very much the US currency at play," said Mark Pervan, an analyst at the Australia & New Zealand Bank.

"The market is reassessing the dollar and has probably taken the view that the dollar hasn't bottomed out and may fall further," he added.

A raft of US economic data is due out later this week, which investors will closely watch for their implications on the world's largest economy.

Producers' cartel Opec has refused to increase production any further, convinced that speculators are to blame for runaway oil prices rather than supply problems.

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, billionaire investor George Soros agreed with this stance, calling the record price of oil a bubble that will only burst when the US and the UK are both in recession.

In the same newspaper, it was also reported that German politicians were poised to call for a ban on oil trading by speculators.

Germany and Poland Find That Trying to Get Along Has Its Benefits

2008-05-28T00:18:00.000-07:00

Janek Skarzynski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski of Poland, right, spoke with the German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, as they arrived for a public debate in Warsaw on April 7.

By NICHOLAS KULISH

Published: May 28, 2008

BERLIN — It’s springtime in Europe and something like love is in the air again for an unlikely pair. Germany and Poland have finally patched things up again.

Last month Germany’s foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, traveled to Poland for a series of meetings with Polish officials, including Prime Minister Donald Tusk. But before kicking off the official part of his schedule, Mr. Steinmeier and his wife went to the country home of his Polish counterpart, Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, joining Mr. Sikorski and his wife for a friendly Sunday dinner.

It was a simple gesture, but surprising after the past two years, when the relationship between the two countries and their leaders could be described as frosty at best and at worst downright antagonistic. Journalists and experts in both countries picked up on the private meal as further evidence of the thaw that began with the change of government in Poland last fall, and has continued ever since.

“After all the animosity and the venom and the bitterness that had characterized the relationship for such a long time, that Sikorski would invite Steinmeier to his home was a pretty big deal,” said Constanze Stelzenmüller, director of the German Marshall Fund’s Berlin office.

It would be easy to dismiss the warmer tone in relations as little more than an old-fashioned political honeymoon for a government elected in October on a promise of mending ties to its European neighbors. But close observers discount that idea.

“There is no honeymoon,” said Eugeniusz Smolar, director of the Center for International Relations, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization in Warsaw. “There was a choice made, based on the hard-nosed evaluation of the situation, that we need Germany on our side to face our problems.”

The two countries have woken up to the fact that they are stronger — politically and economically — working in concert than when they are at odds.

Poland and Germany have a difficult shared history, deeply intertwined through armed conflict and a regularly shifting border until the end of World War II. After the fall of Communism, the newly reunified Germany staunchly supported Poland’s entry into institutions like the European Union and NATO, but frictions remained.

The previous prime minister, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, and his twin brother, Lech, who is still the president of Poland, chose to emphasize and, their opponents say, exploit that history.

Two summers ago, dealings between the countries really began to scrape bottom.

There were spats over German naval maneuvers encroaching on Polish waters, and the Kaczynski brothers memorably lashed out after a nasty article in a German newspaper was rife with personal insults and innuendo about Jaroslaw Kaczynski living with his mother.

The brothers did not help matters by arguing for more voting heft in the European Union last June by bringing up how many more people Poland would have but for the country’s losses at German hands during World War II.

But the straining of the relationship was hardly the one-sided game that it may have appeared, and — especially from a Polish perspective — started far earlier. “The situation is much more complex,” said Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, twice Poland’s foreign minister, who now has the task of tending to the country’s relationship with Germany.

In an interview during a visit to Berlin this month, Mr. Bartoszewski said that recent troubles dated back to disagreements over Poland’s support for the United States in Iraq, and especially former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s cultivation of a special relationship with Russia. “Always at the moment when Berlin and St. Petersburg or Moscow get too close, we have been threatened,” said Mr. Bartoszewski.

The greatest achievement may have been the easing of tensions reached over one of the most inflammatory issues troubling the relationship, a proposed memorial to the Germans expelled from other countries after World War II.

More than 12 million Germans were forced out of their homes in Central and Eastern Europe after the war ended, but commemorating their suffering raises hackles in Poland, both for appearing to equate German suffering with that of the Polish and for potentially encouraging renewed claims for restitution.

In February, Germany’s culture minister, Bernd Neumann, went to Warsaw to meet with Polish officials and explain the latest German proposal for a permanent exhibition on the subject, under the guidance of the respected German Historical Museum rather than the lobbying group, the Federation of Expellees.

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Nigeria attacks boost oil price

Germany and Poland Find That Trying to Get Along Has Its Benefits