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Crude hits US$66 a barrel — new record
New York: Oil prices rose more than a dollar to hit $66 for the first time on the New York Mercantile Exchange, another record yesterday, driven by Iran's stand-off with the west over its nuclear plans and by more refinery trouble in the United States.

Prices spiked also after a warning from the International Energy Agency (IEA) that crude output from non-Opec countries such as Russia and Norway had been disappointing.

The price of a barrel of US light crude rose for the ninth consecutive trading day in the past 11. In London, Brent crude surged $1.55 to $65.66.

Oil prices have now risen almost 10% this month and nearly 120% since spring last year, driven by soaring demand from the United States and China.
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World's largest ever communications satellite, Thaicom-4, launched
Kourou, French Guiana: Reuters have said that a European Ariane-5 rocket has launched the world's largest communications satellite on Thursday, placing the $400 million iPSTAR in orbit for Thailand's Shin Satellite.

The rocket blasted off at 5.20 a.m. (0820 GMT) from the European Space Agency (ESA) launch centre in Kourou, French Guiana, on the equatorial northeast coast of South America.

Twenty-eight minutes later, space officials said the iPSTAR (Thaicom-4) communications satellite belonging to Bangkok-based Shin Satellite PCL had successfully separated into a preliminary orbit.

It would take another 10 days of tests before it started commercial use.

Shin Sat, founded by Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, had twice been forced to delay the launch due to technical problems. It already operates three broadcast satellites covering Asia, Australia, Africa and Europe.

Billed by France's Arianespace rocket launch company as the largest communications satellite ever launched, the iPSTAR weighed in at 6.5 metric tonnes (14,500 lb), breaking an earlier record by nearly 0.5 tonnes.

The satellite has a capacity of 45 gigabytes per second (Gbps), 20 times more than Shin Satellite's three previous satellites combined, the company said.

The new addition, built in Palo Alto, California, by Space Systems/Loral , is designed to provide broadband services throughout southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

Shin Sat Chairman Dumrong Kasemset said he expected iPSTAR to break even within the first year after it started commercial operations in September.

The company said it had signed contracts to sell about 10 percent of the iPSTAR capacity to clients in Vietnam, Myanmar, Australia and New Zealand. It expects Chinese firms to take up about 25 percent of iPSTAR's capacity and Indian companies 15 percent.

Shin Sat is 41 percent-owned by Shin Corp, the flagship of the telecommunications group founded by Thaksin.
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Chevron takes over Unocal
Four months, and an extra $1 billion, later Chevron has finally acquired Unocal, with Unocal Corp. shareholders voting to sell the El Segundo, Calif.-based company to Chevron Corp. for $18 billion.

With operations spanning from the Gulf of Mexico to the Caspian Sea, Unocal was a prized asset for national and international oil companies. After Chevron's initial expression of interest a higher bid from CNOOC Ltd., a subsidiary of government-controlled China National Offshore Oil Co., turned the Unocal acquisition into a cause celebre with US politicians jumping into the act and attempting to whip up a furor over the Chinese bid. CNOOC finally dropped its bid Aug. 2., leaving Chevron to swallow Unocal.

About 60 percent of Unocal's production is natural gas, not oil. Much of that gas is locked in to long-term price contracts in Asia. O'Reilly is excited about that region's consuming potential because the greatest economic growth in the next few decades is supposed to come from Asian countries from China to India.
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