1 China growth slows to 6.9% in
Q3 (Martin Farrer in The Guardian) China’s economic
growth slowed in the latest quarter to a six-year low of 6.9%, despite repeated
interest rate cuts and other stimulus measures. The figure released on Monday
compared with a year-on-year expansion of 7% in the previous quarter. Although
it was slightly better than economists expected, the rate was the slowest since
the 6.2% recorded in the first quarter of 2009 during the global recession.
The
GDP figures were part of a swath of data giving another snapshot of the world’s
second biggest economy, which has seen stuttering growth in recent months after
years of rapid expansion. It was also the first official confirmation of
investors’ fears about economic growth since a Chinese stock market slump
coupled with a surprise currency devaluation in July and August.
The output of China’s huge manufacturing sector cooled
more than expected to 5.7% in September, disappointing analysts who expected it
to rise 6% on an annual basis after a rise of 6.1%the prior month. Fixed-asset
investment growth eased to 10.3% year-on-year in the January-September period,
also missing market expectations. But retail sales rose by a
better-than-forecast 10.9%.
The
communist government has cut interest rates five times since last November in
an effort to shore up growth, measures which have helped to ease investor fears
that a downturn could trigger a worldwide slump. Louis Kuijs of Oxford
Economics said: “Continued downward pressures from real estate and exports
caused GDP growth to drop. But robust consumption and infrastructure prevented
a sharper slowdown.”
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/oct/19/chinese-economic-growth-slows-to-69-in-third-quarter
2 US rig count declines to 787 (San Francisco
Chronicle) Oilfield services company Baker Hughes
Inc. says the number of rigs exploring for oil and natural gas in the US this
week declined by eight to 787.
Houston's Baker
Hughes said that 595 rigs were seeking oil and 192 explored for natural gas. A
year ago, with oil prices about double the prices now, 1,918 rigs were active. Among
major oil- and gas-producing states, New Mexico lost five rigs, Oklahoma and
Texas each declined by two and Colorado and North Dakota each lost one.
Louisiana gained
three rigs, Wyoming gained two and California gained one. Alaska, Arkansas,
Kansas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Utah and West Virginia were unchanged. The US rig
count peaked at 4,530 in 1981 and bottomed at 488 in 1999.
3 Norway as a model for electric car
market (David Jolly in The New York Times) At a
time when the Volkswagen emissions
scandal has helped expose the drawbacks of Europe’s heavy reliance on diesel
cars, Norway has become a global model of how to get the public to embrace
electric vehicles, an experiment that is attracting researchers and policy
makers from around the world.
No other
country can yet match Norway’s proportion of all-electric cars. Though still
only 2 percent, the figure is double that of the runner-up, the Netherlands,
and is growing faster than anywhere else in the world. More than one-fifth of
new car sales in Norway are of electric vehicles.
Some
skeptics wonder whether the Norwegian program is cost-effective, or even an
efficient way to reduce air pollutants. And some elements of the program simply
may not be replicable in other countries. But for many, Norway is showing a
path forward. “If there’s anyone in the world who should be using electric
vehicles, it’s Norway,” said Julian Marshall, an associate professor of
environmental engineering at the University of Minnesota. “That’s a place with
clean energy.”
Making Norway’s project to shift away from fossil-fuel cars all
the more notable is the fact that the country is one of the world’s biggest
producers of oil and natural gas. But it is also blessed with an abundance
of fast rivers, allowing it to generate virtually all of its electricity from
hydropower. That makes Norway’s electricity cleaner and relatively cheap — a
further impetus for adopting e-cars. (A country where much of the electricity
is generated by coal-fired power plants would not see as many environmental
benefits from switching to electric vehicles.)
Proponents argue that
electric cars are essential for a transition to a low-carbon economy, as they
are vastly more efficient than
conventional autos, transferring about 60 percent of their energy to the
wheels. That compares with only about 20 percent for gasoline motors, which
waste most of their energy in the form of heat.
After more than a
decade of government support, official projections had held that there would be
50,000 e-cars on Norway’s roads by the end of 2017. That number, in fact, was
reached this past April, and by September had grown to 66,000 all-electric
cars, and an additional 8,000 gasoline-electric hybrids like the Toyota Prius.
Oslo now has only
about 700 public charging spots, although city officials aim to raise that to
above 1,000 before the end of the year. For most people, that means most of
their charging is done at home. City and regional
governments in Norway, meantime, have started to complain of a revenue
shortfall from all the free-riding e-cars that are not paying fees and tolls.
Some critics say Norway is not
getting its money’s worth from the program. Anders Skonhoft, an environmental
economist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, estimates that
the total value of subsidies works out to about $13,500 a year per electric car
over each vehicle’s life. But for all the money Norway has put into the
program, he said in an interview, the country has cut its carbon dioxide
emissions by no more than one-tenth of one percent.
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