China’s oil reserves outpace US stockpile by 600 million barrels
The United States on Friday said it would cut off the United Arab Emirates-based arm of Egypt’s Banque Misr from access to U.S. financial institutions, the Wall Street Journal’s Morning Risk Report newsletter reported Monday. The action was carried out under Operation Economic Outcast, the newsletter said.
The cutoff targets the bank’s UAE-based operations rather than its Egypt-based parent, the newsletter reported.
The newsletter also covered a settlement reached by Gabriel Perez, a White House teleprompter operator under investigation for placing bets using proprietary information. Under the terms reported by the WSJ, Perez will pay a $65,000 civil monetary penalty to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and give up more than $107,000 won in bets. He will also be suspended from trading on the Kalshi prediction market for three years.
Paramount CEO David Ellison hired attorney Beth Wilkinson after a July hearing in the company’s fight against a coalition of state attorneys general attempting to block its $81 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, according to the newsletter. Wilkinson has successfully defended the National Football League, pharmaceutical company Pfizer, and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh against sexual assault allegations during his confirmation hearings. She has won about 60 cases and lost four jury verdicts—two of which were set aside and one settled—and has never had a client pay a judgment, the newsletter reported.
China spent years and tens of billions of dollars amassing the world’s largest oil stockpile before the U.S. attacked Iran, the newsletter reported. With the conflict likely to continue for some time, the newsletter said, the reserves have given Beijing significant power over the global oil market, which the newsletter described as a “critical new defense” against the West. By some estimates, China’s reserves last year were nearly 600 million barrels bigger than those in the U.S. The stockpile allowed China to slash its oil imports when the war broke out, limiting global oil prices, according to the newsletter. The newsletter described the buildup as a “vindication” for Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who, according to the newsletter, has sought to buttress China against what Xi views as a hostile U.S.-led West.
Scientists monitoring data from satellites and ocean buoys declared the onset of El Niño in June, the newsletter reported, and the phenomenon is shaping up to be among the strongest in living memory. Ocean temperatures are the highest on record, with this belch of Pacific heat adding to the warming driven by greenhouse-gas emissions. The El Niño is already showing up in the cost of passing through the Panama Canal and in Chilean copper output, and might influence everything from Asia’s rice crop to the powder at Colorado ski resorts, according to the newsletter.
An agreement announced Friday evening would transform the U.S. government from a broker of American oil investments in Venezuela to an investor itself, according to the newsletter. Schreiner Parker, a partner at consulting firm Rystad Energy, told the WSJ: “If this deal can survive subsequent Venezuelan governments, then Trump will have secured strategic oil reserves for the U.S. that go beyond the shale revolution.”
The newsletter also reported that Google parent Alphabet is settling a class-action lawsuit in the U.K. over allegations the company charged excessive fees to app developers.