Page 18 - MEOG Week 19

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PolICy
19 dead as Iran warship hit
by ‘friendly fire’ in tense
Gulf
an Iranian warship was hit by a friendly
fire missile during naval exercises, killing 19 sailors, state media and the army said Monday, amid tensions with the US in Gulf waters.
The incident involving the Konarak vessel occurred on Sunday afternoon near Bandar-e Jask, off the southern coast of the Islamic republic, state television said on its website.
“The vessel was hit after moving a practice target to its destination and not creating enough distance between itself and the target,” said the channel.
The armed forces said in a statement that 19 crewmen were killed and 15 injured. It said the Konarak had been involved in an “accident” during the exercises, without elaborating.
The vessel had been towed ashore for “technical investigations,” it added, calling on people to “avoid speculation” until further information is released.
Tasnim news agency said in an English- language tweet that the Konarak was hit by the missile fired by another Iranian warship.
The vessel had been hit by “’friendly
fire’ after Moudge-class frigate ‘Jamaran’ accidentally shot (it) with a missile during live firing exercise in Jask area of Persian Gulf waters.”
The 15 injured were hospitalized in Sistan and Baluchistan, said Mohammad-Mehran aminifard, head of the province’s medical university.
Two of the sailors were in intensive care, he told the semi-official news agency ISNa. The Konarak is a logistical support vessel made in the Netherlands and purchased by Iran before
the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Weighing 447 tons and 47 meters (154 feet)
long, the Hendijan-class vessel is equipped with four cruise missiles, according to state television. It was not immediately clear how many crew members were on board the warship at the time of the accident.
Iran and its arch enemy the United States have traded barbs in the past year over a spate of incidents involving their forces in the sensitive Gulf waters. Their latest high- seas confrontation came on april 15, when the United States claimed Iranian boats had “harassed” its navy ships in the waterway.
US President Donald Trump then tweeted that he had ordered the US Navy to “shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea.”
Tensions have escalated since 2018 when Trump withdrew the United States from a multinational accord that froze Iran’s nuclear program and reimposed crippling sanctions on its economy.
Iran’s armed forces in January mistakenly shot down a Kiev-bound Boeing 737 passenger jet shortly after takeoff from Tehran, killing all 176 people aboard. The military admitted to the catastrophic error, saying it came as Iran’s air defences were on high alert after firing a barrage of missiles at US troops stationed in Iraq. Iran launched the missiles in retaliation for the United States’ killing of its top general qasem Soleimani in a drone strike days before that.
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ADNOC raises June OSP for Upper Zakum
abu Dhabi National Oil Co., the UaE’s biggest oil producer, on Sunday raised its June official
selling prices for its Upper Zakum grade and narrowed the discount for its flagship Murban grade against Platts Dubai.
register Now aDNOC said its June OSP for Murban will be a $4.45/b discount to Platts Dubai crude assessments while Upper Zakum will be increased to a premium of 50 cents/b from 10 cents/b in May. It was the second consecutive month that aDNOC set Murban at a discount to medium and sour Upper Zakum. Das Blend was kept at a 35 cents/b discount to Murban and Umm Lulu was held at parity to Murban. The Murban OSP was narrowed from a discount of $6.95/b in May. Traders were generally expecting a third consecutive month of cuts for Middle East official selling prices, according to the S&P Global Platts survey.
But one respondent said Upper Zakum could be raised by up to 15 cents/b while a Singapore crude trader said aDNOC grades might be hiked because of production cuts. Saudi aramco got the ball rolling Thursday with surprise price hikes for its June OSPs.
aDNOC is cutting volumes of Murban and Upper Zakum by 20% in June, compared with 15% in May, and is trimming output of Das and Umm Lulu by 5%, the same level of cuts in May, a source familiar with the matter told Platts last month.
The UaE, OPEC’s third-largest oil producer, has agreed to cut output from about 4.1 million b/d in april to around 2.5 million b/d in May and June. The reductions are part of OPEC+ cuts that will see 23 members trim output collectively by 9.7 million b/d during these two months.
The OPEC+ coalition will reduce the output cuts gradually through to april 2022 with global demand expected to pick up.
The bill comes due for Saudi Arabia’s oil price war
First came coronavirus, then the price war; now painful government austerity measures that could prove unpopular.
Some programmes tied to Saudi arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 plan to diversify the kingdom’s economy away from oil and create jobs for its youthful workforce fell victim to budget cuts announced on Monday.
Some wars cannot be won. Saudi arabia is learning that the hard way, as evidenced by the kingdom’s twin announcements on Monday.
The first involved austerity measures that shift the bulk of the burden of falling oil income squarely onto the shoulders of
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Week 19 13•May•2020