The shop around the corner raised the price of sandwiches by a quarter this week. Although the housing meltdown is raising concerns that it may take the whole American economy down with it, prices are going up and the reason is the cost of oil.

Oil giant Shell plans to increase investments in Russia despite losing control of the giant Sakhalin-2 project earlier this year.
“If we see other opportunities for setting up offshore joint ventures, then we will look at them without a doubt,” the company’s CEO, Jeroen van der Veer has said.

Well all the papers this morning are about the new cold war stand-off between American and Russia over its missile defence system, with Putin retaliating that he might position Russian nuclear weapons towards Europe.
Well nuclear missiles are not the only standoff Putin is involved in at the moment. He also cranked up the tension yesterday […]

Exxon’s CEO, Rex Tillerson, has said that rising costs to build pipelines to exploit Arctic natural gas from Alaska and Canada could soon be uneconomic.
Tillerson said that the cost estimate to build a gas line from Canada’s Mackenzie Delta gas fields had more than doubled to about $15 billion. “At those costs, it’s not viable […]

BP has secured a $900m (£455m) gas exploration deal with Libya, in a sign of Tripoli’s transformation from pariah to attractive investment destination for UK and US companies.
Tony Hayward, BP’s new chief executive, described the agreement as the group’s “single biggest exploration commitment”. The deal coincides with a visit to Tripoli by Tony Blair, the […]