Topic Of The Week
DOES UKRAINE NEED OIL REFINERIES?
When inviting leading experts in the country to this year’s first round table, the analysts from the Psyche Center were afraid that the experts might answer in the negative. The way our state has disposed of the [oil refining] property created by several generations has been very wasteful. When mercilessly exploiting the once advanced domestic enterprises and extensive infrastructure left from Soviet times, their new owners cared little about the fact that the reserves of the national economy’s safety were not endless.
Scandals
SCANDAL OF THE WEEK: INTERA-UKRAINE LLC Recovers UAH 6 Million Through Courts
IT TOOK LESS THAN A YEAR
On December 6, 2011, courts put an end to the dispute of Itera-Ukraine LLC Trade and Energy Company and Ukrgazservis: The latter’s cassation was left unexamined.
Forecast
POLITICS ORIENTED
According to the economists of last century, the twenty-first century should have become the century of information, high technology and high speeds. One of the fundamental laws of the universe – the transition from quantity to quality – should have been realized. But the matrix of consciousness has failed, and the economy has started to work not on the basis of objective information and in accordance with forecast economic models, but on the basis of rumors, political statements, and psychoanalysis.
HONEY IS SWEET, BUT THE BEE STINGS
According to economic forecasts given by the Psyche Center on the basis of a regressive analytical model, the price of major petrol brands will change only slightly this week. The average retail prices of A-92 and A-95 petrol to DSTU 4063:2001 standards and that of diesel winter-type 0.2-(-25) to DSTU 3868-99 standards will be UAH 9.98, UAH 10.24 and UAH 9.70 per liter respectively. A liter of propane-butane will cost UAH 5.70.
Trade
PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTOR IN ACTION
The book by Nobel prize winners George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller «Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism» offers an exemplary comparison: «A person who claims that stock prices reflect information about future payoffs resembles a berserk weather forecaster in a town where temperatures are fairly stable. The forecaster predicts that on one day the temperature will be 150° F and on another day -100° F.» Apparently some local journalists have not read this book. Otherwise, dozens of forecasts of swift hikes in prices of petrol in Ukraine because of speculation over Iran would have not been published last week.
Anti-counterfeit Campaign
INFINITELY
Another criminal case related to the quality of oil products ended quietly in Crimea late last year. As part of the case, Ukrainian law enforcers were tried to hold Russian businessman Andrei Klimenko to account for allegedly trading in bad-quality fuel in Sevastopol.
Raw Materials
SHALE GAS SEES GREEN LIGHT
Last week it was announced that the Cabinet of Ministers had amended its last-year resolutions — Nos. 1297 and 1298 — regarding tenders to conclude production sharing agreements (PSAs) on the Oleske and Yuzovska shale gas fields. They have been rewritten to match the [tender] announcements by the State Geological Service.
You can read full articles in journal «Terminal: Oil Review» №7 (593) 20 Feb 2012
