Tag: Monday

Spain sending military planes to retrieve treasure

MADRID (AP) ? Spain said Monday it will soon send hulking military transport planes to Florida to retrieve 17 tons of treasure that U.S. undersea explorers found but ultimately lost in American courts, a find experts have speculated could be the richest shipwreck treasure in history.

The Civil Guard said agents would leave within hours to take possession of the booty, worth an estimated euro380 million ($504 million), and two Spanish Hercules transport planes will bring it back. But it was not exactly clear when ? Monday or Tuesday ? the planes and the agents would leave Spain.

Last week, a federal judge ordered Tampa-based Odyssey Marine Exploration to give Spanish officials access to the silver coins and other artifacts beginning Tuesday.

Odyssey found them in a Spanish galleon, the Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes, in 2007 off Portugal. Spain argued successfully in court that it never relinquished ownership of the ship or its contents.

The Spanish Culture Ministry said Monday the coins are classified as national heritage and as such must stay inside the country and will be displayed in one or more Spanish museums. It ruled out the idea of the treasure being sold to ease Spain’s national debt.

Besides its debt woes, Spain is saddled with a nearly dormant economy and a 23 percent jobless rate.

Odyssey made an international splash in 2007 when it recovered the 594,000 coins and other artifacts from the Atlantic Ocean near the Straits of Gilbraltar. At the time, experts said the coins could be worth as much as $500 million to collectors, which would have made it the richest shipwreck treasure in history.

The company said in earnings statements that it has spent $2.6 million salvaging, transporting, storing and conserving the treasure.

Odyssey fought Spain’s claim to the treasure, arguing that the wreck was never positively identified as the Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes. And if it was that vessel, then the ship was on a commercial trade trip ? not a sovereign mission ? at the time it sank, meaning Spain would have no firm claim to the cargo, Odyssey argued. International treaties generally hold that warships sunk in battle are protected from treasure seekers.

The Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes was sunk by British warships in the Atlantic while sailing back from South America with more than 200 people on board.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/aa9398e6757a46fa93ed5dea7bd3729e/Article_2012-02-20-EU-Spain-Shipwreck-Treasure/id-2b0ced9b8a7740c1b308d078d1503064

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US oil prices fall below $97 (AP)

NEW YORK ? U.S. oil prices fell below $97 per barrel Monday as growing supplies offset concerns that President Barack Obama and other Western leaders will make it tougher for Iran to sell crude.

Crude supplies in the U.S. have increased for the past three weeks at a key delivery point in the Midwest, and they’re expected to keep growing this year as the petroleum industry ramps up drilling projects. Oil companies like Exxon Mobil Corp. say they want to increase North American oil production, which is more profitable than natural gas.

Abundant supplies helped keep prices in check Monday after Obama ordered new sanctions against Iran. With oil supplies not a problem in the U.S., the world’s largest oil consumer, it would take much more than proposed sanctions to spark a big reaction in the benchmark price, analysts said.

“You get bullets flying, you’ll see prices spike again,” independent analyst Stephen Schork said.

Until then, traders will focus on weak energy markets in the U.S. The government said last week that the country is using less petroleum than a year ago, and supplies have been growing in Cushing, Okla., where benchmark crude is delivered.

Crude supplies should keep growing until spring, Schork said, when a pipeline project moves more Midwest oil to the Gulf Coast, where it can be exported.

Prices fell less than 1 percent Monday, a relatively stable move on a day when the world’s third-largest exporter, Iran, was slapped with new international sanctions.

The sanctions are designed to make it more difficult for Iran to sell its oil through traditional banking routes. The West hopes this will force Iran to sell its oil at a discount, and reduce the oil revenue Iran uses to run its economy and fund its nuclear operations.

Analysts say any effect on supplies already has been priced into futures contracts.

For the past few months, the U.S. and other Western nations have been leaning on Iran to abandon its nuclear program. The fear is that Iran is building a nuclear weapon, though Iran denies that and says its efforts are strictly for peaceful purposes. European nations plan to stop buying Iranian oil by summer. Iran has threatened to block oil tanker shipments in the Persian Gulf if the embargo is implemented.

On Monday benchmark crude fell 93 cents to end at $96.91 per barrel in New York.

Meanwhile, the price of heating oil and Brent crude, which is used to price foreign varieties of oil, rose Monday as winter storms kept much of Europe in a deep freeze. Plunging temperatures across the continent boosted demand for petroleum-based fuels that are already in short supply.

Italian energy company ENI said Russian natural gas supplies to Italy are 20 percent lower than normal, and that supplies could keep falling. Russian energy company Gazprom has curtailed the amount of gas it sells to Europe as Russia deals with the cold spell.

Brent crude rose $1.35 to finish at $115.93 per barrel in London. Heating oil rose 6 cents to end at $3.17 per gallon and gasoline futures rose about a penny to finish at $2.93 per gallon. Natural gas futures rose 5 cents to finish at $2.55 per 1,000 cubic feet.

U.S. retail gasoline prices were unchanged from Sunday at a national average of $3.48 per gallon, according to AAA, Wright Express and Oil Price Information Service. A gallon of regular is about 11 cents higher than it was a month ago and 36 cents higher than the same time last year.

___

AP Energy Writer Jonathan Fahey contributed to this story from New York.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/energy/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120206/ap_on_bi_ge/oil_prices

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