NEW YORK: US gasoline prices continued to rise on Sunday amid fears of shortages, despite the restart of several key refineries on the US Gulf Coast that had been crippled by Hurricane Harvey.
The storm took down a quarter of US oil refining capacity and lifted average gasoline prices by more than 20 cents since Aug. 23.
On Sunday, average retail prices rose again, to $2.621 a gallon, with weekly increases hitting 18 percent in Georgia and 19 percent in South Carolina, according to motorists advocacy group AAA.
The increases came despite the resumption of operations at several refineries and pipelines. Over the weekend, ExxonMobil Corp. began restarting the country’s second-largest oil refinery, the 560,500 barrels per day (bpd) Baytown, Texas, unit, while Phillips 66 said it was working to resume operations at its 247,000 bpd Sweeny refinery and at its Beaumont oil and fuels terminal.
The restarts followed an announcement from Valero Energy Corp. on Friday that it was increasing production at its Corpus Christi, Texas-area refineries.
The hurricane battered Texas before weakening to a tropical storm and inundated the region with torrential rains and flooding.
Some pipelines also restarted over the weekend, assuaging worries over the ability of refineries to get the crude oil they need to operate. Magellan Midstream Partners said it had resumed operations on Friday on its BridgeTex and Longhorn crude oil pipelines, which transport around 675,000 bpd of West Texas crude to East Houston.
Still, the majority of Texas ports remained closed to large vessels, limiting discharge of imported crude, and the Colonial Pipeline, which hauls more than 3 million bpd of refined products including gasoline, diesel and jet fuel from the Gulf Coast to the populous US Northeast was also partially closed.
— Reuters
US gas prices still rising as energy industry starts to recover after Harvey
US gas prices still rising as energy industry starts to recover after Harvey
Emerging markets should depend less on external funding, says Nigeria finance minister
RIYADH: Developing economies must rely less on external financing as high global interest rates and geopolitical tensions continue to strain public finances, Nigeria’s finance minister told Al-Eqtisadiah.
Asked how Nigeria is responding to rising global interest rates and conflicts between major powers such as the US and China, Wale Edun said that current conditions require developing countries to rethink traditional financing models.
“I think what it means for countries like Nigeria, other African countries, and even other developing countries is that we have to rely less on others and more on our own resources, on our own devices,” he said on the sidelines of the AlUla Conference for Emerging Market Economies.
He added: “We have to trade more with each other, we have to cooperate and invest in each other.”
Edun emphasized the importance of mobilizing domestic resources, particularly savings, to support investment and long-term economic development.
According to Edun, rising debt servicing costs are placing an increasing burden on developing economies, limiting their ability to fund growth and social programs.
“In an environment where developing countries as a whole — what we are paying in debt service, what we are paying in terms of interest costs and repayments of our debt — is more than we are receiving in what we call overseas development assistance, and it is more than even investments by wealthy countries in our economies,” he said.
Edun added that countries in the Global South are increasingly recognizing the need for deeper regional integration.
His comments reflect growing concern among developing nations that elevated borrowing costs and global instability are reshaping development finance, accelerating a shift toward domestic resource mobilization and stronger economic ties among emerging markets.
