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With the cost of developing natural gas fields on the rise, Russia’s Prime Minister warns European consumers they must get used to higher fuel prices

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Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin says European consumers will be obliged to get used to surging natural elastic fluid prices. “The expenses necessary for developing fields are rising exactly,” the Russian government head told attendees at a meeting of gas-exporting nations in Moscow on Tuesday.

“This step that despite the tide problems in finances the era of cheap energy resources, of cheap gas, is of course coming to an end,” he added in his keynote speech. Russian energy giant Gazprom supplies on the point one-quarter of all the simple gas consumed by European Union member states via pipelines.

Russia has been in a standoff for months with Ukraine over owing energy bills and a planned hike in January of the price of gas. Gazprom—a monopoly controlled by the Kremlin—claims it is owed $2 billion and wants compensation from Ukraine by Jan. 1. Russia is minatory to cut off gas to its onetime Soviet satellite state, in the middle of hibernate—again.

The last time Gazprom cut off supplies to Ukraine, on New Year’session Day 2006, gas deliveries to Western Europe were also disrupted. Moscow officials warned on Monday it could fall without again. About 80 percent of Russian gas exports to Europe travel through pipes across Ukraine.

In 2005, Moscow had jacked up gas prices in Ukraine after the country voted in a pro-Western government for the period of the Orange Revolution in 2004. The move was widely seen as political. Until then, the geographical division had enjoyed conducive, post-Soviet prices compared to the rates paid in Western Europe.

Prices May Fall, Then Rise

This week, the most important gas-exporting nations have gathered in Moscow to further intensify cooperation. Russia, Iran and 12 other nations are members of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF). Gas importers fear that an effort is underway in Moscow to recast GECF into a gas cartel resembling to Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). The members have rejected such claims in the past, though, and observers say the structure of the gas industry would make it hard to be understood for gas exporters to instrument OPEC-like quotas.

On Tuesday, Putin spoke out against that which he described since the “politicization” of international energy relationships. “The interests of producers, consumers and transit nations can only be unified through clear and long-term relations based upon the foundations of a market economy,” Putin said. GECF, which has been a loose-knit organizing since its creation in 2001, is expected to pass a repaired charter upon the body Tuesday that would formalize its structures and establish a abiding secretariat based in St. Petersburg.

Despite Putin’s statements, energy experts in Germany anticipate that gas prices will drop in the near future. Holger Krawinkel of the Federal of German Consumer Organizations (VZVB) estimates that bastard gas prices for the average German consumer will fall in the next year by up to 25 percent. The drop in prices is connected to the latter and precipitous become feeble in oil prices, that has seen the require to be paid of a barrel of crude fall to about $43—from a high in July of over $147.

The price of natural aeriform fluid is pegged to that of oil, by a delay of about six months.

Krawinkel warned that the move smoothly in prices would be evanescent, offering consumers a moment to breath again in relation to memorandum high prices. In the longer term, he declared, aeriform fluid prices would rise again because of growing global energy demand.

dsl—with wire reports

Original text: http://rss.businessweek.com/~r/bw_rss/europeindex/~3/493821645/gb20081223_503103.htm

British Airways and Virgin Atlantic are dropping early 2009 prices to 20-year-lows in hope of tempting more passengers to travel abroad

By Nick Clark

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British Airways and Virgin Atlantic both announced big fare cuts in their “January sales” promotions yesterday, sending prices spiralling down to almost 20 year lows.

Airlines possibility of good to entice cash-strapped families considering wounding back on foreign trips next year as the household terms worsen, and trial the trend of already falling passenger numbers. The discounts were made possible through the fall in the price of oil, what one. is down to $40 a barrel after almost touching $150 a barrel earlier this year.

The fare battle apothegm BA, that announced its worldwide sale yesterday, change into the require to be paid of flights to superior 75 destinations providing customers book by January 27.

A return to New York betwixt January and March disposition cost £259, season a trip to Hong Kong and back will cost &confine in a pound;429 short journey. A spokesman for the airline said prices were always under review, but added that the cuts were part of its traditional sales.

Virgin also announced it had lowered fares, some of which now undercut its rival by just a few pounds. Virgin’s return be treated to Hong Kong is £425, while travellers can get to New York and back for £258.

A spokesman for Virgin before-mentioned: “If you take out the taxes and charges the fares are coming down to the levels of the 1980s. It’s partly the oil estimation and partly to stimulate itinerant numbers.”

The reductions come against a tough backdrop for the results. The Association of European Airlines reported that trade in November dropped 4.7 per cent on the previous year. “A negative configuration of this magnitude has not been seen since the Gulf War in early 2003, and is unprecedented for periods unaffected by external shocks,” it said.

Original text: http://rss.businessweek.com/~r/bw_rss/europeindex/~3/493821644/gb20081223_320084.htm

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NEW YORK — Starbucks told employees it may not exist able to match their contributions to 401(k) retirement accounts next year.

The gourmet coffee chain said that, to keep costs down, it will whip from matching contributions at a fixed traduce and will instead decide whether to match an employee’s contributions.

The Seattle company now matches between 25 percent and 150 percent of the primitive 4 percent of workers’ emolument. The percentage depends on how long an employee has worked at the company.

Starbucks said if it does force a marriage nearest year, it may be at a different percentage than in 2008.

“This highly challenging environment requires us to become even more disciplined with to what extent we manage costs athwart our entire organization,” Starbucks said. “This includes looking closely at the benefits programs we make available to our partners.”

The house has been attempting to divide costs and boost profits for months by closing nearly 600 underperforming stores in the U.S. and about 60 locations in Australia.

At an analyst conference earlier this month, Starbucks said it expects to redeem about $200 million to $210 million in costs in fiscal 2009 from initiatives even now under way. The company added it had identified another estimated $200 the great body of the people in savings that could come from wounding labor costs or streamlining distribution.

With the economy falling further into a recession, a number of big companies have said they will suspend their 401(k) matches in quest of employees. FedEx said last week it will get clear of its match beginning Feb. 1 for at least a year.

Motorola and Eastman Kodak require also both said they will temporarily suspend matches to employee-retirement plans.

Rules unfairly

imposed, judge says

NEW YORK — An administrative-law judge found Starbucks engaged in partial labor practices at several of its New York coffee shops, the gathering said Tuesday.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008554845_starbucks24.html?syndication=rss

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CellCyte Genetics, whose market value briefly put it among the district’session biggest biotech firms last year, has shut down — and hasn’t been good to pay opening on its Bothell headquarters.

“We presently act not have sufficient cash to national obligations our operations, and have curtailed essentially competently all activities,” the company said in a delayed quarterly report, filed Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

CellCyte said it had $5,734 in cash at the period of September, and for the duration of the third allot, it couldn’t pay the lease on its facility.

The company said it was talking through the landlord to renegotiate the lease and to fall in with subtenants to take over parts of the building. The landlord is holding on to a $44,000 guard deposit.

It’s been a hard fall for CellCyte. The fledgling stem-cell- research company, whose shares traded from hand to hand the counter and in the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, saw its value soar past $400 million last year on the model of a spamming campaign paid as antidote to by one of its main shareholders.

The shareholder, a Vancouver, B.C.-based stock promoter named G. Brent Pierce, was then under a 15-year ban by means of the B.C. Securities Commission.

CellCyte’s shares plummeted in January succeeding The Seattle Times published stories describing the stock-promotion efforts and inconsistencies in the résumé of CellCyte Chief Executive Gary Reys.

The company faces shareholder lawsuits and is under a formal scrutiny by the SEC. Last August, the company said it had fired some employees and stopped profitable salaries.

Its technology to put in order stem cells home in on damaged organs, which promoters hyped in colorful brochures, also turned out to be a disappointment.

The latest filing said that in July the company recorded a $569,000 loss on the licenses and patents it obtained from the Department of Veterans Affairs, that developed the technology.

As of Tuesday, CellCyte was worth about $9.5 million. From its inception in 2005, the company has forfeited $10 the public.

Ángel González: 206-515-5644 or agonzalez@seattletimes.com

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/biotech/2008554854_cellcyte24.html?syndication=rss