SIA raises fuel surcharge by 15% on soaring jet fuel cost

business-times.asia1.com.sg :

As surcharges make flying more expensive, the sharp spike in the price of jet fuel is distorting the cost base of airlines worldwide. SIA spokesman Stephen Forshaw explained this after the airline raised its fuel surcharge again - the first increase this year [2008], after five last year [2007]. "Whereas four years ago, jet fuel made up about about a fifth of our cost base, today that's closer to two fifths," Mr Forshaw said.

The price of jet fuel is driven by several factors. First, the baseline price of crude oil has risen dramatically. Second, the difference between crude and the more refined jet kerosene - the so-called crack - has widened. A few years ago, it was just a few dollars a barrel of oil. Now the difference is between US$15 or US$20 a barrel. This is partly a result of growing demand for jet fuel, especially in Asia, and a lack of new refinery capacity in this part of the world.

SIA says the fuel surcharge covers only a part of the increase in the price of jet fuel, which has gone up almost 40% since the start of last year. The airline has hedged 50% of its volume requirements at an average of US$85-US$95 a barrel, against the current market price of almost US$120 a barrel. Mr Forshaw said, "The imposition of surcharges since 2004 has only collected about half the increased cost to the airline arising from this steep increase. The rest is absorbed into our cost base, and highlights the need for us to continue to drive our non-fuel costs down as much as we can to remain profitable and competitive."

- This article highlights an important point that I have been telling people about. Rising crude oil prices and the subsequent impact on petrol, diesel and jet fuel prices we all know about, but the increase in prices of these refined products have not kept pace with the increases in the crude oil price, thus squeezing the profit margins of the refineries. This is changing. The refiners are demanding and getting higher margins (aka the "crack spread" / "refinery spread"), and that means that there will be a surge in the prices of petrol, diesel, jet fuel and other refined products, increased costs to consumers, and subsequent ripple effects of price inflation throughout the economy.

(2008-03-28 18:56:46 SGT) [Energy] Permalink

Price of paper up by as much as 40%

channelnewsasia.com :

The price of paper around the world has gone up by as much as 40% over the past year. This has caused the price of recycled paper to increase by 100%. Raw pulp now costs almost US$1,000 per tonne. Industry players said the higher prices are due to higher inflation.

There is also a bigger demand for paper this year, because of the US Presidential Elections and Beijing Olympics. Many local printing companies have been affected by the price increase, so they are looking for alternatives to remain competitive. Since the price of imported waste paper is now US$275 per tonne, local waste paper companies have raised their buying price to attract more waste paper collectors.

- For once, the news media has got it right, if only perhaps inadvertently. That's right, higher prices are due to higher inflation. And inflation, going by the classic Austrian definition, is an increase in the money supply.

(2008-03-28 13:19:42 SGT) [Biz] Permalink

Singapore movie inflation : Golden Village to increase cinema ticket prices by 50 cents

channelnewsasia.com :

Starting on Thursday [27 Mar 2008], there will be a 50 cents increase for movie tickets at Golden Village cinemas. Golden Village Multiplex has announced that it will revise its ticket prices at its nine outlets. The organisation said the price increase is a result of the current market situation and rising costs. Other organisations like Cathay Cineplex and Eng Wah Organisation have no plans to increase ticket prices [yet?].

gv.com.sg :

Due to the onslaught of rising business costs, goods, services, labour, film rentals, the increase is inevitable. However, understanding that this change will affect our patrons, Golden Village has introduced a slew of offers to enable our patrons to stretch their dollar at the cinema. Ticket prices for standard tickets at all our nine multiplexes will be revised, however, Gold Class and Cinema Europa ticket prices as well as all ongoing movie promotional packages and preferential rates with banks, students and other promotional partners will remain unchanged.

- We have now reached the point of the $10 cinema movie ticket (see table above). Yet another manifestation of the wave of inflation that is sweeping the world. What can I say? Perhaps I could say, after the $10 resistance level has been breached, the next resistance levels are $15 and $20. Also, the day will come when cinema ticket prices go over $10, for all cinemas and across all time slots.

(2008-03-28 13:03:46 SGT) [Biz] Permalink

Western Antarctic ice chunk collapses

news.yahoo.com, euronews.net, news.nationalgeographic.com :

A chunk of Antarctic ice about seven times the size of Manhattan [or four times the size of Paris] suddenly collapsed, putting an even greater portion of glacial ice at risk, scientists said Tuesday [25 Mar 2008]. Satellite images show the runaway disintegration of a 160-square-mile [414 square km] chunk in western Antarctica, which started Feb. 28 [2008]. It was the edge of the Wilkins ice shelf and has been there for hundreds, maybe 1,500 years. This is the result of global warming, said British Antarctic Survey scientist David Vaughan.

Because scientists noticed satellite images within hours, they diverted satellite cameras and even flew an airplane over the ongoing collapse for rare pictures and video. The rest of the Wilkins ice shelf, which is about the size of Connecticut, is holding on by a narrow beam of thin ice. Scientists worry that it too may collapse. Vaughan had predicted the Wilkins shelf would collapse about 15 years from now. The part that recently gave way makes up about 4% of the overall shelf, but it's an important part that can trigger further collapse.

- It looks like climate change is going exponential, or "approaching a tipping point", in the fashionable news-speak of the day. It might or might not be the technological singularity that the Kurzweil and Vinge fans have been looking for, but multiple singularities, none of them good, in terms of runaway climate change, resource depletion crises, financial crises, hyperinflation and so on, beyond which point the world as we know it is no longer recognizable.

(2008-03-28 12:48:39 SGT) [Env] Permalink

"NRI Savings Account" spam ads on Google Adsense

This is a message for fellow bloggers and publishers who are using Google Adsense. Recently, I have seen some ads on my blog (see above for a sample) selling some "NRI Savings Account" with a purported link that goes to "www.abnamro.com/Bollywood". According to Wikipedia, NRI stands for "Non-Resident Indian".

At first I thought it was a bit of ad mis-targeting, which I dismissed as a simple glitch in Google's much-vaunted search and contextual-matching algorithms. But then when I saw these ads running for the fifth or sixth time, I knew something was up, so I went to do some investigating. Here's what I've found :

1. My initial thought was to copy the URL for analysis (must be careful there, since according to Google's TOS, a publisher is not allowed to click on his own ads). I got the following string : http://www.sirez.com/lms/44_ABNBW/clickcounter.asp [followed by some url-encoded characters and then followed by] http://216.198.222.137/ABNAMRO/BollywoodCd/savings_bollywood.asp.

2. You don't really need to be a former military computer security researcher (which, well, I was) to immediately grasp that there is something really fishy going on here. The first destination URL goes to some sort of "click counter" page which probably gathers some traffic statistics and then redirects to the second destination URL.

3. Dotted IP addresses (such as 216.198.222.137) with no hostnames ring some major alarm bells. This is one of the tell-tale signs of suspicious websites set up for spam or phishing purposes. I pasted it into my browser and here's what I got :

4. Would the real ABN Amro bank host a website at a dotted IP address with no hostname? I didn't think so. Hence, the next thing to do was a simple reverse DNS lookup :

Name: www.aiminghigher.com
Address: 216.198.222.137

5. Well, "aiminghigher.com" eh? It doesn't add up. It could be another website on the same shared host. I don't have time to go really deep on this one, so I try one final and very simple test. I paste the purported link, "www.abnamro.com/Bollywood", into my browser, I get a 404 page ("The page cannot be found"), and after a second or so, I get re-directed back to the main page of the real ABN Amro Bank.

This is really some kind of fraudulent and spam-ish advertising going on here. I do not wish my visitors to click on this kind of ads and get directed to these sites either, no matter what kind of CPC (Cost-Per-Click) it nets for me. So I go to the Competitive Ad Filter and add sirez.com to the list. If you are an Adsense publisher and you are reading this, I would suggest that you do the same.

(2008-03-28 00:34:21 SGT) [Tech] Permalink

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