“This is Venezuela — they’re very disorganized with these types of things,” said Alejandro Grisanti, the director of the Caracas-based research firm Ecoanalitica. “Every day, it’s harder for them to pay.” The government had another $237 million in interest payments come due Saturday, and the National Public Credit Office has yet to announce their payment. A delay in those payments would bring the total in arrears to $587 million. Source Bloomberg
It is less than two months since U.S. President Donald Trump travelled to Texas to declare that the U.S. energy industry, laid low by this year’s oil price crash, was back on its feet. “We’re OK now,” the president told the assembled crowd.
But bankruptcy numbers released this week tell a different story. Another 16 upstream U.S. oil and gas companies — producers and service providers — hit the wall in August, the same number as in July, according to law firm Haynes and Boone. Source Financial Post
The Bank of Italy said Italy’s public debt hit a new high of 2,560.5 billion euros in July, up 29.9 billion with respect to June. Source Ansa
Austria has said it still supports the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, despite growing reservations about the project in parts of Europe following the poisoning of Russian opposition figure Aleksei Navalny. Source Radio Free Europe
