Nearly 20 years after Spaniards adopted the euro, there has been no convergence with Germany while Eastern European economies are edging closer. In the 1990s, the Czech Republic was emerging from communism and it was producing just two-thirds of the wealth that Spain was. But in three decades, it has managed to beat the Spanish economy in terms of GDP per capita at PPP (or gross domestic product per person at purchasing power parity. Source El Pais
Exxon Mobil erased almost every drop of oil-sands crude from its books in a sweeping revision of worldwide reserves to depths never before seen in the company’s modern history.
Exxon counted the equivalent of 15.2 billion barrels of reserves as of Dec. 31, down from 22.44 billion a year earlier, according to a regulatory filing on Wednesday. The company’s reserves of the dense, heavy crude extracted from Western Canada’s sandy bogs dropped by 98%. Source World OIl
German construction and engineering group Bilfinger has withdrawn from work related to the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, German tabloid Bild reported, citing letters it has obtained. Source World Pipelines
Spain’s public debt ended 2020 at 117.1% of gross domestic product as the coronavirus pandemic and the measures imposed to curb it lifted borrowing and led to a deep economic contraction, the Bank of Spain said on Wednesday. Source Reuters
