
Exxon restarts purchases of Mars crude after brief pause over zinc issues, sources say
The zinc contamination in the Mars crude oil stream had pushed Exxon to borrow up to 1 million barrels of crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for its Baton Rouge refinery in Louisiana.
The start-up of an offshore well caused the zinc contamination in Mars crude, Chevron (CVX.N), opens new tab said last week.
Chevron was actively working to resolve the issue, the company said on Tuesday.
Exxon and Chevron did not immediately reply to requests for comment on Wednesday.
The crude grade was trading at a 30-cent discount to U.S. crude at the Cushing, Oklahoma, hub, due to the persistent quality issue. That compared with a $1 premium at the end of June.
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Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Tiny Louisiana town sees housing prices skyrocket
Prices for certain homes in a tiny part of northern Louisiana have more than doubled thanks to construction beginning on a massive Meta data center, a project that is set to create thousands of jobs. The massive facility, comparable in size to 70 football fields, will sit on more than 2200 acres of what used to be farmland near Holly Ridge in Richland Parish. Meta and its team of general contractors said the herculean undertaking will require 5,000 construction workers. Even with all that manpower, the data center isn't expected to be up and running until 2030. Once operational, Meta believes about 500 employees will be needed to maintain it. Ever since the four-million-square-foot center was announced in December 2024, the value of homes near the construction site have increased by record amounts. A 5,000 square-foot mansion on an 816-acre lot 'just 20 minutes' from the data center is on the market for $16.3 million. In November 2024, the listed price was $7.5 million, less than half of what it is eight months later. This same phenomenon has been observed with more modest homes in the area, such as a $775,000 property for sale in Oak Ridge. That home, also about 20 minutes from the data center, was going for just $463,000 in December. Data centers contain hundreds or even thousands of servers that power basic functions of the internet, which make them crucial facets of American infrastructure. In the case of Meta's 28 data centers across the globe, they have server space to process and store the billions of messages, posts and images circulated on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp every single second of the day. In an Instagram video , Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the Louisiana data center will help make its AI model get smarter, faster and more useful. All this hype around Meta's newest development has supercharged the Richland real estate market, an area that still has high rates of poverty. Realtor Heather Stephenson of Brown Realty told The Shreveport-Bossier City Advocate that her phone is ringing off the hook. She said land within about a 10-mile radius of the data center is getting the most attention. 'We're getting more and more calls and more and more interest. You know, some of those that kind of sat on the market, have been on the market for a while, that are now priced good because they're $15,000 when, you know, comps are higher,' Stephenson said. Lee Brown, the Richland Parish Tax Assessor, mentioned a piece of property along Interstate 20 that is listed for $430,000 per acre, double what is was before the Meta announcement. Brown said development around the data center is booming in anticipation of the much larger foot traffic the area will experience over the coming years. 'Delhi has got a truck stop travel center, for lack of a better word coming, Holly Ridge has one. There are three hotels, and I know of six, off the top of my head, different restaurants,' he told the Advocate.


Daily Mail
17 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Tiny Louisiana town sees housing prices skyrocket because of Mark Zuckerberg
Prices for certain homes in a tiny part of northern Louisiana have more than doubled thanks to construction beginning on a massive Meta data center, a project that is set to create thousands of jobs. The massive facility, comparable in size to 70 football fields, will sit on more than 2200 acres of what used to be farmland near Holly Ridge in Richland Parish. Meta and its team of general contractors said the herculean undertaking will require 5,000 construction workers. Even with all that manpower, the data center isn't expected to be up and running until 2030. Once operational, Meta believes about 500 employees will be needed to maintain it. Ever since the four-million-square-foot center was announced in December 2024, the value of homes near the construction site have increased by record amounts. A 5,000 square-foot mansion on an 816-acre lot 'just 20 minutes' from the data center is on the market for $16.3 million. In November 2024, the listed price was $7.5 million, less than half of what it is eight months later. This same phenomenon has been observed with more modest homes in the area, such as a $775,000 property for sale in Oak Ridge. That home, also about 20 minutes from the data center, was going for just $463,000 in December. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the Louisiana data center will be key in training current and future AI models Data centers contain hundreds or even thousands of servers that power basic functions of the internet, which make them crucial facets of American infrastructure. In the case of Meta's 28 data centers across the globe, they have server space to process and store the billions of messages, posts and images circulated on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp every single second of the day. In an Instagram video, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the Louisiana data center will help make its AI model get smarter, faster and more useful. All this hype around Meta's newest development has supercharged the Richland real estate market, an area that still has high rates of poverty. Realtor Heather Stephenson of Brown Realty told The Shreveport-Bossier City Advocate that her phone is ringing off the hook. She said land within about a 10-mile radius of the data center is getting the most attention. 'We're getting more and more calls and more and more interest. You know, some of those that kind of sat on the market, have been on the market for a while, that are now priced good because they're $15,000 when, you know, comps are higher,' Stephenson said. Lee Brown, the Richland Parish Tax Assessor, mentioned a piece of property along Interstate 20 that is listed for $430,000 per acre, double what is was before the Meta announcement. Lee Brown, the Richland Parish Tax Assessor (pictured), mentioned a piece of property along Interstate 20 that is listed for $430,000 per acre, double what is was before the Meta announcement Brown said development around the data center is booming in anticipation of the much larger foot traffic the area will experience over the coming years. 'Delhi has got a truck stop travel center, for lack of a better word coming, Holly Ridge has one. There are three hotels, and I know of six, off the top of my head, different restaurants,' he told the Advocate. Finding a good deal on any land anywhere in the parish is near impossible, said Jimmy Williams, an realtor with Keller Williams Parishwide Partners. However, if Meta's best laid plans come to fruition, interest in Richland could grow even more in the future. In mid-July, Zuckerberg said the data center in Richland will eventually need 5,000 megawatts of power when it expands even further. The initial plans suggest the center will need 2,600 megawatts, some of which will be provided by natural gas plants and a solar farm. Ultimately, Zuckerberg believes that the data center will rival the size of Manhattan someday.


Telegraph
a day ago
- Telegraph
Iraqi-British national sanctioned for ‘smuggling oil to fund Iran'
An Iraqi-British national has been sanctioned for allegedly smuggling oil to help fund the Iranian regime, US officials said. Salim Ahmed Said is accused of running a billion-dollar smuggling operation via a network of companies trading with Tehran. According to the US treasury, he forged documents and bribed officials in order to disguise the source of the oil, which was then sold to Western buyers via either Iraq or the United Arab Emirates, for at least five years. Some of the profits are alleged to have been sent to Iran to bankroll the activities of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, proscribed by the US as a terrorist group. Said's companies and vessels were allegedly used to blend Iranian and Iraqi oil – one of several 'obfuscation techniques' to launder the supplies so they could be sold on the legitimate market and allow Tehran to evade sanctions. He is also accused of spending millions of dollars bribing members of the Iraqi government in exchange for forged certificates stating the oil originated from Iraq. In addition to owning a UAE-based oil tanker company, with which he is said to have avoided a formal connection, Said allegedly owns two companies based in Britain: The Willett Hotel Limited and Robinbest Limited. 'As President Trump has made clear, Iran's behaviour has left it decimated. While it has had every opportunity to choose peace, its leaders have chosen extremism,' said Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary. '[We] will continue to target Tehran's revenue sources and intensify economic pressure to disrupt the regime's access to the financial resources that fuel its destabilising activities.' The treasury has also sanctioned several vessels said to have been used in the covert delivery of Iranian oil in a bid to intensify pressure on Iran's 'shadow fleet'.