Latest news with #US65
Sydney Morning Herald
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
This is what ultrawealth looks like
In real life, the house is on West Crestwood Court in Deer Crest, a gated community adjacent to the Deer Valley ski resort, where celebrities such as Khloe Kardashian and Gwen Stefani have hit the slopes. Designed by architect Michael Upwall, it has seven bedrooms and 16 bathrooms, as well as a two-lane bowling alley, a full-size basketball court, an indoor rock-climbing wall, and a spa with a steam room and sauna. Outside, it features an infinity pool and a whirlpool bath, both built into a 465-square-metre heated patio. But it's more than just well-appointed. As Eskenazi pointed out, the house is 'not nestled into a community flanked by neighbours' but is 'set apart, elevated, with sweeping views that feel deliberately unobstructed'. That sense of 'space, privacy and silence', he said, provides 'its own kind of luxury'. This was a stark contrast to Armstrong's Succession and its protagonists, the Roy family, who own media conglomerate Waystar Royco. 'That kind of media-mogul wealth is about access and movement. It's flashy, public, very performative,' Eskenazi said. 'With Mountainhead, it was the opposite. Jesse wanted just one main house – huge, remote and a little unsettling.' 'It was more about isolation and privacy than prestige,' Eskenazi added. The remote home is the 'pinnacle of ultraluxury', in the words of Engel & Volkers, a real estate firm that recently listed the property for $US65 million. (It sold for a figure 'in the high-$US50 million range,' a representative for Engel & Volkers said.) Mountainhead wasn't conceived with this specific property in mind. Instead, the crew was briefed to search for something elevated and isolated, ideally set against snow and ice. What Armstrong wanted 'wasn't about a specific architectural style so much as a feeling', Eskenazi said. 'The house needed to be remote and imposing, yes, but also strangely intimate – a place that could hold both grandeur and silence. It had to feel like it had a history, even if we didn't spell it out on screen.' The search for the right setting started broad: the crew considered homes in Europe, while HBO urged it to consider locations in Canada, such as Whistler, British Columbia, because of the country's ample tax credits for visiting productions. An architectural profile in magazine Robb Report clued the crew into the Deer Valley property. 'The moment Jesse saw it, everything changed,' Eskenazi said. 'That was when the location locked in, and we knew: this is it.' Loading Stephen Carter, production designer on the film, and the crew added faux-stone veneers and cedar panelling to cover up some of the house's bare walls, and he was responsible for details such as art and furniture, including a $US300 toaster and 'a lesser-known Jeff Koons'. Some of these fixtures were meant to convey Hugo's desperation to impress as well as his status as the minor magnate. For example, the art: 'While these items would auction in the six figures, they're not quite at the level' of the others in the group, Carter said. ('Was your decorator Ayn Bland?' Jeff ribs Soups when he arrives.) One of the wittiest touches? A work by Damien Hirst in the entry hall: ' Beautiful Bleeding Wound Over the Materialism of Money Painting.' Loading The cumulative effect of these details and the property in which they're situated suggests a kind of gilded cage — the perfect place to sequester four rich tech bros as society starts to collapse all around them.
The Age
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
This is what ultrawealth looks like
In real life, the house is on West Crestwood Court in Deer Crest, a gated community adjacent to the Deer Valley ski resort, where celebrities such as Khloe Kardashian and Gwen Stefani have hit the slopes. Designed by architect Michael Upwall, it has seven bedrooms and 16 bathrooms, as well as a two-lane bowling alley, a full-size basketball court, an indoor rock-climbing wall, and a spa with a steam room and sauna. Outside, it features an infinity pool and a whirlpool bath, both built into a 465-square-metre heated patio. But it's more than just well-appointed. As Eskenazi pointed out, the house is 'not nestled into a community flanked by neighbours' but is 'set apart, elevated, with sweeping views that feel deliberately unobstructed'. That sense of 'space, privacy and silence', he said, provides 'its own kind of luxury'. This was a stark contrast to Armstrong's Succession and its protagonists, the Roy family, who own media conglomerate Waystar Royco. 'That kind of media-mogul wealth is about access and movement. It's flashy, public, very performative,' Eskenazi said. 'With Mountainhead, it was the opposite. Jesse wanted just one main house – huge, remote and a little unsettling.' 'It was more about isolation and privacy than prestige,' Eskenazi added. The remote home is the 'pinnacle of ultraluxury', in the words of Engel & Volkers, a real estate firm that recently listed the property for $US65 million. (It sold for a figure 'in the high-$US50 million range,' a representative for Engel & Volkers said.) Mountainhead wasn't conceived with this specific property in mind. Instead, the crew was briefed to search for something elevated and isolated, ideally set against snow and ice. What Armstrong wanted 'wasn't about a specific architectural style so much as a feeling', Eskenazi said. 'The house needed to be remote and imposing, yes, but also strangely intimate – a place that could hold both grandeur and silence. It had to feel like it had a history, even if we didn't spell it out on screen.' The search for the right setting started broad: the crew considered homes in Europe, while HBO urged it to consider locations in Canada, such as Whistler, British Columbia, because of the country's ample tax credits for visiting productions. An architectural profile in magazine Robb Report clued the crew into the Deer Valley property. 'The moment Jesse saw it, everything changed,' Eskenazi said. 'That was when the location locked in, and we knew: this is it.' Loading Stephen Carter, production designer on the film, and the crew added faux-stone veneers and cedar panelling to cover up some of the house's bare walls, and he was responsible for details such as art and furniture, including a $US300 toaster and 'a lesser-known Jeff Koons'. Some of these fixtures were meant to convey Hugo's desperation to impress as well as his status as the minor magnate. For example, the art: 'While these items would auction in the six figures, they're not quite at the level' of the others in the group, Carter said. ('Was your decorator Ayn Bland?' Jeff ribs Soups when he arrives.) One of the wittiest touches? A work by Damien Hirst in the entry hall: ' Beautiful Bleeding Wound Over the Materialism of Money Painting.' Loading The cumulative effect of these details and the property in which they're situated suggests a kind of gilded cage — the perfect place to sequester four rich tech bros as society starts to collapse all around them.
The Age
15-05-2025
- Business
- The Age
Trump and the oil cartel are on a collision course
The US onshore oil sector is particularly sensitive to oil prices. While break-even prices vary significantly between the basis, the rule of thumb is that they generally need something above $US60 a barrel to break even on new wells and $US65 a barrel or more to generate profits attractive enough to provide an incentive to drill. Oil prices have demonstrated acute sensitivity to Donald Trump's trade policies. After Trump's 'Liberation Day,' global oil prices plummeted, with Brent crude tumbling from around $US75 a barrel to less than $US60 a barrel. The US domestic price, the West Texas Intermediate (WTI), fell to as low as $US55 a barrel. After Trump paused his 'reciprocal' tariffs and agreed a 90-day truce with China, with big cuts to the tariff rates, oil prices have recovered, with Brent trading around $US66 a barrel and WTI around $US62 a barrel. Not helping the position of the US producers is the impact on Trump's tariffs on steel and steel products, cement and drilling fluids. A leading energy consultancy, Wood Mackenzie, says costs will have risen 4.5 per cent by the fourth quarter of this year as a result of those tariffs, which remain in place. The firm expects the cost of the steel pipes used in drilling, production and completion of wells to rise by 40 per cent and be the major contributor to the overall cost increases. So, the 'prices down, costs up' outlook will lead to less investment and less future production. That may be one of the objectives that the Saudi-led OPEC is pursuing. OPEC+ has embarked on a U-turn in its strategy this year. For three years it restrained production. It took a total of about 6 million barrels a day of oil out of the market via production cutbacks over that period, with the Saudis bearing the brunt of those cutbacks – they contributed about 1 million of the 2.2 million barrels a day of 'voluntary' cutbacks announced in late 2023 for last year's production targets. This year the cartel has started returning some of that curtailed production to the market. The original plan was to do it incrementally through to September next year. Instead, after announcing an increase in output of 38,000 barrels a day in April OPEC suddenly ramped that up to 411,000 barrels a day for May and then, earlier this month, announced a similar increase for June. In just over three months it will have added nearly half the volume that it had planned to add over 18 months. Loading The primary motivation for that increase, which has been led by the Saudis, is to respond to over-production from members of the cartel who haven't honoured their commitments -- Kazakhstan and Iraq in particular – and have produced at rates above their agreed caps. The Saudis, having shouldered the bulk of the burden of reduced production, have had enough and are prepared to live with the lower prices – well below the estimated $US90 a barrel or so needed to balance their budget – in exchange for the bigger volumes and the opportunity to discipline the recalcitrant members of the cartel. The ancillary benefit is the impact it has on the US, where shale has made it the world's largest oil producer. Driving the prices down will, as its own forecasts suggest, drive some shale producers out of the market and lower the US industry's global market share, albeit that the shale sector is very flexible and innovative and has a greater ability to turn its production off and on than traditional producers. The 2014 oil price collapse, triggered by a big surge in OPEC supply, saw oil trade below $US30 a barrel. It ignited a wave of bankruptcies in the US shale sector. As soon as the price stabilised, however, production sprang back, with significantly lower costs. Trump's trade war, even if its severity is scaled back after the 90-day pauses on the reciprocal tariffs and China end, is depressing both global economic activity and the growth rate of the US economy. The US economy grew 2.8 per cent last year. OPEC is forecasting growth of only 1.7 per cent this year. Despite that lower growth in prospect, OPEC, pointing to last weekend's temporary truce between the US and China, says there is potential for more lasting agreements and a normalisation of trade flows, albeit at potentially elevated tariff levels compared to the pre-Liberation Day escalation of trade hostilities. Loading Nevertheless, it has left its forecasts for the increase in global oil demand this year unchanged at 1.3 million barrels a day and downgraded them only slightly, to 1.218 million barrels a day, for next year. By comparison, the International Energy Agency has forecast an increase of only 726,000 barrels a day. If the US and the non-OPEC producers don't reduce their output heavily this year, OPEC+ producers continue to unwind their production cuts at the current rate and the impact of the US trade policies continue to chill global economic activity, there is a very real prospect of as glut of oil developing and another big slump in prices. Trump will get his lower prices in those circumstances, which would help modestly offset the impact of his tariffs on inflation. What he wouldn't get is the boom in the shale oil sector that was supposed to be a key plank in his economic strategy.
Sydney Morning Herald
15-05-2025
- Business
- Sydney Morning Herald
Trump and the oil cartel are on a collision course
The US onshore oil sector is particularly sensitive to oil prices. While break-even prices vary significantly between the basis, the rule of thumb is that they generally need something above $US60 a barrel to break even on new wells and $US65 a barrel or more to generate profits attractive enough to provide an incentive to drill. Oil prices have demonstrated acute sensitivity to Donald Trump's trade policies. After Trump's 'Liberation Day,' global oil prices plummeted, with Brent crude tumbling from around $US75 a barrel to less than $US60 a barrel. The US domestic price, the West Texas Intermediate (WTI), fell to as low as $US55 a barrel. After Trump paused his 'reciprocal' tariffs and agreed a 90-day truce with China, with big cuts to the tariff rates, oil prices have recovered, with Brent trading around $US66 a barrel and WTI around $US62 a barrel. Not helping the position of the US producers is the impact on Trump's tariffs on steel and steel products, cement and drilling fluids. A leading energy consultancy, Wood Mackenzie, says costs will have risen 4.5 per cent by the fourth quarter of this year as a result of those tariffs, which remain in place. The firm expects the cost of the steel pipes used in drilling, production and completion of wells to rise by 40 per cent and be the major contributor to the overall cost increases. So, the 'prices down, costs up' outlook will lead to less investment and less future production. That may be one of the objectives that the Saudi-led OPEC is pursuing. OPEC+ has embarked on a U-turn in its strategy this year. For three years it restrained production. It took a total of about 6 million barrels a day of oil out of the market via production cutbacks over that period, with the Saudis bearing the brunt of those cutbacks – they contributed about 1 million of the 2.2 million barrels a day of 'voluntary' cutbacks announced in late 2023 for last year's production targets. This year the cartel has started returning some of that curtailed production to the market. The original plan was to do it incrementally through to September next year. Instead, after announcing an increase in output of 38,000 barrels a day in April OPEC suddenly ramped that up to 411,000 barrels a day for May and then, earlier this month, announced a similar increase for June. In just over three months it will have added nearly half the volume that it had planned to add over 18 months. Loading The primary motivation for that increase, which has been led by the Saudis, is to respond to over-production from members of the cartel who haven't honoured their commitments -- Kazakhstan and Iraq in particular – and have produced at rates above their agreed caps. The Saudis, having shouldered the bulk of the burden of reduced production, have had enough and are prepared to live with the lower prices – well below the estimated $US90 a barrel or so needed to balance their budget – in exchange for the bigger volumes and the opportunity to discipline the recalcitrant members of the cartel. The ancillary benefit is the impact it has on the US, where shale has made it the world's largest oil producer. Driving the prices down will, as its own forecasts suggest, drive some shale producers out of the market and lower the US industry's global market share, albeit that the shale sector is very flexible and innovative and has a greater ability to turn its production off and on than traditional producers. The 2014 oil price collapse, triggered by a big surge in OPEC supply, saw oil trade below $US30 a barrel. It ignited a wave of bankruptcies in the US shale sector. As soon as the price stabilised, however, production sprang back, with significantly lower costs. Trump's trade war, even if its severity is scaled back after the 90-day pauses on the reciprocal tariffs and China end, is depressing both global economic activity and the growth rate of the US economy. The US economy grew 2.8 per cent last year. OPEC is forecasting growth of only 1.7 per cent this year. Despite that lower growth in prospect, OPEC, pointing to last weekend's temporary truce between the US and China, says there is potential for more lasting agreements and a normalisation of trade flows, albeit at potentially elevated tariff levels compared to the pre-Liberation Day escalation of trade hostilities. Loading Nevertheless, it has left its forecasts for the increase in global oil demand this year unchanged at 1.3 million barrels a day and downgraded them only slightly, to 1.218 million barrels a day, for next year. By comparison, the International Energy Agency has forecast an increase of only 726,000 barrels a day. If the US and the non-OPEC producers don't reduce their output heavily this year, OPEC+ producers continue to unwind their production cuts at the current rate and the impact of the US trade policies continue to chill global economic activity, there is a very real prospect of as glut of oil developing and another big slump in prices. Trump will get his lower prices in those circumstances, which would help modestly offset the impact of his tariffs on inflation. What he wouldn't get is the boom in the shale oil sector that was supposed to be a key plank in his economic strategy.
The Age
07-05-2025
- Business
- The Age
ASX edges higher as trade talk hopes boost energy and mining stocks
The Australian sharemarket was moderately higher in lunchtime trading as US market futures rose on confirmation American and Chinese trade officials will meet, spurring optimism trade tensions between the world's two largest economies could ease. The ASX/S&P200 added 16.50 points, or 0.2 per cent, to trade at 8167.90 as of 12.43pm AEST, bolstered by gains from energy and mining stocks, with seven of its 11 industry sectors advancing. The Australian dollar fell back below US65¢, trading at US64.87¢. Index futures for Wall Street's S&P 500 gained 0.7 per cent, rebounding from the market's losses overnight, after US officials said US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and chief trade negotiator Jamieson Greer would meet China's top economic official in Switzerland on Saturday in what could be a first step toward easing the trade war disrupting the global economy. Meanwhile, China reduced its policy rate and lowered the amount of cash lenders must keep in reserve, as Beijing increases efforts to help its economy caught in the trade stoush. The looming trade talks helped boost the energy sector on the ASX, with by oil and gas giants Santos and Woodside up 2.2 per cent and 2.3 per cent, respectively, and refiner Ampol up 1.4 per cent. Oil prices pushed higher again after rallying more than 3 per cent on Monday. Similarly, the mining giants gained as iron ore – Australia's biggest export – climbed 1.2 per cent overnight. BHP, the world's largest miner, rose 1.4 per cent, while Fortescue and Rio Tinto were both up 1.6 per cent. The financial sector was also in the green, boosted by National Australia Bank, which jumped 2.2 per cent after posting a 1 per cent rise in cash earnings to $3.6 billion for the March half, better than market expectations. The other big four banks were mixed, with ANZ up 0.4 per cent, CBA up 0.1 per cent and Westpac down 1.4 per cent. Investment bank Macquarie Group was down 0.1 per cent after the markets regulator ASIC called it out over 'significant compliance failures' in its futures dealing business and over-the counter derivatives trade reporting.
