Proof that Royal Dutch Shell is a truly global company comes in the form of coverage of news about its Arctic Ocean drilling plans.
Newspapers from places as far afield as India and Chicago have covered the story, along with, for all I know, the Arctic Enquirer.
The Chicago Tribune reports that the federal government has given Royal Dutch Shell (LON:RDSB) the final permit it needs to drill for oil in the Arctic Ocean off Alaska's northwest coast.
The permit will allow Shell to begin drilling below the ocean floor.
Environmental groups are, predictably, up in arms – or whatever the cliché is for peaceful protest – over the decision, claiming that drilling will endanger the wellbeing of polar bears, and that oil companies have yet to demonstrate that they can clean up an oil spill in water that is full of cracked ice.
In other oil sector news, oilfield support services firm Wood Group (LON:WG.) revealed it has shed 13% of its workforce after drilling activity eased off in response to the lower oil price.
Around 5,000 jobs were lost, around 1,000 of them in the UK.
That news may or may not make the environmentalists happy, but they are likely to be less equivocal about the news that Scotland’s last coal-fired power station, Longannet in Fife, is to close at the end of March next year.
The decision is not a massive surprise, as management had already flagged up plans earlier this year to close the plant.
Still, with Aberdeen-based Wood Group cutting back and jobs set to go at ScottishPower’s Longannet power station, the employment situation is looking bleak in certain parts north of the border.
In economic news, Kristin Forbes, a member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Making Committee, has warned of the dangers of “lingering too long in the sun”.
There’s not much danger of that happening north of the border, but as it happens he is talking metaphorically, about the perils of keeping interest rates artificially low for too long.
The benchmark interest rate has been stuck at 0.5% for more than six years which, as spells in the sun go, is likely to leave a sunbather with skin like my old school satchel – doubly so if the sunbather has tattoos.
“Linger too long in the sun and your skin may take on a slightly pink glow," Forbes said in a piece for the Daily Telegraph.
"While you probably won't want to move from your comfortable spot in the sun, if you ignore the warning signs, you may have a painful sunburn that evening."
Finally, it has been a strange old day for the share price of African Potash (LON:AFPO), the owner of the Lac Dinga potash project in the Republic of Congo.
A fire was lit under the company’s share price earlier this month when it announced a move into commodity trading that could secure it a revenue stream in the near future.
The share price was on the move again this morning, rising 20% at one point, prompting the company to issue a statement saying it had no idea why the shares had started moving sharply again.
By the time I had finished covering the news item, the share price was down about 8%; then, while I was typing that the share price was down 8%, it moved to be up 5% on the day and then, as I corrected my earlier share price comment, the share price moved back into the red again, at which point I decided to publish and be damned.
For the record, however, the shares are now down 19.42% on the day and up 490% over the last month.