Business Channel 2007-08-21&08-23, 油价回稳观望

Scripts:

Oil followed stock markets in their gains on Friday, jumping more than a dollar a barrel after that move by the US Federal Reserve, one company that’s being benefiting from higher oil prices in recent times is the energy giant Petrobras. I asked its CEO and president Jose Sergio Gabrielli whether if prices were going to ease in the near future.

No, we think that we have very er, a strict and tight market of supply and demand that while its leads are now lessening¹. we have a growth of the demand in the same level as the growth of supply. We don’t see any trend that goes to move the price further down or further up. However, as we have a very tight inventories² and we have a very large movement of capital on the future markets. And we have a lot of residual³ political problems that affect the price of oil. We are going to see a very high-level volatility⁴ in the price of oil, moving in and around for very large numbers, but on the trend way we’re going to have very large.. er.. the prices are not going to ,to fall very fast.

This comes to one of the kind of house-keeping issues if you like. It is difficult, isn’t it, contain rising costs within oil companies at the moment, do you think that costs are inevitably⁵ going to rise or do you feel that you can hold them in check?

I think they’re going, they’re in the last two years, we have very high increase in price of our products with supply chains increasing our costs. The margins⁶ are collapsing⁷ right now. But we see some signs that we’re reaching a peak level. And we’re going to see a plateau, and then in the next two or three years, we’re going to see some leveling off of the price of our costs. However, we’re going deeper and more demanding areas for production of oil which means our oil costs are going up, and also on the refinery⁸ side , we have more complexity⁹ in the refinery, and the cost of refinery...

Notes:

Housekeeping: Management and maintenance of the property and equipment of an institution or organization.

Level off: to stop increasing or being reduced

1 lessening   

减轻，减少，变小

参考例句：

• So however much he earned, she spent it, her demands growing and lessening with his income. 祥子挣多少，她花多少，她的要求随着他的钱涨落。 来自汉英文学 - 骆驼祥子
• The talks have resulted in a lessening of suspicion. 谈话消减了彼此的怀疑。

2 inventories   

n.总结( inventory的名词复数 )；细账；存货清单（或财产目录）的编制

参考例句：

• In other cases, such as inventories, inputs and outputs are both continuous. 在另一些情况下，比如存货，其投入和产出都是持续不断的。
• The store must clear its winter inventories by April 1st. 该店必须在4月1日前售清冬季存货。

3 residual   

adj.复播复映追加时间；存留下来的，剩余的

参考例句：

• There are still a few residual problems with the computer program.电脑程序还有一些残留问题。
• The resulting residual chromatism is known as secondary spectrum.所得到的剩余色差叫做二次光谱。

4 volatility   

n.挥发性，挥发度，轻快，（性格）反复无常

参考例句：

• That was one reason why volatility was so low last year.这也是去年波动性如此低的原因之一。
• Yet because volatility remained low for so long,disaster myopia prevailed.然而，由于相当长的时间里波动性小，灾难短视就获胜了。

5 inevitably   

adv.不可避免地；必然发生地

参考例句：

• In the way you go on,you are inevitably coming apart.照你们这样下去，毫无疑问是会散伙的。
• Technological changes will inevitably lead to unemployment.技术变革必然会导致失业。

6 margins   

边( margin的名词复数 )； 利润； 页边空白； 差数

参考例句：

• They have always had to make do with relatively small profit margins. 他们不得不经常设法应付较少的利润额。
• To create more space between the navigation items, add left and right margins to the links. 在每个项目间留更多的空隙，加左或者右的margins来定义链接。

7 collapsing   

压扁[平]，毁坏，断裂

参考例句：

• Rescuers used props to stop the roof of the tunnel collapsing. 救援人员用支柱防止隧道顶塌陷。
• The rocks were folded by collapsing into the center of the trough. 岩石由于坍陷进入凹槽的中心而发生褶皱。

8 refinery   

n.精炼厂，提炼厂

参考例句：

• They built a sugar refinery.他们建起了一座榨糖厂。
• The purpose of oil refinery is to refine crude petroleum.炼油厂的主要工作是提炼原油。

9 complexity   

n.复杂(性)，复杂的事物

参考例句：

• Only now did he understand the full complexity of the problem.直到现在他才明白这一问题的全部复杂性。
• The complexity of the road map puzzled me.错综复杂的公路图把我搞糊涂了。