Business news in brief

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“We need to be selective about the drugs we use in animals and when we use them.”

William Flynn, FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine Article, 1D

3: BMW weighs a N. America motor plant

FRANKFURT, Germany - BMW is considering building engines in North America for the first time and expanding vehicle production in the region to capitalize on growing demand, three people familiar with the matter said.

The world’s biggest maker of luxury cars may establish a motor factory in Mexico or the U.S. and could potentially decide on the project in 2014, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are confidential.

The maker of the $49,500 5-Series sedan has focused on developing fuel-efficient power trains since Chief Executive Officer Norbert Reithofer took the helm in 2006.

Munich-based BMW has kept tight control of the technology, only starting production of motors outside Europe last year with four-cylinder engines made in Shenyang, China, to supply BMW’s local car plants in Dadong and Tiexi.

BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi are adding production in North America to take advantage of sales-growth potential that contrasts with stagnating demand in their home market of Europe.

Fracking takes U.S. crude to 25-year high

U.S. crude production rose to the highest level in a quarter-century last week as a shale drilling boom in states such as Texas and North Dakota cut the need for foreign oil and pushed the country closer to energy independence.

The U.S. pumped 8.075 million barrels a day in the week ending Friday, a gain of 0.8 percent, or 64,000 barrels a day, the federal Energy Information Administration said Wednesday. It’s the most since October 1988.

“You can’t swing a cat without hitting a barrel of oil in North America,” said Stephen Schork, president of the Schork Group Inc., an energy consulting firm in Villanova, Pa. “It’s amazing how quickly things can change.”

U.S. oil production grew 18 percent in the past 12 months, the fastest pace on record, increasing fuel exports and reducing reliance on imports, according to the Energy Information Administration. The boom will make the country the world’s largest producer by 2015, five years sooner than last year’s forecast, the International Energy Agency in Paris said last month.

• Bloomberg News

Volvo lineup redo aims at U.S. comeback

Volvo Cars, the Swedish maker of premium cars owned by China’s Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co., said it will use smaller engines and a revamped lineup to rebound in the U.S. and take on German rivals by offering more fuel economy.

The company, spending $11 billion on products, technology and plant investments to stage a global sales revival, will show a concept version of a small crossover vehicle at the Detroit Auto Show next month. That’s when the Gothenburg, Sweden-based automaker starts adding cars, wagons and SUVs with new turbocharged four-cylinder engines to draw U.S. buyers, said North American Chief Executive Officer Tony Nicolosi.

“Next year we’ll probably grow eight to 10 percent,” Nicolosi said Tuesday at the automaker’s technical center in Camarillo, Calif. A new marketing push starts in 2014 “to let people know we exist,” he said.

Volvo, which Ford Motor Co. sold to Geely in August 2010 for about $1.5 billion, was once famed in the U.S. for vehicles that ranked among the industry’s safest. This year, the brand’s U.S. sales in the premium auto market have lagged behind those of Bayerische Motoren Werke AG’s BMW, Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz and Audi AG, all up more than 10 percent. Volvo, down 9.1 percent over the same period, is rebuilding research and marketing that had languished as Ford prepared for a sale.

• Bloomberg News

No legs seen for Iran oil-export increase

LONDON - Iran, once OPEC’s second-largest oil producer, will be unable to sustain an increase in crude exports that support its economy when some measures to curb those shipments are eased, the International Energy Agency said Wednesday.

The European Union said last month that it intends to suspend a ban in December or January on insuring tankers carrying Iranian oil. The United States said it will stop forcing buyers to cut purchases, even if they still aren’t allowed to increase them. The concessions are in return for commitments from the Persian Gulf state to provide more information on its nuclear program, which Western powers claim is intended to make weapons. Neither the European Union nor the U.S. lifted sanctions on importing the nation’s oil.

“The fact that the oil sanctions remain fully in place leaves on the face of it no room for any sustained increase in exports,” the International Energy Agency, a Paris based adviser to 28 nations, said in a report Wednesday.

“Even if sanctions on Iranian oil were eventually relaxed, meaningful increases in production would require a longer period and additional investment in Iran’s upstream, and thus would take time to materialize.”

Iran’s oil shipments to other nations rose by 89,000 barrels a day to 850,000 barrels in November, the agency said, including both crude and condensates. The country cut the amount of oil stored on tankers to 22 million barrels by the end of the month from 37 million barrels in October, the agency said.

Billionaires’ rivalry colors soccer face-off

Mexican billionaires Carlos Slim and Emilio Azcarraga, who typically go head-to-head for phone customers and TV viewers, are taking their rivalry to the soccer field this week in their country’s championship game.

Slim, the owner of the nation’s biggest wireless carrier, is an investor in Club Leon, which is a finalist in Mexico’s national soccer league. The team is squaring off against reigning champ Club America, controlled by TV magnate Azcarraga, in a two-game series starting today in Leon’s home stadium.

Caught in the crossfire are the legions of Mexican soccer fans who won’t be able to watch because of an agreement to televise the match only on cable for the first time. After Slim’s America Movil SAB acquired a stake in Leon last year, the club signed a broadcast-rights deal with cable’s Fox Sports.

That means the first match of the finals won’t be available across the nation on free, over-the-air TV - the realm dominated by Azcarraga’s Grupo Televisa SAB.

• Bloomberg News