Business news in brief

Iowa pipe plant to idle as work falls off

CAMANCHE, Iowa -- Officials for a Houston-based company said it will cease production and cut jobs this month at an eastern Iowa plant.

The Quad-City Times reported that executives for TMK Ipsco went to the Camanche plant to inform its 43 workers of the situation.

The plant makes pipe products used by the oil and natural gas industries. Company spokesman Roger Bentley said that because oil prices are down, the number of drilling rigs is down as well, which reduces the demand for pipe. Bentley said the company is idling the plant until conditions improve.

He said a few employees will remain at the plant after Sept. 30 to fill remaining customer orders.

TMK Ipsco is a division of TMK, which is based in Moscow.

-- The Associated Press

Iran still aiming to restore oil output

Most OPEC members would like to see crude prices at $70 to $80 a barrel and the cartel doesn't need to coordinate with other oil suppliers to determine output levels, Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said Wednesday in an interview.

Oil's slump below $40 a barrel in New York last month hasn't tempered Iran's aims to restore production as soon as sanctions are lifted. The nation must increase crude output to regain market share even as U.S. shale producers increase drilling, Zanganeh said at the Petroleum Ministry in Tehran.

"Some OPEC members believed last year that lower prices could push expensive oil from the market," Zanganeh said. "For some months we witnessed the exit of rigs from shale oil, now all of them are returning to these fields and their level of shale oil production didn't change considerably."

Oil has dropped by about half in the past year from more than $100 a barrel in September 2014 after the 12-member OPEC decided in December and again in June not to cut output despite a global crude glut.

-- Bloomberg News

India company hopes scooter flies in U.S.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- India's largest SUV maker is ready to make its debut on U.S. roads. But it's starting with two wheels, not four.

Mahindra hopes to win over city and campus dwellers with a $2,999, Vespa-like electric scooter called the GenZe, which goes on sale this fall in California, Oregon and Michigan. Sales could soon expand to other states and Europe.

If buyers like it, Mahindra could use the GenZe as a springboard into the car market, just as Honda made the leap from motorcycles to cars in the U.S. in the 1970s.

The strategy has some risks. Scooters have never been as popular in the U.S. as elsewhere -- people in China buy as many electric scooters in a day as Americans do in a full year, for example. And consumers might not trust Mumbai-based Mahindra, which scrapped an attempt to sell vehicles in the U.S. five years ago because it couldn't meet U.S. safety standards.

"The pressure has really been on to make sure that we get this right," said Terence Duncan, the head of customer engagement for the GenZe and one of its chief designers. "What we're doing, really, is introducing the brand to American customers."

-- The Associated Press

Panasonic takes on Tesla home battery

Panasonic Corp., which makes the lithium-ion batteries for Tesla Motors Inc.'s cars, will begin selling batteries next year in Europe that power homes, starting in Germany, where people are given greater incentives to switch to solar-generated electricity.

The push into international markets with home batteries will put the Japanese company into direct competition with flagship customer Tesla, which in May unveiled a suite of batteries to store electricity for homes and businesses. Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has said Germany is a key market for his product because of the country's advanced consumer solar-power market.

Later, Panasonic will move on to France, the U.K. and other markets, Laurent Abadie, chief executive officer of Panasonic Europe, said in an interview Wednesday from the IFA electronics show in Berlin.

In Japan, where the batteries are already available, they can help households replace as much as 70 percent of energy usage by storing what's generated from solar panels, Abadie said. The company's goal is to replace 100 percent of energy taken from the electricity grid eventually, he said.

-- Bloomberg News

Farmers set road-hogging Paris protest

Police asked travelers to keep off the roads in and around Paris before sunrise today as farmers plan to blockade the French capital to demand higher prices for produce.

Access roads to the city's airports and the streets around train stations will be shut or jammed by more than 1,000 tractors, the police authority said on its website, listing the anticipated roadblocks.

Farmers from across France are expected to descend on Paris from 6 a.m. local time and protesters aim to cause "very major slowdowns" on most of the city's ring road, according to the farm union FNSEA. Farmers will gather for a protest rally at Place de la Nation in the east of Paris and some tractors will head to the National Assembly.

-- Bloomberg News

Claims settled over Sony Pictures hack

Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. agreed to settle claims by ex-employees whose personal information was stolen in a computer hack linked to the release last year of the satirical comedy The Interview.

Terms of the settlement weren't disclosed in a filing Wednesday in federal court in Los Angeles.

U.S. officials have blamed North Korean hackers angered over the Seth Rogen movie for the attack, which was revealed in November. The breach exposed Hollywood secrets, destroyed company data and caused the movie studio to initially cancel the release of The Interview, which was about a fictional plot to assassinate North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-Un.

Robert Lawson, a spokesman for Sony Pictures in Culver City, Calif., a division of Tokyo-based Sony Corp., declined to comment on the settlement.

-- Bloomberg News

Business on 09/03/2015

Upcoming Events