Energy

Bloomberg Pakistan’s top business tycoons have offered to take over a disputed copper and gold deposit that was once explored by Barrick Gold Corp. and Antofagasta Plc, according to people familiar with the matter. Officials at the provincial Balochistan government are said to have met with a consortium of four business groups including tycoons Arif Habib and Muhammad Ali Tabba …

Bloomberg Saudi Basic Industries Corp. (Sabic) posted its lowest quarterly profit in at least a decade as the chemical maker took an impairment charge and cheaper oil put pressure on its product prices. Net income slumped 86% from the previous year to 830 million riyals, while sales fell 23% for the same period to 33.7 billion riyals, the company known …

Bloomberg A key environmental council approved a permit, clearing the way for Samarco Mineracao SA to resume operations at its iron-ore mine in second half of 2020. Ten of the 12 members of Minas Gerais state environmental council, known as Copam, voted in favor of an operational corrective license for the mine. Executives at Vale SA, which has a 50% …

Bloomberg Oil fell as Russia sounded a cautious note on whether Opec and its partners may cut production further, while industry data showed US crude inventories were expanding. Futures fell as much as 1.3% in New York, erasing some of Tuesday’s gains as Russia’s Energy Minister Alexander Novak said no countries in the Opec+ coalition had proposed changing the current …

Bloomberg Ghana will no longer have access to $190 million in grants from the Millennium Challenge Corp. after terminating a private consortium’s contract to operate the country’s electricity distribution network. Ghana annulled agreement reached under US agency’s aid program as it questioned legitimacy of payment guarantees supplied by Power Distribution Services Ltd. to secure assets of Electricity Co. of Ghana …

Bloomberg An auction next month of oilfields in Brazil may be the priciest ever held, raising at least $50 billion in licensing fees and compensation, according to people familiar with government estimates. Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell Plc and other energy giants are set to vie for deep-sea deposits that could hold 15 billion barrels of oil, almost twice …

Bloomberg Construction of coal-fired power plants in Southeast Asia has slowed significantly since 2016, with only Indonesia starting any new stations in the first half of this year, according to a report by Global Energy Monitor. The region, which has been targeted as a growth center in coming years for coal-fired power, saw 1,500 megawatts of capacity enter construction in …

Bloomberg Royal Dutch Shell Plc abandoned two oil projects off Kazakhstan after stubbornly high costs made them uneconomic. Shell has exited the Khazar field, while North Caspian Operating Co. — a joint venture including Shell — has quit the Kalamkas-Sea project, according to TOO PSA, an entity run by the Kazakh Energy Ministry. The retreat from the fields — both …

Bloomberg Anti-government protests that have shaken the world’s largest copper producing nation Chile for the past three days have spread to the mining sector as unions call for stoppages. Workers at BHP Ltd.’s Escondida mine will hold a “warning stoppage” for 10 hours in solidarity with protests. The stoppage risks disrupting copper supply from the world’s largest producer, with ports …

Bloomberg Nothing right now is stopping a surge in oil tanker rates that’s given owners of the vessels one of the biggest boosts in years. Rates have rallied so high that a secondhand supertanker could theoretically pay for itself in a couple of voyages, according to estimates from Clarkson Platou Securities AS. A normal payback period would often be about …