Energy

  Bloomberg The Obama administration’s decision to forgo auctions of new oil and gas drilling rights in U.S. Arctic waters deals a blow to energy companies seeking to lock up new territory beyond the long-explored Gulf of Mexico. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said the move, announced on Friday, strikes the right balance, by sustaining oil and gas development in the ...

  Reuters Norwegian oil and gas company DNO is to study the development of an oil field in Iran, becoming the second western company after France’s Total to sign an energy deal in the country since the lifting of sanctions. DNO said it had signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) to conduct a study ...

  Bloomberg Israel formally invited bids for 24 new oil-and-gas exploration licences off its Mediterranean coast on Tuesday, the first in four years. “We are offering for exploration half of our economic waters in 24 blocks,” Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz said, announcing the offer which closes on April 21. “Estimates are that most of the natural gas in Israel’s economic ...

  AFP Demand for natural gas will grow in 2017 but at a slower rate than in recent years, Qatar’s energy minister said on Thursday ahead of a meeting of exporting countries. Mohammed Saleh al-Sada said ministers of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) would discuss “long-term strategy” at Thursday’s meeting in Doha. “The big news, of course, is that ...

  Bloomberg OPEC and Russia will meet in Doha on Thursday for another round of talks without ministers from Iran and Iraq, the two countries that pose the biggest obstacle to a deal to cut production. Members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries are “all hands on deck” to reach an agreement by the group’s Nov. 30 meeting in ...

  Paris / AFP The lack of investment in new oil projects risks creating a new market upheaval in several years, the International Energy Agency warned on Wednesday. “We estimate that, if new project approvals remain low for a third year in a row in 2017, then it becomes increasingly unlikely that demand… and supply can be matched in the ...

  Riyadh / AFP As Saudi Arabia seeks to diversify its oil-dependent economy, the chief of a Red Sea “megacity” says his project is pointing the way forward. A decade after its conception, the King Abdullah Economic City — an integrated industrial, residential and tourism centre — is profitable and in line with a government push which intensified this year ...

  Bloomberg OPEC’s Libya plans to almost double crude production next year even as the producer group tries to implement a deal to trim production and ease a global supply glut. The country with Africa’s largest crude reserves currently produces 600,000 barrels a day, state-run National Oil Corp. Chairman Mustafa Sanalla said in a statement posted on the company’s website. ...

  Kuwait City / AFP Kuwait must enact further subsidy reforms to trim its budget deficit resulting from low oil prices despite political sensitivity, the International Monetary Fund has said. Posting its first budget shortfall of $15 billion last fiscal year following 16 years of surpluses, OPEC member Kuwait has adopted a series of austerity measures raising the prices of ...

  CAIRO / Reuters OPEC nations embarked on a final diplomatic effort to secure a deal on oil cuts, with Qatar, Algeria and Venezuela leading the push to overcome the divide between the group’s biggest producers, according to a delegate familiar with the talks. The behind-the-scenes diplomacy comes after bilateral meetings over the weekend failed to resolve the rifts, leaving ...