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DUBAI / Emirates Business Arab Bank Group reported net income after tax for the six months period ended June 30 of $436 million compared to $415 million in prior period, recording a growth of 5%. The Group’s net income before tax grew by 6.4% to reach $582 million with net operating income reaching $ 668.5 million and recording a solid …

Bloomberg BP Plc agreed to pay $10.5 billion, its biggest acquisition in almost two decades, for most of BHP Billiton Ltd.’s onshore US oil and natural gas assets, including in the prized Permian Basin. The deal gives the London-based energy giant a position in the Permian, a swath of west Texas and New Mexico that’s the world’s fastest-growing major oil …

Bloomberg Royal Dutch Shell Plc finally gave investors the share buybacks they’ve been demanding, even as profit fell short of expectations despite resurgent crude prices. The Anglo-Dutch energy producer said that it is starting a $25 billion share-repurchase programme, initially buying up $2 billion of stock over three months. That should soothe investors who have grown increasingly anxious about when …

HODEIDAH / WAM Up to 2800 Yemenis in Ad Durayhimi District of the Hodeidah Governorate have benefitted from an extensive humanitarian airdrop operation carried out by Saudi-led Arab Coalition Forces, for second time in a week. Utilising state-of-the-art technology, including parachutes and GPS techniques, the airdrop, which included 400 food parcels, as well as mineral water provided by the Emirates …

DUBAI / WAM DP World has signed a 20-year concession with an automatic 20-year extension with the Republic of Mali to build and operate a 1000-hectare modern logistics hub outside of Bamako, the capital and largest city of Mali. The multimodal logistics platform, Mali Logistics Hub (MLH) will have inland container depots (ICD) and Container Freight Stations (CFS) that will …

Bloomberg Russia, one of the world’s top three crude producers, is preparing the most radical shakeup of its oil-tax system since 1999. The changes, which will allow the nation’s producers to export crude and oil products duty-free while raising their costs at the wellhead, is set to get the go-ahead from President Vladimir Putin by year-end, bringing in much-needed funds …

Bloomberg On a hot sunny day in July, Europe’s largest port is busy loading super-chilled liquefied natural gas onto a tanker, creating snow flurries during a heat wave. The cargo loaded at the Gate terminal in Rotterdam, which was built to import the fuel. Around the same time, a vessel from the Russian Arctic region arrived with another batch of …

Bloomberg Shares of California utility owners PG&E Corp, Edison International and Sempra Energy climbed after Governor Jerry Brown indicated that utilities shouldn’t be responsible for future wildfire damages without considering whether they acted “reasonably.” The proposal wouldn’t affect the billions of dollars in potential liabilities PG&E and Edison face for blazes in 2017, Brown said. But it’s a win for …

ABU DHABI / WAM Borouge has awarded the Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contract for an additional Polypropylene Plant, PP5, to be integrated with the existing Borouge 3 complex in Ruwais and grow the polymer production capacity to almost 5 million tonnes per annum by 2021. The EPC contract has been awarded to Tecnimont SPA, a subsidiary of Italy’s Milan-based …

Bloomberg The dark storm clouds that have been hanging over the oil industry during the crude-price slump have suddenly started raining cash. After cutting billions of dollars of costs to survive the biggest downturn in decades, Big Oil is now riding a price rebound to generate enough cash to pay dividends and still have plenty left over. The big question …