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BARCELONA / WAM The United Arab Emirates is ranked first for the highest-Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) penetration among all its global counterparts for a second year in a row, according to the FTTH Council. The council published its annual report that highlighted UAE with a coverage of 94.3 percent compared to countries such as Singapore (90.3 percent), South Korea (81.6 percent), Hong …

Bloomberg Big oil tankers sailing from the US are set to bring along some benefits for refiners in Asia while allowing them to sidestep traders serving the world’s top crude-buying region. The new option to load oil into very large crude carriers at the US Gulf Coast terminal operated by the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, or LOOP, will reduce costs …

Bloomberg Oil steadied as Libya’s crude exports from a key terminal were disrupted and Saudi Arabia pledged that global producers will ease their output curbs without shocking the market. Futures in New York were little changed, after rising 3 percent the previous two sessions. Libya’s crude loadings from the Mellitah terminal will be “modified” after protests impeded output at the …

Bloomberg China’s natural gas imports from Central Asia, a long-time source of the fuel via pipeline, slipped last month, worsening a winter shortage and increasing the world’s biggest energy user’s reliance on seaborne supplies. Imports during January from Turkmenistan, China’s biggest overseas source of gas last year, dropped 14 percent from a year earlier, and 4 percent from December, data …

Bloomberg Ghana may start locking in future prices for oil and petroleum imports from the end of March as it seeks to contain inflation, said Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta. A net exporter of crude oil, Ghana could benefit from rising prices while continuing to keep domestic costs in check by agreeing to buy fuel at pre-set prices, Ofori-Atta said in …

Bloomberg The outlook for declining oil production in Venezuela may get grimmer if the US bans supply of a key commodity used to help Venezuelan crude flow from oilfields to the coast. Production in the Orinoco oil belt, which accounts for half of the country’s output, depends on heavy naphtha imported from the US to reach global markets. Naphtha is …

Bloomberg Exxon Mobil Corp. has shut production platforms and a processing plant in the highlands of natural gas exp-orter Papua New Guinea after an earthquake struck the Pacific nation. The US oil giant closed the facilities to assess damage from a magnitude 7.5 earthquake early on Monday morning, it said in a statement. Administrative buildings, living quarters and a mess …

Bloomberg Libya’s oil exports from the Mellitah terminal will be “modified” after protests disrupted production at the key El-Feel deposit for the first time in two months, putting the OPEC nation’s crude production at risk of a decline again. Crude loadings at Mellitah, the export terminal for El-Feel, will be “modified” after force majeure was declared on deliveries from the …

Bloomberg The priciest US gasoline may only be getting pricier. Since March 2017, filling up your car’s 20-gallon (75-liter) gasoline tank with premium has cost at least $10 more than if you’d pumped regular. The widening spread has been driven by additional demand for the fuel and by tightened air rules that have reduced supply. Those conditions are probably going …

MANAMA / Reuters Aluminium Bahrain (Alba) , owner of one of the world’s largest aluminium smelters, will raise by the end of this year’s first quarter the final debt amount needed to fund its Line 6 expansion project, a company official told Reuters. With Line 6, Alba will become the world’s largest single aluminium smelter complex, increasing production capacity by …