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Bloomberg Asia’s rapacious thirst for liquefied natural gas is sucking supplies from surprising places. China to Japan and South Korea are paying top dollar for the super-chilled fuel. The pull is so strong that Norway’s Statoil ASA, which usually exports most of its LNG to Europe, is shipping a rare cargo east. It plans to send more. Asia gets most ...

SEOUL / Reuters South Korea’s Korea Gas Corp has entered court-administered arbitration with Australian joint venture North West Shelf Gas seeking to settle a dispute over a liquefied natural gas (LNG) contract that expired in 2016. A spokesman for the state-run Korean firm, known as KOGAS, confirmed an arbitration process was under way but declined to give details. Woodside Petroleum, ...

RIYADH / Reuters Saudi Arabian utility developer ACWA Power expects to submit tenders for projects this year worth $4.5 billion in Saudi Arabia and will also target projects in Morocco and the United Arab Emirates, its chief executive said. ACWA Power CEO Paddy Padmanathan also confirmed the developer of electricity and water projects in the Middle East, Africa and Southeast ...

BEIRUT / Reuters Lebanon said it had signed its first offshore oil and gas exploration and production agreements for two blocks, including a block disputed by neighbouring Israel. Lebanon’s energy minister said the dispute with Israel would not stop Lebanon benefiting from potential undersea reserves in the contentious Block 9, while consortium operator Total said it would not drill the ...

Bloomberg While many oil producers are stepping back from their retail operations, Royal Dutch Shell Plc is doubling down. Shell, which has about 44,000 filling stations around the world, opened its first one in Mexico last year, the start of $1 billion in investments over the next decade. Shell also is ramping up spending in China, India, Indonesia and Russia, ...

Bloomberg Asia pushed past the rest of the world last year to become the biggest buyer of America’s crude oil — and it’s poised to do it again in 2018. Just two years after Washington ended its crude-export ban, the continent soaked up 37 percent of the oil the US sent abroad in 2017, up from about 9 percent in ...

LONDON / Reuters Europe will face a gas shortage and price spike as soon as the next decade if it doesn’t decide quickly to boost imports from Russia as gas purchases from the United States fail to match demand, Kremlin energy giant Gazprom told Reuters. The Trump administration has said it intends to level the playing field in energy markets ...

BAGHDAD / Reuters Iraq seeks around $100 billion in foreign investment in transport, energy and agriculture as part of a plan to rebuild parts of the country and revive the economy after a three-year war on IS. The government’s National Investment Commission published a list of 157 projects it will seek investment for at an International Conference for Reconstruction of ...

Bloomberg BP Plc dodged the disappointment that afflicted other oil-company earnings as it did a better job of exploiting the upswing in crude prices. Oil and gas output rose following the startup of seven new projects last year, helping the London-based giant post a fivefold increase in fourth-quarter profit from a year earlier to the highest since the start of ...

CAPE TOWN / Reuters Angola sees no further OPEC cuts in 2018 and Africa’s No. 2 crude exporter hopes to join the ranks of gold producers next year as it strives to diversify an economy long based on oil and diamonds, its minerals and petroleum minister said on Tuesday. Angola, where oil wealth has failed to translate into wider prosperity, ...