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Bloomberg Big Oil’s fortunes are becoming tied more closely to natural gas than ever before. Majors including Royal Dutch Shell Plc and BP Plc have boosted their proportion of gas output in recent years, helping them trim Exxon Mobil Corp.’s lead as the world’s most valuable oil company. Meanwhile Chevron Corp. added two giant Australian liquefied natural gas projects and ...

Bloomberg Angola is targeting an increase of about 250,000 barrels a day in oil output by 2020 and is already in discussions with oil majors Exxon Mobil Corp. and Equinor ASA to achieve this, said Sonangol’s Chairman of the Board Carlos Saturnino. New energy legislation and more favourable investment terms have already spurred interest from international operators, including Chevron Corp. ...

Bloomberg The Republic of Congo expects to raise oil production by as much 65 percent this year as two new projects come on stream, Hydrocarbons Mi- nister Jean-Marc Thystere-Tchicaya said. Congo joined OPEC and plans to open up its oil industry, which the government says is dominated by Total SA and Eni SpA, to new investors. Sub-Saharan Africa’s third-biggest oil ...

Bloomberg A Mumbai train commuter who witnessed an accident earlier this month, turned to his smartphone to ask neighbors how to help a bleeding victim. Responses poured in instantaneously. Take him to the station master at the next stop; ask the ticket collector for first aid; call 138 for emergency help and so on. Not long after, the commuter posted ...

Bloomberg Meituan Dianping, the world’s fourth-most valuable startup, filed for an initial public offering in Hong Kong and revealed the scope of its losses for the first time. While the company didn’t disclose how much it was planning to raise from the stock sale, it unveiled a net loss of $2.9 billion last year on revenue of 33.9 billion yuan, ...

Bloomberg Billionaire Jack Ma has declared Bitcoin a potential bubble, reiterating his caution over the volatile crypto-currency as his Ant Financial launched blockchain-based money transfers between Hong Kong and the Philippines. The founder and chairman of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. extolled the possibilities of the decentralised ledger on which Bitcoin is based but warned that the digital currency itself may ...

Bloomberg Farmers in Australia, the world’s biggest exporter of chickpeas, have halved their plantings after the nation’s top customer hiked tariffs to levels that rendered the trade untenable, according to an industry association. India imposed a 30 percent import tariff on chickpeas in December before increasing it to 40 percent in February and to 60 percent in March. The country ...

Bloomberg Thailand will seek bids in the fourth-quarter for a $5.5 billion high-speed rail project that’s part of a wider plan for a train network to China. The bidder will build the first half of the network in Thailand, Minister of Transport Arkhom Termpittayapaisith said. His ministry expects to receive detailed designs this month from China, its partner for the ...

Bloomberg The Treasury Department is planning to heighten scrutiny of Chinese investments in sensitive US industries under an emergency law, putting Washington’s trade war with Beijing on a potentially irreversible course. Under the plan, the White House would use one of the most significant legal measures available to declare China’s investment in US companies involved in technologies such as new-energy ...

Bloomberg British businesses aren’t the only ones unhappy with the state of Brexit negotiations. Companies in the rest of the European Union aren’t thrilled either. Exactly two years after the referendum, nearly half of 800 executives surveyed across six EU countries by law firm Baker McKenzie said their businesses had reduced investment in the UK since the Brexit vote, according ...