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BEIJING / Reuters China’s crude futures kicked off to a roaring start on Monday as western traders and Chinese majors eagerly traded the world’s newest financial oil instrument, which many expect to become a third global price benchmark alongside Brent and WTI crude. Global commodity trader and miner Glencore, and big merchants Trafigura, Freepoint Commodities and Mercuria were among the ...

BEIJING / Reuters Russia kept its spot as the largest crude oil supplier to China in February, data showed, a role it held in January and for the past two years on an annual basis. Russia supplied 5.052 million tonnes, or 1.32 million barrels per day (bpd) last month, up 17.8 percent from a year earlier, data from the Chinese ...

Bloomberg Norway’s oil industry has one more thing to worry about. After an unprecedented lawsuit against Arctic drilling, environmentalists have launched a new legal battle to challenge a tax incentive that’s been a cornerstone of the country’s policy to stimulate oil exploration. The move comes at a bad time for Norway, which needs to step up the search for new ...

Bloomberg Vitol Group, the world’s biggest independent oil trader, suffered a 25 percent drop in annual profit as income from assets sales failed to offset weaker trading results. Net income fell to $1.5 billion in 2017, from $2 billion the year before, according to a person familiar with Vitol’s results. The energy-trading environment has deteriorated as output curbs by OPEC ...

Bloomberg A consortium led by TPG is nearing an agreement to gain control of Fortis Healthcare Ltd., India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value, people with knowledge of the matter said. The investor group, which also includes Manipal Health Enterprises Pvt, could announce a deal as soon as the next few days, according to the people, who asked not ...

Bloomberg Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer of Google, expects China to play a crucial role in artificial intelligence as he keeps expanding the search giant’s workforce in the country, even as many of its services are blocked. “China is already playing a big part in how AI will shape our futures,” Pichai said at the annual China Development Forum in ...

Bloomberg India’s largest cement maker, UltraTech Cement Ltd., aims to aggressively cut its debt over the next two years to help prepare for more acquisitions. UltraTech, controlled by billionaire Kumar Mangalam Birla, plans to prepay some loans through its internal cash accruals, according to Chief Financial Officer Atul Daga. It targets to cut the ratio of its net debt to ...

Bloomberg China’s aspiration to deploy 30 million autonomous vehicles within a decade is seeding a fledgling chip industry, with startups like Horizon Robotics Inc. emerging to build the brains behind those wheels. The Beijing-based company is taking aim at Nvidia Corp. and Mobileye NV just as the autonomous-driving business takes off and uncertainty looms over international trade. Annual revenue from ...

Bloomberg History redux? The surging tension over trade between the US and China has prompted comparisons to American combativeness towards Japan that preceded the 1987 equity meltdown—at least, in the mind of veteran market analyst Hao Hong. While Hong, head of research with Bocom International Holdings Co., acknowledges that it’s possible to crawl up many a technical chart of a ...

Bloomberg Europe’s $38 billion a year carbon market is finally starting to work the way it was intended, reining in pollution with a minimum of squealing from industry. Thirteen years after it was created to limit carbon-dioxide emissions, prices for the allowances are rising. European Union policymakers have enacted measures expected to keep the cost of pollution on an upward ...