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Bloomberg Egypt and Russia signed a $30 billion deal to build North Africa’s first nuclear power plant as the Kremlin moves to expand its influence in the region. Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Egyptian counterpart Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi witnessed the signing ceremony in Cairo on Monday. The project increases Russia’s economic presence and political influence in the Middle East, already ...

Bloomberg Saudi Arabia plans to raise domestic gasoline and jet fuel prices in January, part of a program to gradually eliminate energy subsidies as the kingdom seeks to overhaul its economy and balance the budget, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Gasoline prices are set to increase by about 80 percent, while jet fuel prices will be ...

BAGHDAD / Reuters Iraq has agreed to swap up to 60,000 barrels per day of crude produced from the northern Iraqi Kirkuk oilfield for Iranian oil, Iraqi Oil Minister Jabar al-Luaibi said. The agreement signed by the two countries provides for Iran to deliver to Iraq’s southern ports, on the Gulf, “oil of the same characteristics and in the same ...

Bloomberg Oil slipped to near $57 a barrel as US drilling expanded and OPEC nations Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates signalled they can phase out production cuts if the market improves. Futures fell 0.4% in New York after climbing 2.5 percent in the previous two sessions. Drillers boosted the rig count by two to 751, a three-month high, according ...

Bloomberg Pilot production at Egypt’s Eni SpA-operated Zohr natural gas field will begin “in the coming few days,” the oil ministry said, as the country nears its goal of commercial output from the biggest gas discovery in the Mediterranean Sea by the end of this year. Gas is being pumped from the national distribution system to test pipelines in preparation ...

Bloomberg China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) is restricting natural-gas sales to industries across the country to divert more of the fuel to heat homes in the northern part of the country. The move is a response to instructions from the Nati- onal Development & Reform Commission, which called on local governments and gas suppliers to combat gas shortages in the ...

Bloomberg Japanese prosecutors are investigating two of the country’s biggest construction companies, Obayashi Corp. and Kajima Corp., for suspected wrongdoing linked to a public-backed $79 billion magnetic-levitation rail network. After local media reported authorities were looking into bid-rigging related to construction of Central Japan Railway Co.’s maglev project, Obayashi Corp. said in a statement that prosecutors had raided its office ...

Bloomberg Tata Communications Ltd. will soon hive its property holdings into a separate company, which will subsequently be listed, capping a 15-year effort by the unit of India’s largest conglomerate. The value of the company’s 773 acres of land parcels may be about $4.08 per share, or about 75 billion rupees, according to ICICI Securities Ltd. The spinoff should take ...

Bloomberg China’s efforts to tackle air pollution are getting a reality check, with some regions told to revert to burning coal after shortages of natural gas left people without heating amid freezing winter temperatures. Officials in China’s frigid northern provinces were ordered to prioritise keeping citizens warm and areas that hadn’t yet converted fully to gas were permitted to burn ...

Bloomberg China Telecommunications Corp. is studying an investment in the Philippines after President Rodrigo Duterte invited China to enter the Southeast Asian country and challenge local phone carriers PLDT Inc. and Globe Telecom Inc. The Chinese government, which controls its phone carriers, picked China Telecom to be the one entering the Philippines, Communications Secretary Martin Andanar said, citing information from ...