Bloomberg After relying on oil to fuel its economy for more than half a century, Saudi Arabia is turning to its other abundant natural resource to take it beyond the oil age — desert. The kingdom is converting thousands of square kilometers of sand into new cities as it seeks to diversify away from crude, create jobs and boost investment. …
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TRIPOLI / Reuters Production from Libya’s largest oil field was returning to normal after being briefly disrupted by armed protesters who broke into a control room in the coastal city of Zawiya, the National Oil Corporation (NOC) said on Monday. A pipeline supplying jet fuel and gasoline from Zawiya to Tripoli that the protesters had also closed has reopened, the …
Read More »CAIRO / Reuters Saudi Arabia’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal will invest about $800 million to expand the Four Seasons resort in Sharm el-Sheikh, in partnership with Talaat Moustafa Holding Group, Egypt’s Investment Minister Sahar Nasr said. Billionaire Alwaleed’s investment will also include establishing two new hotels in al-Alamein, a town on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, and Madinaty, a residential compound east …
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Bloomberg Uganda chose a group including General Electric Co. to build and operate a 60,000-barrels-a-day refinery that will process part of the crude extracted from fields being developed by Total SA and Tullow Oil Plc. The Albertine Graben Refinery Consortium — which also includes Yaatra Ventures LLC, Intracontinent Asset Holdings Ltd. and Italy’s Saipem SpA — was picked after a …
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Bloomberg Oil traded near $49 a barrel in New York amid speculation that plentiful supplies will continue to thwart any further rallies. Futures fell 1.3 percent. While growth in US drilling has stalled and Libya’s production revival was dealt a setback by protests, rebounding output is still capping prices, according to Saxo Bank A/S. A committee co-chaired by Kuwait and …
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Bloomberg Norway’s oil industry has been salivating for years over the Arctic Lofoten islands, which could hold billions of barrels of crude. It will likely have to keep dreaming. The general election next month is unlikely to lift a deadlock that’s keeping a ban on drilling off the environmentally sensitive archipelago as more and more Norwegians are turning their backs …
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Cairo / Emirates Business The downturn in the overall health of the non-oil private sector eased in July, with the latest deterioration in business conditions the weakest in a year. New orders stabilised during July, thereby ending a 21-month sequence of decline. Output declined at the slowest pace in 12 months, thereby leading to only a marginal fall in input …
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PARIS / Reuters Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) will sell its nearly five percent stake in Areva to the French state as the nuclear group is delisted and will stay away from nuclear investments for now, sources familiar with the situation told Reuters. Kuwait’s sovereign wealth fund, one of the world’s biggest, paid 600 million euros ($712 million) for its 4.82 …
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ANKARA / Reuters Turkey picked Germany’s Siemens as the winning bidder for a $1 billion wind power project, a sign Ankara wants to keep business separate from the widening diplomatic row between the NATO allies. Relations have deteriorated amid the crackdown that followed the failed coup in Turkey last year. The arrest last month of 10 rights activists, including a …
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DUBAI / Reuters The government of Oman has raised $3.55 billion through a loan from a group of Chinese financial institutions, the latest fundraising by the sultanate which has borrowed over $10 billion this year to replenish coffers hit hard by lower oil prices. Oman signed the senior unsecured term loan, with a five-year maturity, on July 11, the finance …
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