Regional News

Bloomberg All producers agree to extend crude output cuts by nine months to help trim a supply glut, according to Saudi Arabia’s energy minister. The extension through the first quarter of 2018 will help producers reach their goal of trimming global stockpiles to a five-year average, Khalid Al-Falih said. OPEC and other global producers such as Russia had agreed to ...

Bloomberg The Egyptian shores of the Gulf of Suez are becoming increasingly attractive to renewable-energy investors seeking to take advantage of the area’s strong, steady winds. That’s a growing problem for the millions of pelicans, white storks, raptors and other birds that fly by every year while migrating between Eurasia and East Africa. The 200-megawatt Gulf of el Zayt wind ...

Bloomberg Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund set up a defense company to help reduce the kingdom’s reliance on foreign purchases and to diversify the economy away from oil ahead of a visit by US President Donald Trump. The Saudi Arabian Military Industries, or SAMI, will manufacture products and provide maintenance services across units, including air and land systems, weapons and ...

Bloomberg Iraq is on track for what may be the country’s highest monthly crude exports even as the Middle East nation supports moves to extend OPEC-led production cuts aimed at trimming bloated global inventories. Vessels hauling 62 million barrels of the nation’s crude departed ports in the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean Sea in the first half of May, according to ...

Bloomberg Algeria, the African oil producer that was instrumental in crafting OPEC’s historic output deal last year, said most participating nations back a nine-month extension of the cuts. “Most of the countries support the proposition of Russia and Saudi Arabia to extend,” Algerian Energy Minister Noureddine Boutarfa said in Moscow after talks with his Russian counterpart, Alexander Novak. Algeria also ...

LONDON / Reuters Swiss trading giant Glencore and US private equity investor Carlyle Group have teamed up in an attempt to buy Morocco’s only oil refinery, hoping to recoup about $600 million in loans they issued to the plant before it went bankrupt, industry sources said. Two sources close to the process said the Moroccan government wanted at least $2 ...

NEW DELHI / Reuters Iraq replaced Saudi Arabia as top crude supplier to India in April as refiners moved to boost their processing margins by purchasing the cheaper Basra Heavy oil grade, ship tracking and Thomson Reuters trade flow data showed. India’s April imports from Iraq topped 1 million barrels per day (bpd) for the first time, up by about ...

CAIRO / Reuters Egypt has paid off $750 million of its debt to international oil companies and will make a second payment of the same amount at the start of next month, Central Bank Governor Tarek Amer said. Egypt has struggled to pay arrears to foreign oil and gas companies operating in the country, with outstanding debt at $3.5 billion ...

LONDON / Reuters The global oil market is rebalancing and the pace at which supply and demand are falling into line is picking up, even if inventories still fail to reflect the impact of OPEC supply cuts, the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday. In its monthly report, the IEA kept its global demand growth forecast for 2017 unchanged at ...

Bloomberg Kuwait joined Saudi Arabia and Russia in supporting an extension of oil-output cuts by OPEC and other global producers through the first quarter of 2018 to help trim global stockpiles. An extension of the cuts at already agreed-upon volumes is needed to reach the goal of paring world inventories to their five-year average, Kuwait’s Oil Minister Issam Almarzooq said ...