Regional News

DUBAI / Reuters Saudi Arabia’s Al Borg Medical Laboratories, one of the largest private medical laboratory chains in the Gulf, has agreed to buy the lab business of Anglo Arabian Healthcare, majority owned by Waha Capital, sources told Reuters. The two parties signed an agreement in December though a number of terms and conditions remain to be met before the ...

  LONDON / Reuters Royal Dutch Shell on Wednesday urged oil pricing agency S&P Global Platts to protect the dated Brent crude benchmark from declining North Sea supply by including other grades, such as Russian Urals, in its price-setting process. The suggestion marks a shift from two years ago when Shell said adding Urals would not be “worth the trouble”. ...

  DUBAI / Reuters Saudi Electricity Co (SEC) swung to a first-quarter profit on Wednesday after a royal decree exempted the Gulf’s largest utility firm from municipality fees. The company, which the government is aiming to restructure to improve efficiency, made a profit of 4.94 billion riyals in the three months to March 31, a bourse statement said. This compares ...

  Bloomberg The amount of clean fuel that’s stored across the globe is set to increase as governments tackle pollution, according to the biggest independent storage-tank operator in the world. Royal Vopak NV sees consumption for cleaner energy increasing, and is changing its investment strategy to reflect that, Chief Executive Officer Eelco Hoekstra said in an interview in Kuala Lumpur. ...

  Bloomberg Centrica Plc, the UK’s biggest energy supplier, fell to the lowest in more than a year after customer losses continued this year and warm weather trimmed consumption of natural gas and power. The utility reiterated its opposition to price regulation, which would reduce competition, cut choice and lead to potentially higher average prices, according to a trading update ...

  Bloomberg Saudi Arabia and Russia signaled they could extend production cuts into 2018, doubling down on an effort to eliminate a supply surplus just as its impact on prices wanes. In separate statements just hours apart on Monday, the world’s largest crude producers said publicly for the first time they would consider prolonging their output reductions for longer than ...

  Bloomberg Bahrain’s foreign-currency reserves tumbled 11 percent in February, extending a decline that has fueled speculation that the island kingdom would either tap international bond markets soon or seek financial support from other Gulf Arab monarchies. Net foreign assets dropped to 645.2 million dinars, from 725.9 million dinars in January, according to central bank data released on Sunday. Overall, ...

  Bloomberg Iran’s gold jewellery demand climbed to a four-year high in the first quarter, as the rest of the Middle East was hurt by low oil prices. An improving economy helped Iran’s jewelry demand climb 27 percent from a year earlier to 12.9 metric tons in the first three months this year, the World Gold Council said in a ...

  Bloomberg Statoil ASA, Norway’s biggest oil and gas producer, rose the most in five months after first-quarter profit climbed on higher output amid recovering crude prices and as it deepened cost cuts to emerge from a downturn that has battered the industry for more than two years. The shares rose as much as 3.7 percent, the most since December ...

  Bloomberg The era of quantitative easing and emergency measures has left central banks with trillions in assets. In the case of the National Bank of Kazakhstan, it ended up with 10 percent in the country’s state oil company. Even as KazMunayGas National Co. prepares an initial public offering by 2020, the central bank will “stay a shareholder” and the ...