Regional News

  Reuters A shift in the use of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to petrochemicals and away from transport has pushed demand for the fuel to new records in South Korea, after years of slumping consumption, a change which mostly benefits US suppliers. South Korea mainly used LPG to power cars up to 2010, but sales started to spiral down as ...

  Bloomberg OPEC could extend its oil supply-reduction pact with non-members or even apply deeper cuts from July if global crude inventories fail to drop to a targeted level, OPEC sources said. The group, together with Russia and other non-OPEC oil producers, agreed late last year to cut output by 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) to reduce a price-sapping ...

  Bloomberg Israel’s annual consumer price index rose in January for the first time since 2014, finally turning positive after two years of record low interest rates. The index rose 0.1 percent in January from a year earlier, having declined on an annual basis for 28 months, Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics said in a statement on Wednesday. Economists in ...

  Bloomberg The government of Oman is considering financing structures that let it get advance payments from oil traders, reducing the government’s need to borrow more money from banks, sources familiar with the matter said. Under the proposed structures, Oman’s national oil company might get paid as much as two years before oil was delivered, in exchange for price discounts ...

  Bloomberg President Donald Trump has overturned an Obama-era anti-corruption rule that would have forced oil, gas and mining companies to disclose payments to foreign governments, becoming the first president in 16 years to take advantage of a law that allows him to rescind a predecessor’s regulations. Trump signed a congressional resolution to repeal a Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure ...

  Bloomberg Eni SpA will start producing from the giant Zohr natural gas field off Egypt’s Mediterranean coast by the end of 2017 and plans to invest $10 billion in the North African country over the next five years, Chief Executive Officer Claudio Descalzi said. Production plans for Zohr are on schedule, and Egypt will be Eni’s top country for ...

  Bloomberg OPEC may be getting all the credit for reviving the oil market, but it had a little help. While the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries did spur a 28 percent recovery late last year by announcing production cuts, supply isn’t the only factor buoying the market: demand repeatedly beat expectations in 2016, and is set to surprise again. ...

  Bloomberg A crippled spillway is threatening to submerge an entire region of northern California after a recent deluge of rain. And the state’s power market may already be feeling it. As state officials rush to repair an emergency spillway for the Oroville dam — just 150 miles (241 kilometers) north of San Francisco — an 819-megawatt hydropower plant, capable ...

  Bloomberg Williams Cos. is following through on a promise to unload assets and double down in a region of the U.S. where natural gas production is still booming: the Marcellus shale formation. On Thursday, the master-limited pipeline partnership controlled by Williams Cos. said it had struck a deal with Western Gas Partners LP to exchange its 50 percent stake ...

  Reuters Russian crude imports to China have risen in early 2017 as the country’s independent, or teapot, refiners have expanded their diet to include the Urals grade, trade sources said on Tuesday. Russia could expand its market share in China, the second-largest oil consumer, this year after a drop in Brent prices relative to Middle East crude benchmark Dubai ...