Regional News

  Bloomberg There are limits to investors’ love affair with OPEC. After unprecedented optimism that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will manage to ease a global supply glut, money managers reduced their bets on rising West Texas Intermediate prices for the first time in a month. While the group and other major exporters are pumping less crude, US inventories ...

  Bloomberg Egyptian Finance Minister Amr El-Garhy said he expects surging inflation to peak by the end of the first quarter as the price shocks following an increase in fuel prices and the pound’s flotation fade. El-Garhy said policy makers expected prices to jump after currency controls were abandoned in November to help Egypt clinch a $12 billion International Monetary ...

  Reuters Iraq, OPEC’s second-largest producer, plans to cut crude exports from its southern port of Basra to 3.013 million barrels per day (bpd) in March, a loading programme obtained by Reuters on Monday showed. The March volume is 628,000 bpd less than what was planned for February and the lowest since the August programme, adding to signs that Baghdad ...

  Bloomberg The latest challenge facing a $27 billion liquefied natural gas terminal that Malaysia’s Petroliam Nasional Bhd. wants to build in western Canada: the race for the office of the premier in British Columbia. John Horgan, leader of the province’s opposition New Democratic Party thrust the LNG project into the middle of his campaign on Friday, telling reporters it ...

  Bloomberg Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.’s chief executive officer unexpectedly left after just three years, leaving the world’s largest maker of cheap copycat medicines floundering for a new boss as its outlook dims and the shares slump. Chairman Yitzhak Peterburg became CEO on an interim basis following Erez Vigodman’s departure, and a search is underway for a successor, the Petach ...

  Bloomberg OPEC achieved the best compliance rate in its history at the outset of an accord to clear the oil glut, a plan that’s being supported by surprising strength in demand, the International Energy Agency said. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries implemented 90 percent of promised output cuts in January, the first month of its agreement, as key ...

  Bloomberg Petroleo Brasileiro SA’s $5.2 billion sale of a natural gas distribution unit to Brookfield Asset Management Inc. and other investors has just hit a legal snag. A Brazilian federal judge granted an injunction against the acquisition of Nova Transportadora do Sudesteon on grounds that the sale wasn’t sufficiently publicized to foster competition, according to a copy of the ...

  Bloomberg Saudi Arabia is trying to make sure crude buyers in the world’s biggest oil market aren’t lured by rivals while it curbs output as promised. Saudi Arabian Oil Co. will sell full volumes of contractual supply for March to Asian refiners, according to people with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be identified because the information ...

  Reuters Creditors have agreed in principle to Saudi Binladin Group’s (SBG) request for a two-year extension on a 10 billion riyal ($2.7 billion) Islamic credit facility used to pay for delayed building work at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, sources said. Reuters reported last month that SBG had asked a syndicate of banks for the credit to be extended ...

  Bloomberg Total SA raised its dividend by 1.6 percent and said it may give the go-ahead for almost a dozen new projects in the next 18 months after fourth-quarter profit beat analysts’ estimates. “We’re going to propose to increase the dividend as we have confidence in the future,” Chief Executive Officer Patrick Pouyanne told reporters in Paris. “My goal ...