Regional News

  Bloomberg Saudi Arabia will build a maritime complex on its east coast, with shipbuilding capability, to provide sufficient capacity for exporting oil, Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih said. The country, the world’s largest oil-producing nation, eventually will have a shipping fleet that will match its oil capabilities, Al-Falih said in Riyadh. Saudi Arabian Oil Co., or Aramco, will need more …

  Reuters National Shipping Company of Saudi Arabia (Bahri) is planning to increase its fleet size to around 46 ships by the end of 2018, a senior executive said on Sunday. The figure would likely make the company, the exclusive oil-shipper of Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest operator of very large crude carriers (VLCCs), Naser al-Abdulkareem, Bahri’s president of oil …

  Reuters A wetland in southeast Iraq, thought to be the biblical Garden of Eden and almost completely drained during Saddam Hussein’s rule, has become a UNESCO world heritage site, Iraqi authorities said on Sunday. Fed by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the marshlands of Mesopotamia are spawning grounds for Gulf fisheries and home to bird species such as the …

  REUTERS Kuwait’s Zain has communicated to Egypt’s telecommunications regulator its preliminary interest in obtaining a fourth-generation (4G) licence, the operator said in a bourse filing on Monday. Zain “is studying a number of investment opportunities available in the region, one of which is the Egyptian telecommunications market as a strategic market in the Middle East and Africa”, the company …

REUTERS Commercial Bank of Qatar (CBQ) has obtained a $166 million, three-year loan from international banks for general corporate purposes, it said on Monday. Seven lenders participated in the deal, with Mizuho Bank acting as sole co-ordinator, sole bookrunner and mandated lead arranger. Agricultural Bank of China, State Bank of India and Bank of Taiwan were also mandated lead arrangers; …

  Riyadh / REUTERS Saudi Binladin Group has asked for an extension on a 817 million riyal ($217.8 million) Islamic loan that matured last week and which was being used to fund construction work on the kingdom’s Grand Mosque site, according to sources aware of the matter. The request to delay the payment, originally due on July 15, was because …

  Jeddah / TNS The Kingdom ranked 33rd among 139 countries in the technology sector to be classified by the World Economic Forum as “top movers” in the field of information and communication technology. The Kingdom is trying to enter the club of top seven in the ICT world. The Ministry of Telecommunication and Information Technology said in a statement recently …

  REUTERS Saudi Arabia’s National Commercial Bank (NCB), the kingdom’s listed largest lender, reported a 3.2 percent rise in second-quarter net profit on Sunday, at the low end of analysts’ forecasts. The bank made a net profit of 2.44 billion riyals ($665 million) in the three months to June 30, up from 2.36 billion riyals in the same period of …

  REUTERS National Shipping Company of Saudi Arabia (Bahri) said on Sunday it signed a deal with Arab Petroleum Investments Corp. (APICORP) to launch a $1.5 billion investment fund that could buy up to 15 very large crude carriers (VLCCs). The fund will be seeded with $500 million on three occasions, subject to conditions, Bahri said in a bourse statement, …

  REUTERS Guards protesting over pay shut the eastern Libyan oil terminal of Hariga on Sunday, delaying two shipments of crude, a port official said. A unit of Libya’s Petroleum Facilities Guard (PFG) took the action because they said they had not been paid their salaries recently, the Hariga official said. He said the protest had delayed two tankers, one …