Regional News

Bloomberg Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Equinor ASA said they’re committed to a project that will allow the export of natural gas from Tanzania. Proposals to build a $30 billion liquefied-natural-gas plant (LNG), in gestation since 2014, have been clouded by policy uncertainty in Tanzania’s extractives industry. Investor sentiment toward the East African nation has been soured by the government’s ...

Bloomberg Zimbabwe’s government warned fuel suppliers who demand payment in foreign exchange that their licences to trade will be withdrawn. “All those caught selling fuel at prices not approved by Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority and those service stations either demanding payment in hard currency or engaging in other untoward trading will have their licences revoked,” Vice President Kembo Mohadi said. ...

Bloomberg A natural gas pipeline rupture in British Columbia forced refineries in Washington to cut output, pushing gasoline prices higher in the Pacific Northwest. Enbridge Inc.’s WestCoast Mainline ruptured near Prince George. The fire has been extinguished, Michael Barnes, a company spokesman, said. The line, along with an adjacent one, has been depressurized, and he said the company “cannot speculate ...

Bloomberg Miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo are seeking concessions under the nation’s new industry code and holding off challenging it through arbitration, in the hope they can still wring out a compromise in the world’s main source of cobalt and Africa’s biggest copper producer. Producers including Glencore and Randgold have opposed the new code that raised royalties, introduced ...

Bloomberg As Saudi Arabia looks to its oil reserves to underwrite a record share sale, the authority is backing a push into the industry’s less glamorous corners — refining and petrochemicals — to ensure crude keeps paying the bills. State-run Saudi Aramco is working on more than $100 billion of refining and chemical projects, according to Bloomberg calculations, and a ...

Bloomberg Chinese oil buyers are making a beeline for a bargain across the Pacific. With Canadian oil over 60 percent cheaper than US benchmark West Texas Intermediate and global marker Brent, China’s refiners are being lured to the heavy, sludgy crude. That’s because — apart from being a source of fuel — it’s rich in bitumen, a black residue used ...

Bloomberg The International Energy Agency (IEA) cut forecasts for oil demand this year and next because of growing threats to global economic growth, yet warned that dwindling spare oil supplies will keep prices high. Reduced growth estimates from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), trade disputes and the strain of high oil prices all fed into the downgrade to consumption, the ...

Bloomberg India is seeking $1.5 billion of investments from global oil producers and traders to build additional emergency crude reserves that will act as a buffer against volatility in oil prices. The plan is to build underground caverns that can hold a combined 6.5 million tons of crude at two locations, Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserves Ltd. Chief Executive Officer H.P.S. ...

Bloomberg Electric vehicles (EV) may be commonplace sooner than most people think, and that could signal a bonanza for Chilean lithium producer Soc. Quimica y Minera de Chile SA. Larrain Vial, Chile’s largest brokerage firm, sees global EV penetration at almost 21 percent by 2025, well above the market consensus of 8 percent to 20 percent, Alexander Varschavsky, a senior ...

Bloomberg Cracking down on fossil fuels could actually boost profits for the world’s biggest oil companies, though the industry must shift toward cleaner fuels or be left behind by investors, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Major producers including Exxon Mobil Corp., BP Plc and Royal Dutch Shell Plc can slash carbon emissions and still see “materially higher” returns on ...