Regional News

Bloomberg A $42 billion merger to create what would become the world’s largest gas producer is facing an unexpected hurdle from the US antitrust regulator that could derail the deal. The Federal Trade Commission indicated it wants Germany’s Linde AG and Praxair Inc. to sell more assets before it approves their deal, Linde said in a statement to the markets. ...

Bloomberg China is threatening to impose a 25 percent tariff on imports of US liquefied natural gas, potentially a major blow to an emerging American business. It’s the first time the fuel has been ensnared by the trade war, coming as part of a $60 billion response to a Trump administration plan to impose more levies. The move adds new ...

Bloomberg It’s turning into a good week for Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., South Africa’s state-owned electricity company. The cash-strapped utility’s borrowing costs fell as it tapped international debt markets for the first time in more than three years, barely a week after it secured a $2.5 billion loan from China Development Bank. It also moved closer to a wage deal ...

Bloomberg Saudi Arabia, which recently pledged oil-supply increases to tame rallying crude prices, cut production last month, according to OPEC delegates familiar with the matter. The biggest member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries pumped 10.3 million barrels a day in July, according to the delegates, who asked not to be identified because the data is private. The kingdom ...

Bloomberg Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Co. (Kufpec) is borrowing $1.1 billion to spend on oil and natural gas projects as the company plans to expand its shale operations, Chief Executive Officer Sheikh Nawaf Saud Al-Sabah said. Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. and Societe Generale SA were the joint lead arrangers of the five-year loan for Kufpec, a unit of state-run Kuwait ...

Bloomberg Saudi Arabia’s King Salman held his first-ever cabinet meeting in Neom, a planned $500 billion futuristic city that will host more robots than people in a desolate peninsula in the kingdom’s northwest. The sci-fi city on the Red Sea coast is designed to represent Saudi Arabia’s efforts to transform itself away from oil. The 82-year-old monarch’s visit there for ...

Bloomberg BP Plc reported a small and unusual loss from oil trading after being caught on the wrong side of Permian basin pipeline bottlenecks that prompted wild gyrations in US crude prices this year. “A lot of people got a little bit caught up in the bottlenecks in the Permian, we had some of that,” BP Chief Executive Bob Dudley ...

Bloomberg Crude dipped this month as a slew of factors from threats of weaker demand to key OPEC producers boosting output has weighed on the market. Futures in New York have lost almost 7 percent in July as some of the largest producers are seen raising supply levels. On Tuesday, prices also declined amid low-volume trading and a strengthening dollar. ...

Bloomberg Crude oil demand may be on the rise again, but Canadian National (CN) Railway Co.’s new leader insists energy shipments won’t displace longtime railroad staples such as grain and lumber. Grain farmers in the western Prairie provinces saw exports slow to a crawl when Canadian National proved unable to cope with a surge in demand starting in the second ...

Bloomberg Total SA raised its production target for the second time this year, accelerating its emergence from the oil slump as rising prices deliver a surge in profit. While the return of US sanctions on Iran derailed a major gas endeavor of the French energy giant, the move also boosted oil prices just as Total reaped the benefits of project ...