Regional News

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 …

Bloomberg The first major utility to embrace green power is cultivating its roots as a grid operator to insulate it from new rivals seeking a foothold in the electricity business. Iberdrola SA’s Chief Executive Officer Ignacio Galan said selling power directly to environmentally-conscious companies and running grids that earn a predictable return are at the heart of the strategy for …

Bloomberg Chesapeake Energy Corp’s agreement to sell shale assets in Ohio for about $2 billion boosted the natural gas producer’s shares as it moves to whittle down debt. The deal announced with closely held Encino Acquisition Partners is Chief Executive Officer Doug Lawler’s biggest in 3 1/2 years. After Chesapeake said almost all of the proceeds will be used to …

Bloomberg Europe will build more terminals to import US liquefied natural gas, the head of the European Commission told US President Donald Trump during a meeting aimed at averting a transatlantic trade war. “They want very much to do that, and we have plenty of it,” Trump said, referring to the US shale boom, which has unleashed record supplies of …

Bloomberg Saudi Basic Industries Corp, the Middle East’s biggest petrochemicals producer, posted an 81 percent increase in second-quarter profit on higher sales prices and volumes. Net income rose to 6.7 billion riyals ($1.8 billion) from 3.71 billion riyals a year ago, the company known as Sabic said in a statement. Revenue climbed 26 percent to 43.3 billion riyals. The company …

Bloomberg BP Plc agreed to pay $10.5 billion, its biggest acquisition in almost two decades, for most of BHP Billiton Ltd.’s onshore US oil and natural gas assets, including in the prized Permian Basin. The deal gives the London-based energy giant a position in the Permian, a swath of west Texas and New Mexico that’s the world’s fastest-growing major oil …