Regional News

Bloomberg The priciest US gasoline may only be getting pricier. Since March 2017, filling up your car’s 20-gallon (75-liter) gasoline tank with premium has cost at least $10 more than if you’d pumped regular. The widening spread has been driven by additional demand for the fuel and by tightened air rules that have reduced supply. Those conditions are probably going ...

MANAMA / Reuters Aluminium Bahrain (Alba) , owner of one of the world’s largest aluminium smelters, will raise by the end of this year’s first quarter the final debt amount needed to fund its Line 6 expansion project, a company official told Reuters. With Line 6, Alba will become the world’s largest single aluminium smelter complex, increasing production capacity by ...

Bloomberg Chesapeake Energy Corp. shares jumped the most in almost two years, putting it on top of the S&P 500, after the shale explorer pledged to continue its push to cut spending and sell more assets in the year ahead. Chesapeake raised $1.3 billion last year from asset sales and has fired thousands of employees to cope with a burdened ...

MUMBAI / Reuters India state refiners expect their profit margins to hold their strength this year as demand growth accelerates for fuel products amid a record $93 billion spent on infrastructure and stable crude oil prices, company executives and analysts said. India’s sales of cars and especially motorbikes are forecast to rise rapidly, even as the development of a Delhi-Mumbai ...

Bloomberg Two of the world’s biggest energy producers have abandoned the sale of some of Australia’s oldest oil fields after running a 20-month sales process. Exxon Mobil Corp. and BHP Billiton Ltd. will retain ownership and operation of fields, licenses and associated infrastructure held in the Gippsland Basin Joint Venture after concluding a sale process, Exxon’s Esso Australia unit said ...

Bloomberg The rollercoaster that drags liquefied natural gas prices higher as demand jumps in the northern hemisphere winter is going into overdrive. After a winter in which an unexpected boost in demand from China pushed prices to three-year highs, spot LNG in northeast Asia has plummeted about 30 percent from its mid-January peak. Summer plunges and winter spikes are the ...

Bloomberg Centrica Plc stepped up its cost cutting drive and planned the sale of nuclear assets as its profit dropped. The UK’s biggest energy supplier increased its cost savings target by about 66 percent to 1.25 billion pounds ($1.73 billion) a year by 2020, Centrica said in its full-year earnings statement. It intends to sells its 20 percent stake in ...

Reuters Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) said on Saturday it had declared force majeure on the 70,000 barrels per day (bpd) El Feel oilfield after a protest by guards closed the field. El Feel was shut after guards withdrew from the field to push demands over pay and other benefits earlier this week. The NOC said force majeure was declared ...

Bloomberg The future is electric for BP Plc, though it’s not giving up on oil just yet. The British company bumped up its forecast for electric vehicles by 80 percent to 180 million by 2035, according to an energy outlook. It expects a third of the miles driven in 2040 will be powered by electricity. The company forecasts the abundance ...

MANAMA / Reuters Bahrain will go ahead with imposing a value-added tax to stren-gthen state finances, Minister of Finance Sheikh Ahmed bin Mohammed al-Khalifa said on Wednesday, after domestic political opposition slowed the plan. “We’ll be working with parliament on VAT and aim to have everything set up by the end of 2018,” Sheikh Ahmed told an investment conference in ...