Regional News

Bloomberg Equatorial Guinea, OPEC’s newest member, is looking to build a $2 billion oil-refining complex that may be operated by Venezuela’s state-run crude producer PDVSA. The refining complex in Equatorial Guinea is expected be announced in January and take two years to be completed, Gabriel Obiang, Equatorial Guinea’s Minister of Mines, Industry and Energy, said in an interview while attending ...

Bloomberg Engie SA and Mitsui & Co. agreed to sell the Loy Yang B coal power plant in Australia’s Victoria state to Alinta Energy Holdings Ltd., boosting the Hong Kong-owned utility’s exposure to the fossil fuel. Alinta’s owner, Chow Tai Fook Enterprises Ltd., entered into a conditional binding agreement to buy the 1,000-megawatt station, the company said in an emailed ...

Bloomberg BASF SE said it’s in talks to combine its oil-and-gas unit with the energy company controlled by Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman, setting the stage for one of the largest deals in the sector for some time. The German chemicals company would hold a majority in the combined entity, with a view to a possible initial public offering “in the ...

RIYADH / PARIS / Reuters Toshiba-owned Westinghouse is in talks with other US-based companies to form a consortium to bid in a multi-billion-dollar tender for two nuclear power reactors in Saudi Arabia, three industry sources said. Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil producer, sent a request for information (RFI) to reactor builders worldwide last month in a first step towards ...

TUNIS / Reuters Libya’s Waha Oil Co is producing about 260,000 barrels per day (bpd), up more than 100,000 bpd from the company’s output levels this summer, but further gains are complicated by a lack of investment, its chairman said. Ahmed Ammar said Waha was aiming to increase output to 375,000 bpd by the end of next year but was ...

MOSCOW / Reuters Russia’s oil producers and energy ministry discussed a six-month extension to global oil output cuts, TASS news agency repor-ted, citing unnamed meeting participants, shorter than a 9-month extension floated by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Energy Minister Alexander Novak and domestic oil producers held a meeting last week to discuss the deal, which is scheduled to expire on ...

TUNIS / Reuters Poland’s dominant gas firm PGNiG has signed its first mid-term deal for liquefied natural gas (LNG) deliveries from the United States, as part of a wider plan to cut its reliance on Russian supplies, it said. State-run PGNiG said that as part of the deal, signed with Centrica LNG Co. Ltd, it will receive nine LNG shipments ...

Bloomberg A relentless flow of natural gas from America’s shale basins is drawing bears to the market — and that’s music to the ears of at least one Asia-backed investor. Kalnin Ventures LLC — an investment company with funding from Thailand’s largest coal miner, Banpu Public Company Ltd. — has spent about $417 million over the past two years snapping ...

Bloomberg OPEC has an Iraq problem: the group’s second-biggest exporter is lurching between quota busting and production-crimping crisis, clouding the policy-making picture as ministers decide how long they need to extend output curbs. After consistently exceeding its output quota all year, Iraqi production plunged in October when clashes between the federal army and fighters from the semi-autonomous Kurdish region disrupted ...

Bloomberg Centrica Plc will scrap its default tariffs for new customers by the end of March as part of a set of proposals for reforming the UK energy retail market. Removing the rolling plan, known as standard variable tariff, and replacing it with a choice of fixed-term contracts with a duration as long as three years will increase competition, the ...