Reuters State oil giant Saudi Aramco <IPO-ARMO.SE> has signed a contract with Chinese oil refiner North Huajin Chemical Industries Group Corp to supply crude in 2017, two sources with knowledge of the matter said on Monday. The contract, the first between Aramco and Huajin, comes as Saudi Arabia attempts to regain its status as the top crude supplier to …

  Bloomberg In the snowy prairies of Western Canada, not even temperatures below -40 degrees have stopped Stampede Drilling Ltd.’s 60 recently rehired workers from manning the oil-service provider’s rigs after a nine-month dry spell for the business. “Once oil hit $50, everybody started phoning again,” Bill Devins, the drilling company’s 57-year-old owner, said in a phone interview from his …

  Reuters Iraq, OPEC’s second-largest producer, plans to cut crude exports from its southern port of Basra to 3.013 million barrels per day (bpd) in March, a loading programme obtained by Reuters on Monday showed. The March volume is 628,000 bpd less than what was planned for February and the lowest since the August programme, adding to signs that Baghdad …