KHOBAR / Reuters Saudi Aramco has received bids from international engineering companies to build gas booster compressor stations at Haradh and Hawiyah, industry sources said, as the country plans to diversify its energy mix. The contracts are part of a $4 billion scheme to increase gas production in the country for domestic consumption. Saudi Arabia’s domestic gas demand has been …

BEIJING / Reuters Russia held its spot as China’s top crude oil supplier for a fifth month in a row in July, with shipments up 54 percent over a year earlier, data showed on Wednesday. Russian shipments last month came in at 4.97 million tonnes, or about 1.17 million barrels per day (bpd), the General Administration of Customs said in …

KHOBAR / Reuters State-run Bahrain Petroleum Co (Bapco) will meet a consortium led by France’s Technip for further talks over the planned expansion of Bahrain’s only oil refinery, sources close to the matter told Reuters. Bahrain has long been planning to expand the Sitra refinery and industry sources told Reuters in April that all bidders for the work had been …

Bloomberg Home energy use is finally exciting to people. Unfortunately for the traditional utilities, it’s not because of them. A combination of new technology and a push toward low-carbon energy has caused customers at Europe’s largest and most-established utilities to flee. The average annual rate of leavers is nearly 12 percent, more than double the rate a decade ago, according …

Bloomberg Overseas fund managers and companies are tracking India’s efforts to force its biggest defaulters into insolvency proceedings as interest in buying distressed assets grows, according to investment bank Moelis & Co. A dozen companies in sectors including steel, power and construction may become buyout targets after the Reserve Bank of India ordered lenders to take them to insolvency court …

Bloomberg China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd. will raise as much as HK$88.1 billion ($11.3 billion) by selling new shares to its parent as part of a government-led ownership overhaul of the nation’s second-largest wireless carrier. Unicom plans to sell as many as 6.65 billion new shares to unlisted China Unicom (BVI) Ltd. at HK$13.24 apiece, or 10 percent higher than …

Bloomberg VIPKid, an online education company that matches Chinese students with North American teachers, was valued at more than $1.5 billion in a round of funding from investors including Sequoia Capital China and Tencent Holdings Ltd., according to people familiar with the matter. The Beijing-based company said on Wednesday it had raised $200 million to expand into new markets and …

After weeks of belligerent rhetoric, North Korea took a pause. But where is the mercurial Kim Jong Un headed next? US officials are debating whether he may want direct talks with Washington about a formal treaty to replace the 1953 armistice agreement that ended the Korean War. The US has been pursuing a dual path, threatening military conflict (semi-believably because …

Last Tuesday Donald Trump said that some of the people marching with neo-Nazis were “very fine people.” By Thursday, Trump shifted to talking more about monuments to the Confederacy—and so did many Democrats. And that drove a whole lot of people nuts, including several Republican anti-Trumpers who I think were quite sincere about it. Why, they wanted to know, were …

Britain’s labor market is powering ahead, and inflation exceeds the Bank of England’s target. Is it hot in here? Don’t expect Governor Mark Carney to cool things off. Here’s a major economy where price increases have not only picked up, but at 2.6 percent easily top the 2 percent target. Unlike in the US, the euro zone and Japan, a …