Bloomberg BHP Billiton Ltd., the largest overseas investor in US shale, boosted spending on its onshore oil and gas division as rising prices lure drillers to add rigs and spur a deals spree. The company boosted spending on the unit to $165 million in the three months to December 31, from $108 million the previous quarter, according to a ...

  Bloomberg General Electric Co.’s woes in the oil patch persisted in the fourth quarter, denting sales and dragging down shares to their biggest decline in four months. Weakness in the oil and gas unit, which makes drilling equipment and pipes, will probably linger into this year after an “extremely difficult” 2016, Chief Financial Officer Jeff Bornstein said on a ...

  DALLAS / AP TransCanada has quickly filed a new application to build Keystone XL, one of two big oil pipelines being given a second chance by President Donald Trump. Former President Barack Obama rejected the Keystone XL in 2015. The Army halted construction of the Dakota Access pipeline last month. The move by Trump fulfills a campaign promise to ...

  Bloomberg Three months into a cash ban that has sucked out momentum from one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has little room to boost spending. While economists urge more investment in roads, ports and railways when the government presents its budget February 1, and maybe even direct cash transfers to boost consumption, a splurge carries ...

  Bloomberg North Korea’s 5 megawatt nuclear reactor at Yongbyon is showing a water plume, indicating that the plant is probably operating at the facility, a US research institute said. The facility, which had suspended operations in late 2015, is capable of producing enough plutonium to assemble one atomic bomb every year. Satellite pictures taken Jan. 22 show emissions from ...

  Bloomberg Consumers across the globe donning gloves to do the dishes may soon feel the heat from rubber being burned on China’s roads. Surging car sales in China in the last few months have more than doubled the price of a little-known chemical called butadiene. The colorless gas, used for making synthetic rubber, has soared in tandem with rising ...

  Bloomberg China home prices increased last month in the fewest cities since January last year, signaling property curbs to deflate a potential housing bubble are taking effect. New-home prices, excluding government-subsidized housing, gained last month in 46 of the 70 cities tracked by the government, compared with 55 in November, the National Bureau of Statistics said. Prices dropped in ...

  President Trump’s slash-and-burn actions in his first week have been dramatic, but dangerously lacking in a consensus of support, even within his own administration. The risks were evident in the collapse of a planned meeting with Mexico’s president and in Trump’s embrace of torture tactics rejected by his secretary of defense and CIA director. Trump’s ‘tweet from the hip’ ...

  Indian bank investors are in for a rude shock, and one that’s got little to do with the chaos unleashed by demonetization. The fault lies in shareholders’ own expectations, which, in Morgan Stanley’s words, are driven by “institutional memory.” The top three Indian private-sector lenders by assets — ICICI Bank Ltd., HDFC Bank Ltd. and Axis Bank Ltd. — ...

  With Britain poised to quit the European Union, Prime Minister Theresa May needs all the friends she can get. That helps explain her visit to White House, President Donald Trump’s first from a foreign head of state. The question is, what’s in it for him? Like so much else in the Trump era, this rapprochement is both unpredictable and, ...