BEIJING / Reuters China is pulling in ships from all over to avoid a natural gas supply squeeze ahead of another cold snap and as the world’s most populous nation prepares for Spring Festival celebrations. Fuel demand in January and February typically slows as temperatures improve compared with the busiest month, December, but data suggests this year could buck the …

Bloomberg The global oil industry’s backlog of big drilling projects is starting to shrink as prices improve. From production vessels tapping Brazil’s deep-water reserves to pipes connecting rigs to underwater wells in China, the number of ventures delayed since the oil crash that finally got approval to get off the ground totaled 18 last year, according to a report by …

Bloomberg Scraping the bottom of the oil barrel for cheap fuel may be turning into a multi-billion-dollar headache for India’s largest crude refiner. The South Asian nation’s battle against pollution has left Indian Oil Corp. searching for alternative markets to sell petroleum coke, the cheapest and dirtiest among the oil products. A host of new limits on the fuel’s use …

Bloomberg FirstEnergy Corp. rose the most in almost a decade after announcing a $2.5 billion equity investment by a group including Elliott Management Corp. As part of the deal, the Akron, Ohio-based utility owner is forming a “restructuring working group” that will seek to minimise the time needed to exit the unregulated power business, according to a statement. The company …

Bloomberg As Nordea Bank AB blazes a trail in Europe by banning its employees from trading Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, the regulator is taking a back seat in a decision-making process it says is better left to the industry. Sweden’s Financial Supervisory Authority thinks “every institution must decide on the details of their internal regulations specifying the rules for their …

DUBAI / Reuters Citigroup has won formal approval from Saudi Arabia’s Capital Market Authority to begin investment banking business there, the US bank said on Tuesday. More than a dozen foreign banks have licences to operate branches in Saudi Arabia, battling for business resulting from the kingdom’s reforms to wean its economy off oil revenues. Citi was among the banks …

Bloomberg Governor Haruhiko Kuroda delivered a message to investors speculating that the Bank of Japan might be nearing the start of policy normalisation: Not so fast. Kuroda said the BOJ wasn’t in a position to even consider exiting its current policy, after it maintained its massive stimulus program and kept its inflation and economic forecasts unchanged earlier on Tuesday. “Given …

Bloomberg The African Development Bank plans to increase its loans to Nigeria by more than $2 billion next year with investments in energy, infrastructure and agriculture, its President Akinwumi Adesina said. “The total portfolio we have in Nigeria is $6 billion,” Adesina said in a Jan. 18 interview in Abuja, the capital. “We expect that by the year 2019, we …

Bloomberg Foreign-currency trading on Egypt’s interbank system has climbed to $14.5 billion since the November 2016 decision to float the currency, central bank Governor Tarek Amer told Bloomberg. Bank trading in dollars — almost non-existent before the float — had reached $9 billion in September. The 60 percent rise since then reflects growing confidence in the economy after reforms aimed …

Bloomberg Europe’s financial technology startups are on hiring mode, fighting each other – and the incumbents — in what one executive described as a “war for talent.” Payments company GoCardless Ltd., which employs 170 people in London, will open a Paris office in February, said chief product and technology officer Carlos Gonzalez-Cadenas. Online lender LendInvest Ltd. said it will make …