Bloomberg President Joe Biden is set to extend tariffs on imported solar equipment but leave in place a critical exemption, a senior administration official said, attempting a middle-ground approach intended to boost domestic manufacturing as well as US renewable energy deployment. The tariffs had been scheduled to expire in early February and will now run for another four years, ...
Read More »Oil majors close to erasing all losses since pandemic began
Bloomberg European oil majors are erasing their pandemic slump as tensions between Russia and the West drive Brent crude above $92 a barrel. The Stoxx Europe 600 energy sub-index is outperforming all other sectors on Friday as crude heads for its seventh week of gains. Shell Plc, BP Plc and TotalEnergies SE led the rally, and the companies have ...
Read More »Royal Dutch Shell finds oil in offshore Namibia field
Bloomberg Royal Dutch Shell Plc has made an oil discovery in Namibia, an area where previous explorers have largely failed to find commercial resources. Searching for oil and gas in the waters of the southwest African nation has been compared to the early days of the North Sea, where a number of wells were drilled before any significant discoveries ...
Read More »Texas cold snap deepens, and demand for power surges
Bloomberg The biggest test of Texas’s newly fortified power grid arrives Friday morning, when electricity demand is forecast to surge as waking residents crank up heaters in the sub-freezing cold. Shortly before sunrise in Dallas, it was 20 degrees Fahrenheit (-7 degrees Celsius). Midland, in the oil- and gas-rich Permian basin, was 10. Highs will only be in the ...
Read More »Focus on climate is the best news in India’s new budget
India’s federal budget, presented earlier this week, is both a presentation of the national accounts and the only statement of government policy that we get all year. This year, the accounts made for worrying reading. The government is short of money and the economy is short of momentum. As a statement of policy, however, the budget is far more ...
Read More »Facebook must solve its TikTok problem
Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. has suffered a string of public challenges in the past year as regulators intensified their scrutiny of the company and Apple rolled out a privacy feature that crimped a key source of user data. But as Meta’s wobbly revenue outlook made clear, the company is facing yet another threat to its business. The social ...
Read More »A return to normal life after Omicron requires vigilance
For the first time in a long while, there’s good news about Covid-19. The omicron wave is cresting in the US, and in many states is already receding. A respite from Sars-CoV-2 could well follow. And if new variants eventually emerge, it may be possible to live with them — that is, without shutting businesses, always wearing masks, and social ...
Read More »Joe Biden can’t ignore North Korea’s missiles much longer
Between Ukraine, Iran, Taiwan and Afghanistan, President Joe Biden has more than enough global problems to focus on. Unfortunately, he needs to add one more: North Korea. Dictator Kim Jong Un has ushered in the new year with a barrage of missile launches — 11 so far, including what now appears to have been the first test of an ...
Read More »Billionaire Bhatia to helm IndiGo after swing to profit
Bloomberg Rahul Bhatia, the billionaire co-founder of IndiGo, is taking on a newly-created executive position of managing director at the company, after the biggest budget carrier in Asia by market value posted a surprise quarterly profit. The appointment of Bhatia, which is effective immediately, signals a truce with fellow co-founder Rakesh Gangwal, who had accused Bhatia of corporate governance ...
Read More »Kenya Air picks advisers to evaluate debt restructuring
Bloomberg Kenya Airways Plc has selected financial advisers at Seabury Consulting to help the airline evaluate options to restructure its debt load, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The airline, in which the Kenyan government has a 48.9% stake, faces mounting debts and depressed passenger demand amid pandemic-related travel restrictions. A representative for Kenya Airways said the ...
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