Middle East & Africa
Monday, 08 August 2011 12:50
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JERUSALEM: Israel's finance ministry on Monday announced a 9.3 percent rise in the electricity price, citing disruptions in the gas supply from Egypt, even as Israelis protest nationwide over the cost of living.
The treasury stressed that it had kept the increase as small as possible, cutting in half the 20 percent rise that had been expected.
"Electricity will rise 9.3 percent primarily because of interruptions in the supply of Egyptian gas to electricity stations," finance ministry spokesman Boaz Stembler told AFP.
Israel's supply of gas from Egypt has been regularly disrupted since an uprising overthrew former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in February.
A pipeline that carries gas through the Sinai and on to Jordan and Israel has been blown up at least four times in recent months by unknown attackers.
The disruptions in gas supply have forced electrical stations to use coal and diesel fuel, both of which are more expensive, and prompted the ...
BAGHDAD: Iraq has qualified 41 companies to participate in its 4th energy bidding round, which is scheduled to take place in late January, Abdul-Mahdy al-Ameedi, director of the oil ministry's contracts and licensing directorate, told Reuters on Sunday.
The 4th bidding round for 12 new exploration blocs is expected to add 29 trillion cubic feet of gas and 10 billion barrels of oil to Iraqi reserves from the auction.
Copyright Reuters, 2011
...
KUWAIT: Crude oil prices should bounce back once global markets regain confidence following last week's downgrade of the US credit rating, the oil minister of OPEC-member Kuwait said on Sunday.
"We hope that this drop (in oil markets) does not last for a long time and we start seeing international markets recovering gradually after the panic we have seen from the situation in the US and Europe," Mohammad al-Busairi told Reuters in an interview on ...
JUBA: North Sudan has released a 600,000 barrel oil shipment of South Sudan held earlier over failed customs duties, a southern official said on Saturday.
"Now the shipment has left, the 600,000 barrels," David Loro Gubek, undersecretary at the ministry of energy and mining, told Reuters.
North Sudan said on Friday the crude cargo had been held at its oil export port, Port Sudan because the south had failed to pay custom duties.
Copyright Reuters, 2011 ...
SINGAPORE: The Middle East crude market slid on Monday after Formosa Petrochemical Corp, one of the largest refiners in Asia, shut its entire refinery for safety checks.
FORMOSA
- Formosa had to shut its 540,000 barrels-per-day (bpd) refinery as the Taiwanese government ordered safety checks after a weekend fire damaged power cables at the company's Mailiao production site.
Formosa has asked to defer term crude cargoes for August-loading from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, a trade source said, ...
BRAZZAVILLE: French oil major Total SA estimates an investment of $10 billion is needed to develop the Moho Bilondo Nord offshore project in Congo Republic, its chief executive has been quoted as saying.
"The Moho Bilondo Nord project is the future of petroleum exploration in Congo around 2015 to 2017," Congolese state media quoted Total's Christophe de Margerie as saying after a meeting with President Denis Sassou N'Guesso last week.
"A team is currently working to define ...
VIENNA: Austrian oil and gas giant OMV said on Friday that unrest in North Africa and the Arab peninsula led to an overall drop in its oil production in the second quarter of the year.
Oil and gas production fell by 14 percent to 275,000 barrels of oil equivalent (boe) per day in April-June, from 318,000 boe per day in the same period last year.
This was "mainly due to the ongoing political instability in Libya and ...
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