DUBAI (Reuters) – A slide in solar power costs and a surge in oil prices over the last few years has made solar power a win-win strategy for Saudi Arabia: saving billions of dollars of crude for export while making electricity at less than half the cost.

Riyadh plans to install 41,000 megawatts (MW) of solar power over the next 20 years, but to date has built only 12 MW – or less than even Britain installed in early May.

DUBAI/DELHI, May 9 (Reuters) – Iran has offered new, more
alluring terms to reluctant Indian companies to win the
investment it craves for its decaying energy sector suffering
from tight Western sanctions.

Iran started offering production sharing contracts (PSCs),
long denied to investors, to a group of Indian oil executives
visiting Tehran in January, an Indian industry source said on
Thursday.

DUBAI, April 30 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell has beaten
France’s Total to a multi-billion-dollar project to develop a
tricky gas field with Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. (ADNOC).

The choice of Shell ahead of rival bidder Total
offers the Anglo-Dutch energy giant a chance to prove
the effectiveness of its latest sour gas treatment technology in
a project on the Bab field that has been valued at around $10
billion.

DUBAI, April 23 (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia’s atomic energy ambitions are grand enough to grant
several reactor vendors multi-billion dollar contracts to keep them busy building in the desert
for decades.

The fortunes of nuclear power plant builders around the world sank when a tsunami smashed
into Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant in March 2011, sparking the worst nuclear crisis since the
Chernobyl disaster.

DUBAI, April 23 (Reuters) – Fuel made from Iranian oil is
legally powering thousands of flights a year out of Dubai’s
booming airport, despite U.S. pressure on buyers to shun
Tehran’s petroleum exports.

It may even fuel U.S. allied military jets in the Middle
East.

Washington and the European Union have slashed Iran’s
exports in half over the last year by leaning on importing
coutries to find alternative feedstock for their refineries.

DUBAI/KHOBAR (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia is unlikely to produce much shale gas this decade, hampered by scarce water and prices fixed far below production costs, but it has the reserves, the desire and the potential to become a shale giant one day.

The world’s biggest oil exporter already has sizeable reserves of conventional gas, but more than half is trapped in oil fields whose production is driven by OPEC oil policy. Increases in output are not expected to keep pace with the economy’s voracious appetite for gas to fuel power, petrochemical and desalination plants.

DUBAI/KHOBAR, April 3 (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia is unlikely
to produce much shale gas this decade, hampered by scarce water
and prices fixed far below production costs, but it has the
reserves, the desire and the potential to become a shale giant
one day.

The world’s biggest oil exporter already has sizeable
reserves of conventional gas, but more than half is trapped in
oil fields whose production is driven by OPEC oil policy.
Increases in output are not expected to keep pace with the
economy’s voracious appetite for gas to fuel power,
petrochemical and desalination plants.

DUBAI (Reuters) – UK stocks of liquefied natural gas have swollen over the last week, data from National Grid shows, after three big Qatari deliveries helped replenish low heating fuel supplies during the coldest March in over half a century.

Britain’s relatively small gas stocks fell to just 2,594 gigawatt hours (about 225 million cubic metres) on Saturday, according to the latest data from National Grid, as prolonged cold weather kept heating demand well above seasonal norms.

DUBAI (Reuters) – Three big Qatari liquefied natural gas (LNG) deliveries should help replenish vital heating supplies for snow-covered Britain this week, but UK gas stocks remain uncomfortably tight with weeks of abnormally cold weather still to come.

A late blast of winter weather has drained Britain’s already modest gas stocks to around a tenth of their capacity, sparking fears of supply restrictions with the cold weather forecast to continue into early April.

DUBAI, March 7 (Reuters) – Iran’s oil export revenues are
helping Indian rice exporters to claw back some of the lucrative
business lost to cross-border truckers in Pakistan as a result
of Western sanctions.

Indian rice exports direct to Iran have bounced back, thanks
to shippers being paid up front in rupees from a huge pool of
oil money owed to Iran by Indian refiners.