Oil Unlikely to Escape $60-70/bbl Prices in 2019. The direction of the oil price in the last 12 months can be described as peculiar but predictable. After a relatively mundane first half of 2018, trading in the second half saw bouts of extreme bearish and bullish excitement.
BP Invests in Technology to Help Upstream Business. BP Ventures invested $5 million in Belmont Technology to enhance BP’s upstream artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, the company announced Monday.
CNOOC Leading the Way for China's NOCs. Earlier this week, CNOOC Limited unveiled plans to raise capital spending over the next two years to boost production. As Rigzone reported Wednesday, the Chinese national oil company (NOC) intends to:
Increase its total capital budget by approximately 14 percent
Raise net production to 545 million barrels of oil equivalent in 2021 – a nearly 15-percent increase from the company’s estimated 2018 net production
Spud 173 exploration wells, acquire nearly 11,000 square miles of new 3D seismic and bring six new projects onstream this year
Eni Bags Stake in World's 4th Biggest Refinery. After months of courting oil officials in Abu Dhabi, Claudio Descalzi got his prize: a stake in the world’s fourth-largest oil processing plant.
The chief executive officer of Rome-based Eni SpA has sunk billions of dollars into three oil and gas production and exploration concessions in Abu Dhabi since March. But on frequent visits to the United Arab Emirates -- at least three since November -- he repeatedly expressed interest in a piece of Abu Dhabi National Oil Co.’s 922,000 barrel-a-day refining business.
Apple sales in China drop 27%. Apple sales in China dropped 27 percent in the final quarter of 2018, with CEO Tim Cook admitting that higher iPhone prices are a "factor" in the decline.
The United States tech giant said it brought in $13.2 billion in China in the holiday quarter, down from nearly $18 billion during the same period in 2017.
Africa offers opportunities for fintech development. Digital financial inclusion could become a highlight in China-Africa collaboration, with great potential for social benefits and business success ready to be unleashed, experts said.
"Africa is extremely interested in China's practice of digital financial inclusion, or how China has leveraged digital technologies to make financial services accessible for previously underserved small businesses and individuals," said Bei Duoguang, president of the Chinese Academy of Financial Inclusion, or CAFI, which functions under the aegis of Renmin University of China.
Expert: Slowdown in semiconductor industry to continue in 2019. The semiconductor industry will continue to slow down its global growth this year, mainly due to the slump in dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, chips, according to an industry expert.
Luring back consumers with smart tech. In China's saturated smartphone market, industry players are desperately rethinking survival strategies.
Alarm bells started ringing louder last month as soon as Apple Inc announced its sales have slowed. This came amid slower economic growth, and against a backdrop of a trade dispute with the United States and intensified competition among big brands.
