Year: 2020

Saudi Aramco Retakes Crown From Apple As World’s Most Valuable Company

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Saudi Arabia’s oil giant Aramco reclaimed the spot of the world’s most valuable company after a relatively steady performance in Riyadh so far this month, while shares in Apple plunged amid a wider sell-off in tech stocks in New York. According to estimates from Bloomberg, Aramco – which became the world’s largest listed firm by market capitalization with its listing in December 2019 – has regained the top spot that Apple has held since July 2020 when U.S. equities and tech stocks in particular rallied on U.S. economic stimulus. At…

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Karak to get Rs12bn royalty funds in next five years: MNA

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KARAK: The ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf MNA Shahid Khattak has claimed that Rs12 billion oil and gas royalty funds would be spent on development projects in the Karak district in the next five years, including Rs1.3 billion during the current financial year. Talking to mediapersons here the other day, he said a high-level meeting held a few days ago chaired by provincial finance minister Taimor Saleem Jhagra had decided to utilise royalty funds on development of Kohat division. He claimed that oil and gas royalty funds would be spent with the…

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PPL in FY20

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The biggest challenge for the exploration and production sector in 2020 has been very weak oil prices – down almost 25 percent in FY20 year-on-year. In addition, falling oil and gas production volumes amid depleting resources have been a key concern for the domestic E&P sector. And hence market expectations for PPL’s performance in FY20 had been tainted by weak market dynamics. Against the backdrop, there is some good news and not-so-good news for Pakistan Petroleum Limited (PSX: PPL) than what had been anticipated. PPL’s financial performance has been affected…

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The End of Oil is Near, or Maybe Not

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The cover of the September/October 2020 issue of Sierra magazine states “The End of Oil is Near”.  The corresponding story “The End of Oil?” was paralleled with a recent segment on Democracy Now.  I think that is wishful thinking.  To the extent that oil demand goes down in the future, it will go down because people can’t afford oil distillates at the price producers need to produce the corresponding oil. The “The End of Oil?” article describes weak oil demand in recent years although it should be stated that global oil…

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Balochistan amends mineral laws to transform state-run entities

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QUETTA – The Balochistan government has brought changes in mineral laws to transform state-run minerals companies into vibrant and profitable entities, according to a senior officer of the Mines and Minerals Department. The move is meant to clear the path for the Balochistan Minerals Exploration Company (BMEC) and Balochistan Minerals Resource Company Limited (BMRL) to take mining lease in the province. After the amendment, it would provide legal cover to both the companies, the officer told APP. The initiative would lead to increase revenue generation in the province, he further…

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