Author: Admin

ISLAMABAD: The K-Electric had informed the concerned authorities in January about its fuel requirements for the month of June but the approval for oil import was not granted in time, it emerged Saturday. During a public hearing on Friday, K-Electric chief executive Moonis Alvi had also blamed the federal government for delaying the required approvals which curtailed its power generation capacity leading to excessive power outages in the metropolis. The crisis in Karachi has invited severe criticism from the opposition, government, and civil society, but the power utility said that…

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ISLAMABAD: The K-Electric (KE) and the power regulator on Friday hinted at inducting rental power projects and doing away with peak and off-peak tariff during the period of prolonged power cuts amid severe criticism from consumers over poor service and call for ending monopoly by allowing more utilities in the country’s largest metro-politan of 15 million. These were the key takeaways of a public hearing conducted by the National Electric network but the key problem was generation constraints. Nepra Chairman Tauseef H. Farooqi raised questions about the performance of the…

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The United States and Libya are probing a suspected scheme in which eastern Libyan strongman Khalifa Haftar is allegedly paying Nicolas Maduro’s regime in Venezuela U.S. dollars in exchange for gold, The Wall Street Journal reported, quoting Western and Libyan security officials. Libya’s government, against which Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) and affiliated factions are fighting in the civil war, has been tracking the commander’s private jet, which appears to have traveled to Venezuela’s capital, Caracas. According to the investigations reported by the Journal, the plane is suspected of loading…

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Marathon Petroleum Corp (NYSE: MPC) began restarting its 585,000 bpd refining complex in Galveston Bay that has been shuttered for more than a month now, according to Reuters sources. The complex—America’s second-largest refinery after Motiva–was shut on May 23rd as part of a massive overhaul. Marathon did not confirm the plans to restart, but the sources indicate that its 225,000 bpd Pipestill 3B crude distillation unit will be back in production sometime early next week. Pipestill 3B is one of two units tasked with breaking down crude oil into feedstocks…

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The record stockpile of natural gas in northwest Europe and Italy is eating into the regions’ thirst for Gazprom’s product, according to Reuters, and the Russian gas giant has lost more ground in terms of sales to the area compared to its competitors.  Gazprom’s falling natural gas exports to the region have caused Gazprom’s share of the natural gas market to fall by 4 percentage points in the first half of 2020, according to data compiled by Reuters and Refinitiv—from 38% a year ago to 34% now. Sales from Gazprom’s…

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ISLAMABAD: A sum worth Rs30 billion has been allocated to the Naya Pakistan housing scheme, Prime Minister Imran Khan announced in a live televised address on Friday, in line with helping the underprivileged class build their own homes. Addressing the nation after chairing a meeting of the National Coordination Committee on Housing, Construction, and Development, PM Imran said the scheme was aimed at the “working class, the welder, the small shop owner, who do not have a lot of money to build their own houses”. “The goal of the Naya…

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The world-famous Hagia Sophia museum in Istanbul – originally founded as a cathedral – has been turned back into a mosque. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the decision after a court annulled the site’s museum status. Built 1,500 years ago as an Orthodox Christian cathedral, Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest in 1453. In 1934 it became a museum and is now a Unesco World Heritage site. Islamists in Turkey long called for it to be converted to a mosque but secular opposition members…

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DUBAI: Malaysia recorded 4,233,425 tourist arrivals for the first quarter of 2020. This marks a decrease of 36.8% compared to the same period in 2019. The tourist expenditure for the first quarter recorded a total of RM12.5 billion, a decrease of 41.5% compared to RM21.4 billion registered for the same period in 2019. Per capita expenditure also showed a decline of 7.4% from RM3,201.8 in 2019 to RM2,964.5 this year. The average length of stay (ALOS) in Malaysia saw a decrease of 1.9 nights from 6.0 nights in 2019 to 4.1 nights. From January to March 2020, Malaysia received less tourists each…

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