Saudi Arabia is sending an ever-larger portion of its crude to China - with the US losing out.

Russian and Saudi Arabian companies are considering expanding existing energy cooperation to include new joint oil and gas, petchems and nuclear projects,

Saudi Arabia's real non-oil growth is expected to strengthen to 2.9 percent in 2019 as government spending and confidence increase, but real GDP growth is projected to slow to 1.9 percent as real oil growth slows to 0.7 percent with the implementation of the OPEC+ agreement.

The Alfanar Group, one of Saudi Arabia’s largest industrial conglomerates, has announced that it will set up a renewable energy office in the UK, through its subsidiary ‘Alfanar Energy UK Ltd.’ The new subsidiary will be headquartered in London, tapping into the UK’s highly skilled workforce and creating up to 30 jobs.

Russian President Vladimir Putin struck a deal with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman to extend the OPEC+ agreement at current production levels for the rest of this year and potentially into early 2020.

The countries signed an $8.3 billion economic cooperation pact that included a $6 billion deal between Saudi Aramco and the Korean company S-Oil to build an oil refinery and downstream petrochemical facilities in South Korea.

Saudi Arabia’s crude oil production approached a four-year low, averaging an estimated 9.9 million barrels per day (b/d). Production declined more than 1 million b/d since its estimated all-time high production levels in October and November 2018

OPEC and 10 non-OPEC partners, led by Russia, agreed in December to cut a combined 1.2 million b/d of production in the first half of 2019.

In line with plans to localise the production of renewable energy in Saudi Arabia as part of its Vision 2030 economic diversification push, seven photovoltaic solar power projects with a capacity of 1.52 GW and worth $1.51bn (SAR5.6bn) were launched on the side-lines of the recently concluded Saudi Elenex exhibition.

The Arab Petroleum Investments Corporation (APICORP), a multilateral development financial institution, forecast in its MENA Annual Energy Investment Outlook 2019 that current and planned energy investments in the region add up to $1trn for the next five years.