REUTERS - Indeed, mining and heavy industry contributed the biggest gains in October, propelling overall industrial profits by 25.1 percent year-on-year to 745.4 billion yuan ($112.94 billion), compared with a 27.7 percent jump in September, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Monday.

BLOOMBERG - As Saudi Arabia led OPEC’s output cuts this year to shrink a global glut, it’s lost out on market share in the world’s biggest energy consumer. Russia in September retained the top Chinese supplier spot for the seventh straight month, while the kingdom was third.

Vietnam’s state television said Chinese President Xi Jinping had told Vietnam’s General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong he wanted to work with Southeast Asian nations on a code of conduct in the sea. China’s Xinhua news agency said China and Vietnam had agreed to properly handle maritime issues and strive to maintain peace and stability.

During President Donald Trump’s visit to Asia this week, a Chinese energy company pledged to spend almost $84 billion helping West Virginia build an entire supply chain that would bring the benefits of America’s shale gas boom to bear.

Within the grouping of Developing countries, India and China are the two nations with the largest additional energy demand over the forecast period, both in the range of 22–23 mboe/d.

President Donald Trump can return to the United States claiming to have snagged over $250 billion in deals from his maiden trip to Beijing. Whether those deals live up to the lofty price tag is another question altogether. Some huge deals were announced. Among them is a 20-year $83.7 billion investment by China Energy Investment Corp in shale gas developments and chemical manufacturing projects in West Virginia, a major energy producing state that voted heavily for Trump in the 2016 election.

China’s top state oil major Sinopec, one of the country’s top banks and its sovereign wealth fund have agreed to help develop Alaska’s liquefied natural gas sector as part of U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit, the U.S. government said on Thursday. The agreement will involve investment of up to $43 billion, create up to 12,000 U.S. jobs during construction, reduce the trade deficit between the United States and Asia by $10 billion a year, and give China clean energy.

Crude oil imports by China's independent refineries in eastern Shandong province, Xinhai Petrochemical in Hebei and Fengli Petrochemical in Henan rebounded 11% month on month to around 7.435 million mt in October, or 1.76 million b/d.

The step to restructure debt comes as Venezuela stands to receive more revenue for its oil. The country’s crude oil basket price rose to CNY350.75 ($52.90) a barrel Friday, the highest since July 2015. And Venezuela did approve a $1.1 billion principal payment on a PDVSA bond on Thursday.

The South China Sea is a major route for liquefied natural gas (LNG) trade, and in 2016, almost 40% of global LNG trade, or about 4.7 trillion cubic feet (Tcf), passed through the South China Sea.