BLOOMBERG - Vietnam’s state-owned oil company said South China Sea tensions will hurt oil and gas exploration and efforts to attract foreign investment to offshore fields.

ENERGYNOW - The head of one of Canada’s largest banks is urging the federal government to stem the flow of investment capital from this country to the United States — because, he warns, it’s already leaving in “real time.”

SAUDI ARAMCO - Saudi Aramco announces commercial cooperation worth over $10 billion with 14 American companies during Saudi-US CEOs forum in New York

SAUDI ARAMCO - Petroliam Nasional Berhad (PETRONAS), the national oil company of Malaysia, and Saudi Aramco, the national oil company of Saudi Arabia, are pleased to announce the formation of two joint ventures for the Refinery and Petrochemical Integrated Development (RAPID) project.

REUTERS - The final investment total for the 200 GW of generation, including the solar panels, battery storage and a manufacturing facility for panels in Saudi Arabia, will eventually total around $200 billion, Son said.

BLOOMBERG - Oil’s recovery to almost $70 a barrel hasn’t been sufficient to stimulate the return of enough investment in the sector, according to Saudi Arabia’s energy minister.

REUTERS - In a statement to the Shanghai Stock Exchange, Sinopec said it had allocated 117 billion yuan of capital expenditure for 2018, up from an actual spend of 99.38 billion yuan last year. That includes a 55 percent hike in upstream spending to 48.5 billion yuan, as China’s biggest refiner looks to make the most of a rally in oil prices since early February to over $70 a barrel.

GAZPROM - Gazprom continues to implement a number of strategic projects in the west. This work is key to the long-term development of Russia’s Unified Gas Supply System (UGSS) and the provision of reliable gas supplies to consumers in the European part of the country and the traditional European markets.

PLATTS - ExxonMobil remains more bullish on the future for oil, predicting that demand for oil will likely continue to grow by 19% to 117 million b/d to 2040.

PLATTS - The Russian energy ministry said there are many pilot projects introducing blockchain to Russia's energy sector in the development and discussion stage, which could have a "potentially significant" impact on optimizing oil and gas companies' costs.

EIA - Brent global benchmark crude oil price will increase throughout the projection period but will remain lower than prices during 2010–2014 in real dollar terms. For this reason, future investment growth in higher-cost resources is expected to be lower than in recent history. Global production of tight oil will increase by 3.3 million b/d, offshore deepwater by 2.7 million b/d, and oil sands by 1.4 million b/d between 2017 and 2040. Total production increases from these sources makes up nearly half of the long-term global liquids supply growth through 2040.

REUTERS - “The stability in oil prices is a net positive. If energy companies can demonstrate to investors that they can generate cash flow in the current oil price environment, they can go public,” said Grant Kernaghan, Citigroup’s managing director of Canadian investment banking. “The recent volatility hasn’t resulted in markets shutting down,” he added, suggesting equity markets were still open despite a 10-session period up to Feb. 8 when the S&P 500 dropped over 10 percent.

REUTERS - Israel expects a decision to go ahead with the construction of a 2,000 kilometer (1,243 mile) pipeline linking vast eastern Mediterranean gas resources to Europe to be made by early 2019, Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz told Reuters.

EIA - Nuclear electricity generation capacity in the Middle East is expected to increase from 3.6 gigawatts (GW) in 2018 to 14.1 GW by 2028 because of new construction starts and recent agreements between Middle East countries and nuclear vendors.

SAUDI ARAMCO - our industry needs more than 20 trillion dollars over the next quarter century to meet rising demand for oil and gas (including in ageing infrastructure).