The Sinopec award comes on the heels of an agreement between Iraq and Total to jointly work on developing four associated gas and solar power projects.

The kingdom exported 5.63 million b/d in February, according to JODI data released April 19, down 957,000 b/d from January.

“We are on the right track and some progress has been made, but this does not mean that the talks in Vienna have reached the final stage,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh told a weekly news conference in Tehran.

The governments of France, Germany and the UK on 14 April responded to Iran's plans to enrich to 60% with "grave concern",

The two leaders are to hold broad talks on steps to further improve bilateral relations and to chair the first meeting of the Turkey-Libya High Level Strategic Cooperation Council.

With the production gains, OPEC+ compliance with its quotas slipped to 111% in March, compared with 113.5% in February, juiced by Saudi Arabia voluntarily cutting an additional 1 million b/d since January.

Iran has insisted that the US drop all the sanctions it unilaterally imposed after withdrawing from the deal in 2018, while US officials have maintained that Iranian nuclear violations of the agreement must be rectified first.

Upon closing, Aramco will receive upfront proceeds of around $12.4 billion, further strengthening its balance sheet through one of the largest energy infrastructure deals globally.

Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry on April 8 signed a memorandum of cooperation with the UAE's Ministry of Energy & Infrastructure to jointly consider developing an international hydrogen supply chain with an eye to supply the fuel to Japan.

The Kingdom wants to increase the generation capacity of renewable energy sources to about 58.7 gigawatts by 2030, of which 40 gigawatts (GW) would be from solar and 16GW from wind energy and the balance coming from other renewable energy sources,

A little more than a decade ago, the UAE made a firm commitment to become the first Arab nation to develop a peaceful nuclear energy programme.

Iran met in Vienna with the remaining signatories of the deal – the EU, UK, France, Russia, China and Germany. While the US was also in Vienna, it did not participate directly in those talks but met separately with the deal signatories in a different part of the city.

Iranian crude production has risen in recent months, hitting 2.14 million b/d in February, a 190,000 b/d increase from a 33-year low of 1.95 million b/d in August.

The UAE Regional Dialogue for Climate Action concluded on 4 April, convening climate leaders from across the MENA region to accelerate progress on climate action.

The United Arab Emirates and the US announced their joint commitment to tackle the climate challenge in a joint statement that stresses the importance and urgency of raising global climate ambition.