NEW YORK: Saudi Arabia and Russia are working on a historic long-term pact that could extend controls over world crude supplies by major exporters for many years.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said that Riyadh and Moscow were considering a deal to greatly extend a short-term alliance on oil curbs that began in January 2017 after a crash in crude prices.
“We are working to shift from a year-to-year agreement to a 10 to 20 year agreement,” the crown prince told Reuters in an interview in New York late on Monday.
“We have agreement on the big picture, but not yet on the detail.”
Russia, not a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, has worked alongside the 14-member group during previous oil gluts, but a 10 to 20 year deal between the two would be unprecedented.
Top OPEC producer Saudi Arabia recruited Russia and other non-OPEC countries to help drain oversupply when oil prices collapsed to below $30 a barrel in 2016 from over $100 in 2014.
Crude has since recovered to $70 but fast-rising output from US shale producers has capped prices.
“This is all about whether the arrangement is a short-term expedient to deal with this particular crisis in the oil market, or whether it reflects a realignment in world oil,” said oil historian Daniel Yergin, vice chairman at consultancy IHS Markit.
“OPEC countries want to find a way to institutionalize this relationship rather than to have it be a one-shot deal.”
Robert McNally at consultancy Rapidan Energy Group said Riyadh wanted help in breaking the boom-bust cycles that characterize oil markets by capping crude on the upside as well as by helping lift low oil prices.
“History shows that without a long-term, powerful, competent coherent, disciplined swing producer in the oil markets ... you get space-mountain oil prices. Wild volatility of the sort we have seen in the past 10 to 15 years and that Saudi Arabia and Russia do not want to see again,” McNally said.
He said that would require Russia to join Saudi in building spare production capacity to use when prices rise too much.
SAUDI, RUSSIA ALLIANCE “THICKER THAN OIL“
A long-term pact between Moscow and Riyadh would effectively co-opt Russia to the Saudi-led OPEC cartel while strengthening Russia’s hand in the Middle East where the United States has long been the dominant super-power.
News of the potential oil alliance came at a time when the two have been working to cement an economic relationship despite being at odds over the conflict in Syria, where they back opposing sides.
A meeting between the Saudi crown prince and Russian president Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of a G20 meeting in China in September 2016 was instrumental in bringing Russia on board to support OPEC, non-OPEC oil curbs.
Last October, Saudi King Salman became the first Saudi monarch to visit Russia, providing investment and political support for a Russian economy battered by Western sanctions.
“It is a very important strategic development,” Helima Croft at RBC Capital Markets said of a potential 10 to 20 year Saudi-Russia oil collaboration.
“First, the Crown Prince is making the statement, not the oil minister, one more clear sign that he (like Putin) is the final word on his country’s oil policy.
“Second it is one more sign of the major reversal in Saudi-Russia relations. Saudi was a staunch cold war ally of the US Now this Russia-Saudi alliance appears to be thicker than oil and seems to be driven by the personal affinity between Putin and MBS,” said Croft.
ARAMCO IPO LATE 2018, EARLY 2019
The crown prince predicted that world oil demand would not peak until 2040, despite advances in renewable energy technologies and the electric vehicle.
In an attempt to end Saudi Arabia’s reliance on oil, he is leading a push to diversify the Saudi economy away from oil and gas by 2030.
Riyadh plans to raise funds through the flotation of a 5 percent stake in state Saudi oil company Aramco. Time is running out for an initial public offering this year but the crown prince said the IPO could still take place at the end of 2018 or in early 2019, depending on financial market conditions.
Saudi Oil Minister Khalid Al-Falih said last week that documentation was ready but that a venue for the IPO had not yet been decided. The New York stock exchange is still in the running for the IPO, alongside London and Hong Kong, but Falih said there was a risk of a “frivolous” legal action if Aramco were listed in the United States.
OPEC seeks oil alliance with Russia for next 10-20 years - Saudi crown prince
OPEC seeks oil alliance with Russia for next 10-20 years - Saudi crown prince
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Europe to launch chamber of commerce in Riyadh
RIYADH: The first European Chamber of Commerce in the Gulf region will open next week in Riyadh, the EU’s special representative for the Gulf region has told Arab News.
Luigi Di Maio said the new body would bring Saudi and European companies together to enhance trade and cooperation.
“We’ve worked very hard with the Ministry of Investment, your Ministry of Trade. The EU delegation in Riyadh did a great job. And now we are going to inaugurate this chamber,” Di Maio said.
“That is in order to bring closer our companies, Saudi companies and European companies, to take on both sides the new opportunities of the Vision 2030 program … of our new European Green Deal, Next Generation EU, and others.”
Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 reform program had transformed the global business community’s view of the Kingdom, Di Maio said. “The ambitions, especially economic ambitions, of Saudi Arabia are totally changing perceptions of the Kingdom around the world,” he said. “There is a business community that is more and more interested in these ambitions, in this vision, and in a new generation of dreamers in this country.”
There was a growing recognition of the Kingdom’s diplomatic and economic influence, Di Maio said. “Saudi Arabia is becoming more and more the point of reference because now it is implementing its vision for the region that is not just an economic ambition, but is a new policy and new initiatives in order to de-escalate, to make the region in peace and wind down on tensions like the tension that we are experiencing now.
“The partnership and the strategic partnership between the EU and GCC countries, in particular with countries like Saudi Arabia, is vital.”
Police enter Columbia University building barricaded by students as protests rock US campuses
- Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry
- The protests have posed a challenge to university administrators trying to balance free speech rights with complaints that the rallies have veered into anti-Semitism and hate
NEW YORK: Dozens of helmeted police marched on to Columbia University’s campus in the heart of New York City on Tuesday and began evicting a building that had been barricaded by pro-Palestinian student protesters.
AFP journalists could see police climbing up to the second story of Hamilton Hall from a laddered truck and disappear inside, as student newspaper the Columbia Spectator said arrests were being made.
Hamilton Hall had been barricaded at dawn by students who vowed they would fight any eviction, as they protested the soaring death toll from Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
The action came as university administrators around the United States struggle to contain pro-Palestinian demonstrations on dozens of campuses.
The demonstrations — the most sweeping and prolonged unrest to rock US college campuses since the Vietnam war protests of the 1960s and 70s — have already led to several hundred arrests of students and other activists.
Many of them have vowed to maintain their actions despite suspensions and threats of expulsion.
“We will remain here, drawing from the lessons of our people (in Gaza) that stay put, and hold their ground even under the worst conditions,” a protester wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh headscarf, who declined to give her name, told reporters outside the hall earlier in the day.
As she spoke, protesters were seen using ropes to hoist crates of supplies up to the building’s second floor, apparently signaling the students were hunkering down.
President Joe Biden’s White House had sharply criticized the seizure of Hamilton Hall, with a spokesman saying it was “absolutely the wrong approach.”
“That is not an example of peaceful protest,” the spokesman added.
The protests have posed a challenge to university administrators trying to balance free speech rights with complaints that the rallies have veered into anti-Semitism and hate.
The unrest has swept through US higher education institutions like wildfire, with many student protesters erecting tent encampments on campuses from coast to coast.
At Columbia, demonstrators have vowed to remain until their demands are met, including that the school divest all financial holdings linked to Israel.
The university has rejected the demand, with president Minouche Shafik saying earlier that talks with students had collapsed.
Columbia has warned that students occupying the building face expulsion.
The university outlined in a press update Tuesday that those in the encampments and Hamilton Hall “number in the dozens,” while nearly 37,000 attend Columbia.
In one of the newest clashes, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, police moved in Tuesday to clear one encampment, detaining some protesters in a tense showdown.
Meanwhile at northern California’s Cal Poly Humboldt, a week-long occupation was brought to a dramatic end early Tuesday when police moved in to arrest nearly three dozen protesters who had seized buildings and forced the closure of the campus.
In Oregon, Portland State University’s campus was closed Tuesday “due to an ongoing incident” in the library, college authorities said, after local media reported around 50 protesters had broken into the building a day earlier.
And Brown University reached an agreement in which student protesters will remove their encampment in exchange for the institution holding a vote on divesting from Israel — a major concession from an elite American university during the protests.
Footage of police in riot gear summoned at various colleges has been viewed around the world.
UN human rights chief Volker Turk voiced concern at the heavy-handed steps taken to disperse the campus protests, saying “freedom of expression and the right to peaceful assembly are fundamental to society.”
He added that “incitement to violence or hatred on grounds of identity or viewpoints — whether real or assumed — must be strongly repudiated.”
Shafik said many Jewish students had fled Columbia’s campus in fear. “Anti-Semitic language and actions are unacceptable,” she said.
Protest organizers deny accusations of anti-Semitism, arguing their actions are aimed at Israel’s government.
The Columbia student group insisted their protest was peaceful and warned authorities against a crackdown similar to those that marred the anti-Vietnam War movement.
The Gaza war started when Hamas militants staged an unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7 that left around 1,170 people dead, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
During their attack, militants also seized hostages, 129 of whom Israel estimates remain in Gaza, including 34 whom the military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 34,535 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Nadal gets emotional after a loss in his last Madrid Open appearance. Alcaraz reaches quarterfinals
- Nadal: It’s been a gift what you’ve done for me during the 21 years that I’ve played here. All I can say is ‘thank you
- After the match, tournament organizers unfurled five banners for each of Nadal’s titles in Madrid — 2005, ‘10, ‘13, ‘14 and ‘17
MADRID: Rafael Nadal had to pause for a few moments, visibly emotional, while addressing the crowd after his loss in the fourth round at the Madrid Open.
As chants of “Rafa, Rafa, Rafa” echoed around, the five-time champion in Madrid made a farewell speech following a 7-5, 6-4 loss Tuesday to the 31st-ranked Jiri Lehecka.
It was likely his last official match at the tournament in the Spanish capital.
“This is a difficult day when it arrives, but it’s a reality. My body and my life had been sending me signs for some time,” Nadal said. “I was able to say goodbye playing on this court, one of the most emotional ones for me. Madrid at times has been more important to me than a Grand Slam. The memories here will stay with me forever.”
After the match, tournament organizers unfurled five banners for each of Nadal’s titles in Madrid — 2005, ‘10, ‘13, ‘14 and ‘17. They also showed a video of his highlights, as his wife and sister shed tears in the stands.
“It’s been a gift what you’ve done for me during the 21 years that I’ve played here,” said the 37-year-old Nadal, a winner of 22 Grand Slam singles titles. “All I can say is ‘thank you.’”
Nadal had not lost to a player ranked outside the top 20 on clay since falling to Pablo Cuevas in 2016 at Rio de Janeiro. He was seeking his 60th win in Madrid and the 100th ATP 1000 quarterfinal of his career.
Earlier, the player who Spanish fans hope will take over Nadal’s reign, Carlos Alcaraz, needed nearly three hours to beat Jan-Lennard Struff 6-3, 6-7 (5), 7-6 (4).
Both Spaniards are coming off injuries and are trying to get back in shape ahead of next month’s French Open. The 20-year-old Alcaraz missed tournaments in Monte Carlo and Barcelona. Nadal was coming off two matches in Barcelona after not playing competitively in nearly three months.
He arrived in Madrid saying he wasn’t fully fit and was worried about his condition, but in the end he won three consecutive matches without showing significant physical limitations.
“Just two days before I left for Barcelona I really didn’t know if I was going to be able to play again in an official match,” Nadal said, “and in the end I’ve played two weeks.”
The second-seeded Alcaraz was coming off two comfortable victories in Madrid but struggled on Tuesday. He squandered four match points against the 24th-ranked Struff while serving at 5-3 but converted on his first opportunity in the deciding tiebreaker at the Caja Magica center court.
“I wasn’t at my best physically toward the end of the match, but I’m happy that in the end I found my game,” Alcaraz said. “I fought for every ball and didn’t let down despite some difficult moments when things didn’t go my way.”
Alcaraz is trying to become the first player to win three straight Madrid Open titles. He also needed three sets to beat Struff in last year’s final. The world No. 3 will next face seventh-seeded Andrey Rublev at the clay-court tournament.
Top-seeded Jannick Sinner defeated 16th-seeded Karen Khachanov 5-7, 6-3, 6-3 to reach the Madrid quarterfinals for the first time. He is the only player to make it to the quarterfinals at all four ATP 1000 events this season.
“I made a couple of mistakes in the first set when he broke me, but this can happen,” Sinner said. “In the second set I tried to stay focused. Immediately, I broke him, and the confidence level raised a bit.”
SWIATEK RALLIES
Top-ranked Iga Swiatek rallied for a 4-6, 6-0, 6-2 win over Beatriz Haddad Maia to reach the semifinals for a second straight year.
After letting a 4-1 lead slip to drop the first set, Swiatek regained control in the second and third sets.
She will next face 18th-seeded American Madison Keys, who overcame eighth-seeded Ons Jabeur 0-6, 7-5, 6-1 after losing the first eight games of the match.
The Madrid Open is the only high-profile European clay tournament that Swiatek is yet to win.
MEDVEDEV ADVANCES
Third-seeded Daniil Medvedev was given the run around by Alexander Bublik before winning 7-6 (3), 6-4 to advance into a match against Lehecka.
“A lot of drop shots, and I got so tired in the end running for them,” Medvedev said. “That’s when you lose your concentration and you start to play a bit worse. But after the match he told me he was dead also. So, good for me, at least I was not the only one.”
World No. 8 Rublev advanced 6-2, 6-4 over Tallon Griekspoor and No. 22 Francisco Cerundolo upset two-time champion Alexander Zverev 6-3, 6-4 to set up a meeting with Taylor Fritz, a 7-6 (2), 6-4 winner over Hubert Hurkacz.
In-form Aubameyang aiming to fire Marseille to Europa League final
- Aubameyang has rediscovered the prolific form of his heady days at Borussia Dortmund and Arsenal, netting 27 goals in 46 games in all competitions
- Aubameyang and Marseille are on their third coach of the campaign, with Spaniard Marcelino Garcia Toral quitting in September
PARIS: Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is enjoying a stunning late-career revival at Marseille, whose unlikely run to the semifinals of the Europa League has been made possible largely thanks to the goals of the former Arsenal striker.
There was plenty of skepticism when Marseille signed the 34-year-old on a three-year deal after a poor last campaign at Chelsea.
The Gabon international had struggled to settle at Stamford Bridge at a turbulent time for the London club, and scored just one goal in only five starts in the Premier League.
However, the return to the country of his birth after a decade abroad has worked a treat, even in a Marseille side who have lurched through numerous crises over the course of the season.
Aubameyang has rediscovered the prolific form of his heady days at Borussia Dortmund and Arsenal, netting 27 goals in 46 games in all competitions.
His goals have not been enough to propel Marseille into the upper reaches of the Ligue 1 table, given that they currently sit seventh with only three games left.
That means there is a danger they won’t qualify for Europe at all next season.
Aubameyang and Marseille are on their third coach of the campaign, with Spaniard Marcelino Garcia Toral quitting in September after only seven games at the helm.
His decision to walk came after a fiery meeting between club management and unhappy supporters groups.
Marcelino was replaced with former Italy star Gennaro Gattuso, but he didn’t fare much better, lasting five months before being dismissed in February.
The current man in charge is Jean-Louis Gasset, the veteran 70-year-old who was available after leaving the Ivory Coast job during the Africa Cup of Nations.
Gasset has not been able to make Marseille more consistent domestically, but he has led them to victories in the Europa League against Shakhtar Donetsk, Villarreal — two former winners of the competition — and Benfica.
That run, including beating former European Cup winners Benfica on penalties in the quarterfinals, has led OM to a last-four showdown with Atalanta.
“We dream of evenings like these. This is a competition that suits us,” Gasset said after beating Benfica.
“We have got to the semifinals of a European competition having beaten three clubs who have won (European) trophies.
“It is an epic tale. A season can only be judged at the end, but we want to go as far as possible.”
That would mean getting to the final in Dublin on May 22 against either Roma or German champions Bayer Leverkusen.
Marseille, who lost the Europa League final in 2018 and the UEFA Cup finals of 1999 and 2004, would not be favorites in the final and are also probably the underdogs against Atalanta, conquerors of Liverpool in the last round.
But Aubameyang could be the man to make the difference.
After all, the forward who was on the books at AC Milan as a youth and who made his name at Saint-Etienne, is the all-time top scorer in the Europa League.
He has 34 goals in the competition, a tally that leaves him four ahead of Radamel Falcao, the next best marksman.
“It’s my competition,” he remarked with a smile when speaking to UEFA after starring in the 4-0 win over Villarreal in the last-16 first leg.
Eight of those goals came at Dortmund, while he got 14 for Arsenal, with whom he played in their defeat by Chelsea in the 2019 final in Baku.
He has 10 in 11 games in the competition this season for Marseille, including five in two games against Ajax.
“He is a champion and he has almost unique characteristics. He is one of the best strikers of the last 15 years,” Marseille president Pablo Longoria told La Gazzetta dello Sport.
“He has scored lots of goals and done so everywhere he has been. He is the best goal-scorer in the Europa League.
“We hope he will make his mark against Atalanta and stay with us until the end of his career.”
A 98-year-old in Ukraine walked miles to safety from Russians, with slippers and a cane
- Describing her journey, the nonagenarian said she had fallen twice and was forced to stop to rest at some points, even sleeping along the way before waking up and continuing her journey
KYIV, Ukraine: A 98-year-old woman in Ukraine who escaped Russian-occupied territory by walking almost 10 kilometers (6 miles) alone, wearing a pair of slippers and supported by a cane has been reunited with her family days after they were separated while fleeing to safety.
Lidia Stepanivna Lomikovska and her family decided to leave the frontline town of Ocheretyne, in the eastern Donetsk region, last week after Russian troops entered it and fighting intensified.
Russians have been advancing in the area, pounding Kyiv’s depleted, ammunition-deprived forces with artillery, drones and bombs.
“I woke up surrounded by shooting all around — so scary,” Lomikovska said in a video interview posted by the National Police of Donetsk region.
In the chaos of the departure, Lomikovska became separated from her son and two daughters-in-law, including one, Olha Lomikovska, injured by shrapnel days earlier. The younger family members took to back routes, but Lydia wanted to stay on the main road.
With a cane in one hand and steadying herself using a splintered piece of wood in the other, the pensioner walked all day without food and water to reach Ukrainian lines.
Describing her journey, the nonagenarian said she had fallen twice and was forced to stop to rest at some points, even sleeping along the way before waking up and continuing her journey.
“Once I lost balance and fell into weeds. I fell asleep … a little, and continued walking. And then, for the second time, again, I fell. But then I got up and thought to myself: “I need to keep walking, bit by bit,’” Lomikovska said.
Pavlo Diachenko, acting spokesman for the National Police of Ukraine in the Donetsk region, said Lomikovska was saved when Ukrainian soldiers spotted her walking along the road in the evening. They handed her over to the “White Angels,” a police group that evacuates citizens living on the front line, who then took her to a shelter for evacuees and contacted her relatives.
“I survived that war,’ she said referring to World War II. “I had to go through this war too, and in the end, I am left with nothing.
“That war wasn’t like this one. I saw that war. Not a single house burned down. But now – everything is on fire,” she said to her rescuer.
In the latest twist to the story, the chief executive of one of Ukraine’s largest banks announced on his Telegram channel Tuesday that the bank would purchase a house for the pensioner.
“Monobank will buy Lydia Stepanivna a house and she will surely live in it until the moment when this abomination disappears from our land,” Oleh Horokhovskyi said.
