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London: Oil prices rose on Friday and are expected to record their biggest weekly gains since late August, as investor concerns about the potential impact of omicron COVID-19 variants on economic growth and fuel demand diminished.

At around 3:15 pm Riyadh time, Brent crude oil rose 1% to US$75.16 per barrel, while the US benchmark WTI crude oil also rose 1% to US$71.68. Both of these results have improved by more than 7% this week, and are the first weekly improvement in seven weeks.

However, since the omicron was confirmed on November 23, Brent crude oil has still fallen by more than 7%.

Since the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies (collectively referred to as OPEC+) agreed on December 2 to advance the January production increase plan, prices have been rising.

OPEC+ made this decision under pressure from the world's largest crude oil consumer, the United States. The United States has been pushing oil prices down and worried that the omicron variant may hurt demand, as forecasts show supply overruns from January. The release of strategic oil inventories led by the United States will increase the surplus.

"The market has made a good decision," an OPEC representative told Reuters. "Different news caused short-term negative emotions, and there is no clear evidence."

Although the new round of movement restrictions due to the omicron variant may affect demand, strict travel restrictions were not restored during the early wave of the pandemic.

At the same time, OPEC+ has been lifting last year's record production limit through monthly increases. Due to the lack of the ability to increase production to some of the alliance's producers, it has been unable to deliver on its promises.

Christyan Malek of JP Morgan Chase and other analysts believe that oil prices may be higher in 2022. They believe that OPEC+ will find it difficult to increase 250,000 barrels of oil per month, and in a report on November 29, they predicted that oil prices will be $125 next year.

Neal Atkinson, a senior oil analyst and former senior official of the International Energy Agency, said that OPEC+'s decision will benefit both producers and consumers.

He said that the actual increase in OPEC+ may be less than 400,000 barrels per day, so it is unlikely to expand the expected oil surplus in the first quarter, and it is difficult to see the intensity of the earlier blockade recover.

"I suspect there will be a major demand shock," he said. "OPEC+ did the right thing. So far, as demand has rebounded and prices have risen to a fair and balanced level, they have cautiously increased oil."

December 10th marks the fifth anniversary of the founding of OPEC+. The official name is the Declaration of Cooperation (DoC) between OPEC member states and 10 non-OPEC oil-producing countries.

On this day in 2016, OPEC member states and Azerbaijan, Kingdom of Bahrain, Brunei Darussalam, Equatorial Guinea (later joining OPEC), Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mexico, Sultanate of Oman, Russian Federation, Republic of Sudan and South Sudan In September of the same year, the Republic reached an agreement to reduce its global supply by 1 million barrels per day and gathered at the OPEC headquarters in Vienna, Austria.

"Looking back at 2016, few people believe that cooperative efforts will develop and develop into a strong major cooperative force to help restore the much-needed stability of the global oil market," OPEC Secretary-General Mohamed Sanussi Barkindo (HE Mohammad) Sanusi Barkindo) said. “However, these 23 oil-producing countries continue to meet the challenges they face, including formulating effective and far-sighted policies to deal with the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

(Reuters contributed to this article.)

London: In the past decade, promoting the merits of the environmental, social and governance agenda has been a major issue for large investors. 

And, despite the controversy over the return, it was very successful. Blue chips and even small companies now produce detailed reports to show how they accept ESG and incorporate it into board policies and decisions.

In addition, the bank refused to provide loans to companies involved in industries deemed ESG violations. 

Last week, US banking giant Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser said that if customers fail to meet its climate goals, the bank will abandon customers.

In Europe, banking regulators are even considering imposing higher capital requirements on banks whose ESG commitments do not meet accepted norms.

This can be difficult. ESG is a fairly broad term that can cover a range of fields from fossil fuels to the defense industry. In short, from an investor's point of view, this basically means investing your money in companies that you believe are performing well, and taking your cash out of companies that are deemed to be performing poorly.

However, more and more people oppose the impact of ESG on companies.

Earlier this month, Rupert Soames, the CEO of the British outsourcing group Serco, was also the grandson of Sir Jazz. Winston Churchill warned that the growth of ESG is preventing companies from engaging in contracts that are vital to British national security. Serco stated that after fund managers warned them that they would give up their shares in the company, it has decided to avoid contracts with the British Atomic Weapons Agency.  

Soms said: "The unintended consequence of this for the government is that their suppliers will find it harder or more expensive to finance themselves in the public market."

Currently, few industries place more emphasis on the unintended consequences of ESG than the energy industry.

ESG pressure has played a role in the sharp decline in oil and gas investment, as energy companies are under pressure to return funds to shareholders and invest more in the transition to greener energy and away from fossil fuels. 

A recent Goldman Sachs report noted that in the past decade, financial markets have been increasing the cost of capital for high-carbon investments in industries such as offshore oil and liquefied natural gas.

If this has not had enough impact on investment, this year the International Energy Agency issued a heavy warning, requiring investors to stop funding new oil and gas projects to ensure that the world achieves net zero emissions by 2050.

Therefore, despite the rapid growth in demand, the Riyadh-based International Energy Forum estimates that investment in oil and gas this year is still 23% below pre-pandemic levels, at 341 billion U.S. dollars.

This week, Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman warned that the decline in investment may trigger a global energy crisis.

Prince Abdulaziz stated that if demand increases, Saudi Arabia is one of the few countries that can increase production capacity in 2022.

He said: "We are ready to enter a potentially dangerous period. If there is no more investment to maintain and increase production capacity, the energy crisis will come to the world."

His view was endorsed by the Kingdom’s Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan, who said: “In Saudi Arabia, we are interested in maintaining demand. We are also worried that demand is increasing and there is no alternative to fill this gap. , We don’t want oil prices to rise too high."

As one of the largest North Sea oil and gas development projects in recent years, the Cambo project was shelved last week after the oil giant Shell withdrew from the project. Shell owns 30% of the shares in the field, saying that Cambo is not economically viable. However, project insiders said that the decision was mainly due to the lack of support from the United Kingdom because of climate protests against the development of new oil and gas resources in the North Sea.

The failure of oil companies to match the increase in demand with the increase in production has left the supply problem almost entirely in the hands of OPEC.

However, OPEC Secretary-General Mohamed Barkindo warned this month that the continued decline in oil and gas investment will lead to energy shortages, market imbalances and price increases.

The sharp rise in energy prices this year should be a wake-up call to re-examine the pressure on companies from the ESG agenda and the political demands on the edge of the fossil fuel cliff. Private capital may leave the oil and gas industry under ESG pressure, but consumers have not. In short, ESG is stifling supply and cannot do anything to address demand.

In addition, large financial institutions have also been accused of "greenwashing". The DWS Group, the asset management arm of Deutsche Bank, is being investigated by German regulator BaFin, the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Ministry of Justice because it has been accused of misrepresenting its ESG capabilities.

Tariq Fancy, the former head of sustainable investment at the investment giant BlackRock, stated earlier this year that ESG has “almost no impact” on the environmental and social causes the company claims to support, stating that It was a "dangerous placebo", which caused an uproar.

This year's global inflationary pressure, dominated by a sharp increase in energy prices, is a feature of the hasty transition to decarbonization and ESG demand.

Consumer demand is driving energy prices, and in the context of the inability of renewable energy to meet demand and the collapse of investment in recent years, energy costs, as Barkindo and others have warned, look likely to rise further.

It is in this context that the trend of ESG may finally be reversed. 

Earlier this year, Texas passed a bill prohibiting state pension plans and investment funds from investing in companies that would cut ties with the energy sector.

Earlier this month, American oil company Hess (Hess) CEO John Hess (John Hess) said: "In the final analysis, to achieve an orderly transition, oil and gas are part of the solution, not the problem," he Say. "Our carbon footprint is now 10% lower than it was 10 years ago. The real gain is that the energy transition will take a long time, cost a lot of money, and requires non-existent technologies. We need climate literacy, energy literacy, and economic literacy."

Riyadh: Altibbi, a digital health platform based in Amman, has expanded its operations to Egypt and opened a hotline that can be accessed anywhere in North African countries.

The company said in a statement that the service is designed to connect patients directly with certified doctors. 

The platform's goal is to provide 2 million consultations in Egypt by the end of the second quarter of 2022.

The company’s CEO Jalil Allabadi said: “By providing a simple hotline service that is accessible to everyone, Altibbi is enabling fast, easy and affordable healthcare services across the country. " 

"This is another important step in our efforts to provide quality healthcare services to everyone in the region," he added. 

The service was launched in cooperation with the Jordanian and Egyptian authorities through their respective national COVID-19 hotlines.

Riyadh: According to CNBC, the CEO of Uber last week described it as the transportation company’s “best week ever,” and its stock price rose by 5% on Tuesday. 

Dara Khosrowshahi said that the ride-sharing business has recovered nearly 90% from the impact of the pandemic, and he is “confident” that it will hit a record high in 2022. 

Khosrowshahi said: "Our overall mobile business continues to approach pre-pandemic levels." 

The CEO stated that the company plans to focus on developing partnerships with grocery stores instead of building its own distribution warehouse.  

Khosrowshahi said that Uber is also currently seeking to sell shares in its non-strategic assets, including its holdings in China's Didi Global Corporation.

Riyadh: The prices of cryptocurrencies listed on Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States and popular data provider CoinMarketCap.com, fell briefly on Tuesday.

According to Bloomberg News, some tokens show astronomical gains, making users eager to get huge windfalls.

CoinMarketCap.com said in a statement that the issue has been resolved, and Coinbase said the same on Twitter, noting that the transaction was not affected.

Coinbase also added that it is still investigating asset prices and the difficulties of using the Coinbase wallet for transactions, which allows customers to manage their crypto assets.

However, neither company explained what happened.

"Everyone will adapt to these distractions. They all use the same data source, so when there is a problem and the price is really low, there will be herd behavior to drive investment decisions," Rosario Ingargiola, founder of Bosonic, a cryptocurrency clearing and settlement platform Say.

CoinMarketCap.com said in a statement: "We have not found any evidence that today's failure was caused by an external party," because many people on Twitter speculated that the site was hacked. CoinMarketCap.com is owned by Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange.

Morgan Stanley-backed bitcoin service provider NYDIG raised $1 billion in its latest round of financing, highlighting Wall Street's growing interest in the crypto sector.

The company was valued at more than $7 billion in this round of financing, and existing investors, including Morgan Stanley, also participated.

According to data from PitchBook, after Robinhood Markets Inc. raised US$3.4 billion in January, the funds and FTX Trading Ltd.'s US$1 billion financing in July became the second largest this year related to encryption or blockchain. Of venture capital transactions. data.

This round of financing was led by growth equity company WestCap, with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, MassMutual, and FIS.

Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency in international transactions, traded higher on Wednesday, rising by 0.87% to $47,605 at 5:00 pm Riyadh time.

According to data from Coindesk, the trading price of Ethereum, the second most traded cryptocurrency, was US$3,816, an increase of 0.53%.

Riyadh: According to Asharq, Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange, will sign a preliminary agreement with the Dubai government on crypto-related activities.

Dubai is one of the candidates to become the headquarters of the coin security ball together with France.

Changpeng Zhao, CEO and co-founder of Binance, bought his first house in Dubai in October.

According to Bloomberg News, he also stated last month that he purchased the property to prove Binance's relationship with the city, which he said is very supportive of cryptocurrencies.

"The advantage of the government there is that it is making great progress, which represents a very good business environment," Zhao said.