RIYADH: Saudi Arabia has signed a deal to invest up to $10 billion in oil-producing rival Russia, Andrey Ostroukh reports. The money is aimed at the agriculture, medicine, logistics, retail and real estate sectors, and it represents Russian efforts to replace Western funding hit by sanctions.
The money will come from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign-wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund. The Russian Direct Investment Fund also signed an agreement with the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority, another Saudi Arabian sovereign-wealth fund, under which the two sides would seek mutual investment opportunities in Saudi Arabia and other Middle East countries.
TerraForm Power Inc. agreed to purchase a majority stake in a portfolio of wind farms in the U.S. and Canada from Invenergy Wind LLC in transactions valued at a combined $2 billion, Tess Stynes reports. TerraForm, created last year by a spinoff of SunEdison Inc.’s clean-power assets, expects to take net ownership of 460 megawatts of wind power plants. An additional 470 megawatts of wind power plants will be acquired by a warehouse facility sponsored by SunEdison and third-party equity investors, with the assets being dropped down to TerraForm later.
TerraForm sells power to utilities or other companies under long-term contracts and the assets in the deals include seven contracted wind farms. SunEdison and other renewable-energy developers such as NextEra Energy Inc. and NRG Energy Inc. have spun off groups of power plants, solar farms and wind farms into new companies such as TerraForm.
Meanwhile, the burst of investors in India’s ambitious project to increase solar power capacity may be a new gold rush, Saritha Rai writes for Forbes.
Hong Kong commodities trader Noble Group Ltd. will launch an independent review into its accounting after it faced heavy criticism from research firms that accused it of accounting irregularities, Jake Maxwell Watts reports.
Noble’s share price has fallen more than 40% since a report criticizing its accounting was published in mid-February. Abheek Bhattacharya writes that a second stamp of approval would be good, but it would be even better if investors had enough information to rid them of their doubts on their own.
Crude oil prices rose in European trade on Tuesday, clawing back some ground after steep overnight declines, but the persistent glut in global markets is likely to keep prices under pressure.
The overnight selloff in oil prices was much sharper than in other commodities, almost rivaling the price decline in the aftermath of OPEC’s decision not to intervene in oil markets last year.
Nymex crude lost 7.7% on Monday, its largest one-day dollar and percentage decline since Feb. 4, while Brent crude lost 6.3%, its largest one-day dollar decline since Nov. 27, data showed.
