Marafiq

Saudi Arabia’s state-owned Power and Water Utility Co. for Jubail and Yanbu, or Marafiq, said it has signed contracts for two projects in Jubail industrial City that involve setting up a water desalination station and building 249 residential units for its employees, pan-Arab daily Asharq Al Awsat reports Thursday. The reverse osmosis desalination plant will be the fourth of its kind in Jubail and the project aims to meet the city’s growing demand for water, the paper said quoting Thamer Al Sharhan, Marafiq’s chief executive. The desalination contract was signed with a consortium of Saudi Binladin Group and Spain’s Acciona Agua, Asharq Al Awsat reports, adding that the station, expected to start operations in the last quarter of 2014, is designed to produce 100,000 cubic meters a day of desalinated water. Prince Saud Bin Abdullah Bin Thunayan Al Saud, chairman of Saudi Arabia’s Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu said according to the daily that in parallel to the residential project in Jubail, Marafiq is implementing another project to build 298 residential units for its workers in Yanbu Industrial City.

Qatargas

Qatargas, one of two state-run liquefied natural gas producers in Qatar, said on Wednesday it signed a new deal with Japan’s Kansai Electric Power Company Inc. (9503.TO), more evidence of the Asian country’s growing reliance on imported energy after an earthquake and tsunami last year damaged some of its nuclear reactors. Under the terms of the sales and purchase agreement, the Qatargas 3 division, 30% owned by ConocoPhillips (COP), will deliver 0.5 million ton of LNG per year to Kansai Electric over 15 years, starting in 2013, the gas company said in a statement. Qatar, the world’s largest LNG exporter, has signed a spate of new energy deals with Japan over the last few months. Qatargas said earlier in the month it will supply Japan with an extra 11 million metric tons of LNG over the “short term.” Kansai Electric, the second-largest electricity company in Japan, is one of eight Japanese buyers of LNG that entered into a multiparty contract with Qatargas in 1994. Under this contract, the delivery of LNG to Kansai Electric started in 1997.

Petrofac

Petrofac Limited said on Thursday it has been awarded a $200 million (Dh735.6 million) lump-sum engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract by Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) for a new power distribution network in North Kuwait. Project was awarded following a competitive tender and will be completed in 24 months. Under the contract, Petrofac will construct three new substation buildings as well as putting down 900 kilometers of buried cable to connect the site’s substations to the distribution network.

National Societe Generale Bank

National Societe Generale Bank surged to the highest level in more than 12 years as investors bet Qatar National Bank will pay a premium to acquire Societe Generale SA’s majority stake in the Egyptian lender.The shares jumped 7.4 per cent to 44 Egyptian pounds, the highest intraday level since March 2000, at 11:47 a.m. in Cairo, valuing the bank at 19.5 billion pounds ($3.2 billion.) Egypt’s EGX 30 Index fell 0.6 per cent. Qatar National Bank, known as QNB, received the Egyptian central bank’s approval to conduct due diligence on the potential acquisition of SocGen’s 77.2 per cent stake this month. QNB, which raised $3.5 billion in a rights issue last year and sold $1 billion of bonds in February, is expanding to counter limited domestic growth in the country of 1.7 million people.

Egypt treasury bills

Egypt seeks to raise 4 billion Egyptian pounds (Dh2.4 billion, $656 million) from one-year treasury bills on Thursday, the most in five months, to take advantage of falling yields as foreign investors return. The dollar bonds dropped.

The North African nation’s government is also offering 2.5 billion pounds in six-month securities, according to central bank data on Bloomberg. The one-year sale, which would be the biggest since an auction in April, comes after the average yield on the bills plunged 120 basis points, or 1.2 percentage points, at last week’s sale to an 11-month low of 13.8 per cent.

Overseas investors, who had sold their holdings of Egyptian debt after last year’s popular uprising, are coming back after the government secured aid pledges from Qatar and Turkey and said it aims conclude a $4.8 billion International Monetary Fund loan agreement this year. Foreigners bought “10 per cent or more” of government bonds auctioned on Sept. 23, Nidal Assr, head of the central bank’s foreign-exchange management unit, said the following day.

Egypt’s 5.75 per cent dollar bonds maturing in April 2020 fell for a fourth day, lifting the yield four basis points to 5.82 per cent 9:32 a.m. in Cairo, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The pound, subject to managed float, was little changed at 6.0951 a dollar.