A Malaysian company is building what it says is the world’s first plant to commercially produce ethanol from nipah palm trees, with the product aimed mainly for export to countries looking for alternatives to gasoline, its chairman said Saturday.
Pioneer Bio Industries Corp. Sdn. Bhd. said it is building the plant in northern Perak state to [...]

The government Tuesday raised its forecast for the average price of oil in August by $3 a barrel, citing July’s heat wave and decreased production from the closure of BP’s oilfield in Alaska’s North Slope.
The Energy Information Administration (EIA), the numbers arm of the Energy Department, estimated in its monthly energy forecast that oil is [...]

Sri Lanka has set a 30-day deadline for the local unit of Indian Oil to resume gasoline sales or risk being taken over by the government.
The Lanka-Indian Oil Company, LIOC, which controls a third of Sri Lanka’s retail petroleum business stopped importing gasoline following a dispute with the Sri Lankan government over 71 million dollars.
The [...]