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BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INTERNATIONAL Finance Corporation of the World Bank is lending US$10 million to Ruscam, a Russia-based glass bottle supplier. The seven-year loan will finance the installation of a second furnace for the company, providing Ruscam with an additional 315 tons of glass making capacity per day at its Vladimir region base, 335 miles east of Moscow.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development is lending Euro 10 million to Denmark’s Danfoss Solutions, who will finance investment in energy-efficiency projects in the eastern European brewery sector, particularly in Poland and Russia, where energy consumption by industrial companies is significantly higher than in western plants.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
MEMBERS the European Parliament have amended proposals to restrict the use of artificial sweetener cyclamates in soft drinks across the European Union, tightening rules tabled by the European Commission. The EP’s environment committee voted to reduce the limit to 250 mg/l and said this should apply to milk-based as well as water-based drinks.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A GLOBAL code of practice for the harvesting and manufacturing of fish and fishery products is being drawn up by the world food trade standards body, Codex Alimentarius. Its committee on food hygiene recently endorsed a draft set of worldwide list of rules on handling fish, which are being developed to promote trade by creating uniform, albeit voluntary, standards.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
CALGARY-based oil and gas company, Enbridge Inc., is considering a CAN$3 billion stand-alone pipeline project from Alberta to the British Columbian coast that would carry 400,000 barrels a day from Fort McMurray to Prince Rupert, where oil would be transported to California by tanker.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has approved the proposed acquisition of Norwegian oil and gas company Fortum Petroleum by Italy’s energy company ENI, saying it would not damage the current competitive situation in the gas markets in Italy or in southern Germany, where ENI is present through GVS.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
THE USA’S Devon Energy Corp. has announced that it will buy Ocean Energy Corp. for US$3.5 billion in stock, to create the largest America-based independent oil and gas production company. Oklahoma-based Devon, which took over Anderson Exploration of Calgary in 2001 for a hefty US$4.6 billion and Northstar Energy, also of Calgary, in 1998, will assume US$1.8 billion of Houston-based Ocean’s debt.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INTERNATIONAL Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World Bank is leading an aid deal to encourage local companies to maintain and manage pipelines sending natural gas and oil from central Asia to the European Union. The IFC, (which is initially injecting US$250,000), BP, Norway’s Statoil, GTZ, (the German aid agency), and the Baku Enterprise Centre, Azerbaijan, will launch a programme to help local businesses benefit from petro- projects, notably the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline to Turkey.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AS the Iraqi regime faced potential invasion, the United Nations-run oil for food programme has continued to operate healthily, with revenues for the week ending February 21 totalling US$338 million from 11.9 million barrels. The UN’s Office of the Iraq Programme said exports averaged about 1.7 million barrels a day.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has been laying preparations for possible fuel shortages associated with a possible war in the Middle East, summoning its special group on petroleum provisions to analyse existing European Union (EU) fuel stocks and supplies. The Commission wants every Member State to stockpile enough fuel to last for 40 days of standard consumption.…