Saudi Aramco is studying additional crude oil export routes and exploring more overseas storage as prolonged disruption to the Strait of Hormuz strains global energy supplies, chief executive Amin Nasser said on Monday.

Speaking at the Energy Intelligence Forum in London, Nasser described the disruption as the most serious energy supply shock of his career and said the global supply resilience cushion had become increasingly thin.

The world entered the crisis with almost 10 billion barrels of global oil stocks, while nearly 3 billion barrels of gross oil supply had since been lost, equivalent to roughly half the crude and refined products that would normally have moved through Hormuz over the same period, Nasser said.

More than 1 billion barrels had been drawn from those stocks to mitigate the disruption, with most of that coming from onshore commercial inventories, he said.

Nasser said estimates suggested less than 6 billion barrels of commercial inventories remained, with the vast majority not practically available.

“The supply resilience cushion is scarily thin,” he said.

Emergency reserves could provide temporary support through the winter but could not resolve long-term supply constraints, Nasser said. Replenishing inventories while meeting demand could take up to two years once Hormuz fully reopened and confidence returned, he added.

Aramco was studying additional routes for crude exports and exploring more overseas storage to help cover short-term disruptions, Nasser said.

He said Aramco’s resilience also rested on strategic storage, spare production capacity, multiple crude grades, domestic gas storage, its tanker fleet through Bahri and its balance sheet.

The company’s local supply chain had provided more than 90 per cent of the materials used in asset restoration, he said.

Nasser said half of the world’s proven oil reserves were located in the Middle East, along with most global spare production capacity.

“Markets can diversify suppliers. They cannot diversify geology,” he said.

The region’s strategic importance was set to grow as other resource bases matured and new resources became potentially harder to find and less economically competitive, he added.

Nasser said the disruption had extended beyond crude markets, hitting ocean freight, tightening supply chains and contributing to shortages of commodities including aluminium, sulphur, helium and petrochemicals.

He cited an International Monetary Fund severe scenario in which global economic growth could fall to 2 per cent next year while inflation rises above 6 per cent.

“The longer the disruption continues, the risk of this happening only grows,” he said.

Nasser called for greater international cooperation to safeguard the free flow of energy and goods, including coordination on emergency response, supply planning, refinery and petrochemicals flexibility, joint stockpiling, supply chains and cybersecurity.

He also warned that publicly available information, including satellite imagery and shipping logs, was increasingly being weaponised against infrastructure and tankers.

Nasser said the industry should end what he called an era of cyclical under-investment and said resilience should be integral to judging a company’s performance alongside earnings, shareholder returns and environmental, social and governance measures.

He said the crisis had exposed what he called a false choice between energy security, affordability and sustainability, adding that Middle East oil and gas would remain central to the global energy system for decades.

Read: G7 agrees to coordinated 100 million barrel release to stabilise energy markets

A worker at a Russian anti-plague research institute has died from an unexplained form of pneumonia, prompting authorities to place nearly 200 people under medical observation amid unconfirmed reports of a possible pneumonic plague infection.

The woman worked at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia and the Far East and died last week after developing what Russian authorities described as “pneumonia of undetermined origin”.

Igor Kobzev, governor of Russia’s Irkutsk region, said testing had not detected any microorganisms linked to the employee’s professional activities and that no new cases had been recorded among other workers at the institute.

“The sanitary-epidemiological situation” in the region remained stable, he said.

A hospital facility in Shelekhov, near Irkutsk, where the woman was reportedly treated has been placed under quarantine, while Russian media reported that nearly 200 people who had come into contact with her were being monitored as a precaution.

Russian authorities have not confirmed that the woman died from plague.

Rospotrebnadzor, Russia’s consumer and public health watchdog, said a biological safety team had inspected the institute and found no evidence of an emergency involving pathogenic microorganisms.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov urged the public to rely on official statements rather than speculation surrounding the case.

“It is their official statements that should be relied upon — rather than paying heed to various rumours, speculations and the like,” Peskov said, referring to Rospotrebnadzor.

Unconfirmed Russian media reports have suggested the worker may have been exposed to the bacterium that causes plague either through a laboratory incident or following travel to an area where the disease occurs naturally among wild rodents. Neither explanation has been confirmed by authorities.

US monitoring suspected plague case

The incident has also drawn attention from the US and international health officials.

US President Donald Trump said Washington was looking “very strongly” at the case and offered US assistance if required.

“I hate to see them having it,” Trump said. “We’ll help. Everybody who has that kind of a problem, we’ll always help.”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington was monitoring developments closely but stressed that there was no immediate cause for alarm.

“If something like that gets out, it can quickly spread,” Rubio said. “So we’re watching and monitoring it closely.”

The World Health Organisation said it was aware of reports that a laboratory worker had died from severe pneumonia but that no cause of death had been officially confirmed.

What is pneumonic plague?

Pneumonic plague is a severe form of plague caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, the same pathogen responsible for bubonic plague.

Unlike the more common bubonic form, pneumonic plague can spread between people through infectious respiratory particles following close contact with an infected person.

The WHO says pneumonic plague can be fatal within 18 to 24 hours after symptoms develop if left untreated, but antibiotics can successfully treat the disease when administered early.

Plague has not disappeared globally. Between 2019 and 2025, 10 countries reported 3,860 suspected human plague cases to the WHO. Six countries recorded confirmed cases, with 423 deaths reported among 3,847 suspected cases in those countries.

Most reported cases were concentrated in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Madagascar.

Dubai CommerCity has launched a second expansion phase worth more than Dhs1.8bn, adding over 91,000 square metres of new space as occupancy across the digital commerce free zone approaches 96 per cent.

The expansion will be delivered between the first quarter of 2027 and the fourth quarter of 2028 and will cover Dubai CommerCity’s Business, Logistics and Social clusters, according to the Dubai Media Office.

Dubai CommerCity is a joint venture between the Dubai Integrated Economic Zones Authority, or DIEZ, and Wasl Group.

The Business and Social clusters will add about 86,000 square metres of space, including offices across six new buildings, retail outlets, restaurants, cafés and services.

The office buildings will offer shell-and-core units, fitted workspaces and flexible plug-and-play offices. Delivery will take place in two stages, beginning in the first quarter of 2027 and the first quarter of 2028.

The Logistics Cluster will include a new 5,600-square-metre facility called The Hive, featuring 181 flexible units starting from five square metres, climate-controlled fulfilment areas, digitally managed loading and unloading zones and dedicated last-mile delivery facilities.

The facility will also include electric-vehicle charging stations and renewable-energy systems and has been designed in line with LEED certification requirements, the statement said.

Dubai CommerCity said occupancy across its office, logistics and retail space had reached nearly 96 per cent, prompting the additional capacity.

Operational volumes have also risen, with the number of e-commerce parcels shipped increasing by 152 per cent over the past year, while cargo volumes processed through the DCC Way transit platform rose 14 per cent in 2025.

Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, chairman of DIEZ, said, “This expansion reflects the growing investor confidence in Dubai’s economic ecosystem and its ability to attract high-quality investments while providing an advanced economic infrastructure that responds to rapid shifts in emerging sectors. It aligns with the objectives of the Dubai Economic Agenda, D33, and further strengthens the emirate’s position as a global hub for the digital economy and future commerce, while serving as a platform for companies to grow and expand across regional and international markets.”

Dubai has been investing in digital commerce, logistics and technology infrastructure as part of efforts to expand non-oil sectors and strengthen its position as a regional base for companies serving international markets.

Schneider Electric has agreed to acquire US industrial software company PTC in an all-cash transaction valuing the company’s equity at about $22.6bn (EUR20.1bn), as the French group expands its industrial software and artificial intelligence business.

Under the agreement, PTC shareholders will receive $205 per share in cash, representing a 42.3 per cent premium to the company’s last closing price and a 46.1 per cent premium to its volume-weighted average share price over the previous 30 trading days before the announcement.

The transaction implies an enterprise value of about $23.7bn.

Schneider Electric said the acquisition would combine PTC’s product design, engineering and data management capabilities with its existing industrial software portfolio, extending its platform from product design and engineering through to operations and maintenance.

PTC provides computer-aided design, product lifecycle management, application lifecycle management and service lifecycle management software and serves more than 30,000 customers globally.

The Boston-headquartered company generated EUR2.4bn in revenue in calendar year 2025, with an adjusted EBITA margin of about 40 per cent. PTC expects revenue and annual recurring revenue to grow by about 10 per cent annually through 2029.

Schneider Electric said the combined business would increase software and services revenue to an estimated 24 per cent of group revenue on a pro forma basis, with more than 15,000 software employees serving more than 50,000 software customers.

The acquisition would also expand Schneider Electric’s addressable market in industrial software by about three times, including greater exposure to discrete and hybrid manufacturing.

Read: Schneider Electric’s Frédéric Godemel on AI, hybrid grids and Dubai’s energy future

From revenue to industrial AI: How this acquisition helps Schneider Electric

Schneider Electric expects to generate EUR250m in annual run-rate cost synergies by the third year following the transaction and about EUR800m in revenue synergies.

The company said the revenue gains would come from cross-selling across the companies’ customer bases, expanded distribution channels and geographic reach, and AI-enabled joint development of digital-thread solutions.

“By connecting and contextualising data across the lifecycle of products and assets, we will create a unique digital thread for the next generation of industrial AI,” Schneider Electric chief executive Olivier Blum said.

PTC president and chief executive Neil Barua said joining Schneider Electric would give the company additional scale and resources to accelerate innovation, advance its product lifecycle strategy and expand into more markets.

Schneider Electric expects the transaction to be immediately accretive to adjusted earnings per share by low single digits, before purchase price accounting effects, in the first year of full consolidation. Including full run-rate synergies, it expects the transaction to be mid-to-high-single-digit accretive to adjusted EPS.

The approximately EUR22bn total cash consideration is secured through a fully committed bridge facility provided by Morgan Stanley and Société Générale.

Schneider Electric expects to ultimately fund the transaction through an equity issuance of about EUR5bn to EUR6bn and new debt of about EUR16bn to EUR17bn.

The equity issuance is expected to take the form of an accelerated book-building offering, while the debt is expected to be issued across several currencies.

The boards of both companies have unanimously approved the transaction.

The deal is expected to close by the third quarter of 2027, subject to customary closing conditions, including approval by holders of at least a majority of PTC’s outstanding shares and required regulatory approvals.

PTC’s board has recommended that shareholders approve the merger agreement.

Formula One has confirmed that the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix will go ahead as scheduled on December 6, with chief executive Stefano Domenicali revealing that 99 per cent of tickets for the season finale have already been sold.

Domenicali said both the Qatar and Abu Dhabi Grands Prix remain on course to take place, ending uncertainty over whether the final two rounds of the 2026 championship could be affected by the regional conflict.

“Based on the information we have, everything is confirmed for [us to stay in] Qatar and Abu Dhabi,” Domenicali told French broadcaster Canal+.

The Qatar Grand Prix is scheduled to take place at the Lusail International Circuit on November 29, followed a week later by the season-ending race at Abu Dhabi’s Yas Marina Circuit on December 6.

Speaking separately to Sky Sport Italia, Domenicali said “everything is in order”, adding that Formula One was continuing to keep teams and drivers informed about the situation.

He also said 99 per cent of tickets for the Abu Dhabi race had already been sold, with the event generating “great excitement”.

The confirmation follows discussions over possible changes to the closing stages of the Formula One calendar, including an option to relocate the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix to Imola in Italy.

However, Formula One is now proceeding with the existing schedule, leaving Qatar and the UAE to host the final two rounds of the season.

Seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton has previously expressed his support for racing in the region.

“I personally want to go. I love going to the Middle East,” Hamilton said during the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, while expressing confidence in Domenicali and Formula One to make the appropriate decision over the final races.

The Abu Dhabi Grand Prix has served as Formula One’s season finale for much of the past decade and is one of the UAE’s biggest annual sporting and tourism events.

The 2026 championship is currently led by Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli, who has 320 points and holds an 84-point advantage over teammate George Russell.