Other national and international news worthy of a read this morning if you have the time:

• It seems refiner Phillips 66 is substituting (in part) for KSA, having sent the first gasoline shipment in 16 months to Egypt, Bloomberg briefly notes in a piece that otherwise focuses on the record pace at which US refiners are exporting fuel.

• At least we’re not India: “One week after India’s sudden declaration that 500- and 1,000-rupee notes were no longer legal tender, the economy is in chaos. And that’s perhaps because the policy was designed as much to shock and awe observers with the government’s command of the Indian economy as to control India’s “black money” problem. What seemed at first to be a masterstroke by Prime Minister Narendra Modi now looks like a grave miscalculation.” (BloombergView) (Background here)

• “Saudi Arabia is preparing to lift the lid on one of the global energy industry’s most closely guarded secrets as it prepares to sell shares in Saudi Aramco: how much crude lies beneath the desert kingdom’s sands.” (Financial Times)
• Alwaleed is very talkative the days, telling Bloomberg in a lengthy sit-down that he will no longer hold a stock “forever” and bluntly saying that his beloved holdings in Citi or Twitter could go — at the right price. He also said it’s a possibility — “2-3 years down the line” — that KSA could face the prospect of decoupling the SAR from the USD.
• It’s not just Toblerone that are getting smaller: “Quality Street tins are getting lighter, there are only five eggs in a Creme Egg multipack and famous chocolate bars have shrunk as the shortage of cocoa butter bites.” (Financial Times)