ADES says subsidiary's rig capsizes in Egypt, confirms fatalities
The rig capsized as it was being towed to a new location, ADES said in a statement to Tadawul. At the time, 30 individuals were on board, including 18 employees of the company.
ADES said 23 people were rescued and three remain missing. Intensive search operations by the relevant authorities are ongoing.
ADES confirmed four fatalities, including three company employees and one contractor working for a third party.
The company noted it is committed to supporting the families of those affected and is working closely with local authorities and emergency services.
'The safety and well-being of all personnel remaining the highest priority,' the statement noted, adding that a full and thorough investigation into the incident will be conducted.
The rig and all personnel involved are fully covered under the group's insurance program, the statement added.
At this stage, ADES does not expect the incident to have a material impact on its financial position or on its previously disclosed financial outlook for 2025.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Arab News
2 days ago
- Arab News
Egypt's non-oil private sector contracts in June as PMI falls to 48.8
RIYADH: Egypt's non-oil private sector continued to contract in June, with the Purchasing Managers' Index falling to 48.8 from 49.5 in May, as business confidence plunged to its lowest level on record. According to the latest S&P Global survey, this marked the fourth consecutive month below the neutral 50 threshold, signaling a continued deterioration in operating conditions. The decline was accompanied by the sharpest reduction in purchasing activity in nearly a year and a pronounced drop in sentiment about the year ahead. The June PMI downturn came amid escalating regional and economic pressures, with spillovers from the Gaza conflict suppressing tourism, remittance flows, and Suez Canal revenues — all key sources of foreign exchange and domestic demand. Concurrently, intermittent disruptions in Israeli gas exports have sparked concerns over energy reliability, while elevated freight rates have inflated import costs. David Owen, a senior economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence, said: 'Overall expectations for future activity were the lowest ever recorded in June.' He added: 'This downbeat sentiment reflects subdued hopes for order books, as well as concerns that geopolitical risks could cause greater economic disruption.' The survey, conducted between June 12 and 20, highlighted deepening demand weakness across the economy. Businesses widely reported that weaker order books prompted them to scale back output, while a broad stagnation in local markets contributed to the drop in new orders. Although the pace of decline accelerated compared to May, S&P Global noted that it remained softer than the series average. Purchasing volumes decreased for the fourth month running, with the contraction gathering pace to become the fastest recorded in nearly a year. The manufacturing sector saw the largest cutbacks among the surveyed industries. As a result of reduced buying levels, inventories stalled in June after having risen slightly in the preceding three months. The data also pointed to ongoing strains in supply chains, reflected in a slight lengthening of supplier delivery times for the second month in a row. Employment levels continued to weaken, though the rate of job shedding was described as fractional and was the softest observed in the current five-month sequence of workforce reductions. S&P Global noted that staffing cuts were driven not only by diminished demand but also by the prevailing pessimism regarding future activity. 'Although rates of contraction accelerated from the prior survey, they remained softer than their respective historic trends,' Owen added. 'Nevertheless, a faster drop in input purchases combined with stalling hiring activity suggests that firms expect demand to remain low and are thereby looking to make cost savings.' On the cost side, there was a modest reprieve for businesses. Input cost inflation eased to a three-month low, while the pace at which firms raised output prices slowed considerably from May's seven-month high. This softening of price pressures provided some relief but did little to offset the overall deterioration in confidence. The S&P Egypt PMI is a composite index derived from survey responses from around 400 private-sector firms, designed to provide a single-figure snapshot of non-oil business conditions. Readings above 50 signal improvement, while those below 50 indicate deterioration.
Arab News
2 days ago
- Arab News
On the brink: Is Libya headed for partition?
The sobering reality facing Libya far surpasses mere political stalemate; it embodies the active calcification of a partitioned state. Two distinct centers of power now operate with parallel bureaucracies, military structures, and international recognition circuits, each solidifying its control over significant territory and resources. This is no theoretical fragmentation typically subject of erudite observations by scholars, but an operational division measured in concrete terms. One administration commands the capital and its international legitimacy, while the other dominates about 60 percent of the nation's landmass, including the lion's share of proven oil reserves — Libya's primary economic lifeline, responsible for over 90 percent of state revenue. Each entity fields its own armed forces, estimated in the tens of thousands collectively, backed by rival foreign patrons whose military footprints are expanding. The division even extends beyond security; separate legislative bodies pass laws for their respective zones, while reconstruction efforts have devolved into competing, regionally siloed projects. An entrenched reality has settled, where daily governance functions independently on either side of a virtual iron curtain, reflecting a partition actively constructed and resourced, rendering the notion of a unified Libyan state increasingly unlikely. Tripoli's authority, nominally the UN-recognized Government of National Unity, is visibly fraying under the weight of its own internal power struggles and widespread popular rejection. Its attempt to violently purge rival militias in May, triggering intense urban warfare and displacing civilians, culminated in the resignation of influential ministers. Ultimately, Tripoli's 'fausse paix' was shuttered by urban combat spanning 72 hours and 11 districts, including the affluent Dhat El-Imad towers and seafront — zones historically insulated from conflict. The clashes also displaced 2,500 civilians, halted operations at Mitiga International Airport for 48 hours, and stranded foreign nationals. Critically, the resignations of finance and economy ministers, architects of a state budget dependent on $20 billion in annual oil revenue, exposed the government's evaporating fiscal control. The spectacle of rival militias, some state-funded while others operate extortion rackets, engaging in pitched battles across the capital also cast a glaring spotlight on the fragility of Tripoli's control of its affiliated militias. Now, the GNU's sovereignty has become a facade maintained by force, not legitimacy, with its institutions hollowed out via state capture and endemic corruption, with multibillion-dollar state companies becoming battlegrounds for rival kleptocratic networks. Militias now treat state parastatal coffers as mere plunder, with one faction having seized control of Libya's Post, Telecommunications & Information Technology Company, a $3 billion state entity, in a firefight that killed eight civilians and left 58 bodies abandoned in a militia-controlled hospital. On the other hand, parallel security structures are a further mockery of governance: 27 officially funded militias operate in Tripoli alone, yet the state cannot mobilize 500 coherent troops without triggering inter-militia warfare. Worse yet, foreign backers compound the chaos. This duality, where 'state' forces assassinate rivals in extrajudicial executions while citizens burn tires in protest, frames partition as simple arithmetic, as Tripoli's authority dwindles, reaching no further than its allied militias' checkpoints. Each faction now monopolizes force within its domain. Hafed Al-Ghwell On the other side of the divide, Benghazi has meticulously constructed a de facto state apparatus in the east, seemingly achieving some level of internal cohesion and international normalization unimaginable just a few years ago. Exploiting Tripoli's chaos and legitimacy deficits, the rival administration has leveraged relative stability and a unified military command structure under its Libyan Arab Armed Forces to attract wary international partners. The ensuing diplomatic shift is palpable: Over the past year alone, Benghazi hosted delegations from the US military, the Italian Interior Ministry and intelligence chief, Turkish generals, Philippine diplomats, the Vatican ambassador, French NGOs, and British trade missions. It has not escaped notice that a dedicated 'foreign ministry' in the east has since chronicled over 100 diplomatic engagements across 12 months via more than 200 official social media posts, averaging one every four days. Such expanding engagement signals institutional permanence, not temporary rebellion, and since then, military normalization has only accelerated with the participation of the Libyan Arab Armed Forces in the US-led African Lion 2025 joint exercises, while hosting Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yunusbek Yevkurov five times since August 2023. Clearly, dual approaches, where 31 countries now treat eastern institutions as viable partners, proves partition transcends rhetoric. When foreign embassies relocate staff to Benghazi citing 'prosperity and security,' and reconstruction contracts bypass Tripoli's hollowed ministries, the de facto statehood of the east becomes irreversible arithmetic, and idyllic aspirations for Libya's reunification remain just that — ideals. Given the prevailing dynamics, it is possible to draw a fairly unambiguous picture of international actors no longer being mere observers of Libya's debilitating bifurcation. They are now actively enabling and profiting from it. Previous models of exclusive recognition for Tripoli's revolving door interim authorities have ceased to exist. This 'dual-track' engagement, replicated by Rome, Paris (hosting the eastern leader at the Elysee), and even Washington, reveals a cynical international consensus. Stability, narrowly defined as the absence of all-out war and the preservation of self-interested aims (migration 'control,' construction contracts, oil and gas, Sahel access, and transnational networks), is prioritized over the messy pursuit of genuine national unification, democratic legitimacy, or the removal of foreign mercenaries. What remains is an accelerating drift toward a redrawing of Libya's map rather than a temporarily frozen conflict. Each faction now monopolizes force within its domain, while foreign fighters answerable to external powers bolster both sides, further eroding national sovereignty. What constitutional processes and fleeting hopes for elections that still remain are indefinitely postponed — deemed too destabilizing by elites and their international backers who benefit from the current rent-seeking arrangements. However, average Libyans, suffering in a state on the brink of total collapse, see their demands for unity and accountable governance ignored by domestic warlords and foreign powers alike. Their protests, while newsworthy, lack unified leadership or international backing to overcome an entrenched militarized duopoly. Now, the global community's comfort with this enforced status quo, prioritizing manageable instability over risky democratic restoration, is the most powerful engine of partition. Without a fundamental shift from this external calculus of short-termism and economic opportunism toward a concerted, impartial push for inclusive elections, disarmament of militias, and the removal of foreign forces, Libya's map risks being definitively redrawn — not by the will of its people, but by the interests of its fractured elites and their global enablers.
Arab News
3 days ago
- Arab News
Egypt says Ethiopia's power-generating dam lacks a legally binding agreement
CAIRO: Egypt said on Friday that Ethiopia has consistently lacked the political will to reach a binding agreement on its now-complete dam, an issue that involves Nile River water rights and the interests of Egypt and Sudan. Ethiopia's prime minister said Thursday that the country's power-generating dam, known as the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, on the Nile is now complete and that the government is 'preparing for its official inauguration' in September. Egypt has long opposed the construction of the dam because it would reduce the country's share of Nile River waters, which it almost entirely relies on for agriculture and to serve its more than 100 million people. The more than $4 billion dam on the Blue Nile near the Sudan border began producing power in 2022. It is expected to eventually produce more than 6,000 MW of electricity — double Ethiopia's current output. Ethiopia and Egypt have spent years negotiating an agreement over the dam, which Ethiopia began building in 2011. Both countries reached no deal despite negotiations spanning 13 years, and it remains unclear how much water Ethiopia will release downstream in the event of a drought. Egyptian officials, in a statement, called the completion of the dam 'unlawful' and said that it violates international law, reflecting 'an Ethiopian approach driven by an ideology that seeks to impose water hegemony' instead of equal partnership. 'Egypt firmly rejects Ethiopia's continued policy of imposing a fait accompli through unilateral actions concerning the Nile River, which is an international shared watercourse,' Egypt's Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation said in a statement on Friday. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, in his address to lawmakers on Thursday, said that his country 'remains committed to ensuring that our growth does not come at the expense of our Egyptian and Sudanese brothers and sisters.' 'We believe in shared progress, shared energy, and shared water,' he said. 'Prosperity for one should mean prosperity for all.' However, the Egyptian Water Ministry said on Friday that Ethiopian statements calling for continued negotiations 'are merely superficial attempts to improve its image on the international stage.' 'Ethiopia's positions, marked by evasion and retreat while pursuing unilateralism, are in clear contradiction with its declared willingness to negotiate,' the statement read. However, Egypt is addressing its water needs by expanding agricultural wastewater treatment and improving irrigation systems, according to the ministry, while also bolstering cooperation with Nile Basin countries through backing development and water-related projects.
