Bahrain mulls asset sale as cash crunch bites

Manama may seek to sell non-producing assets in order to mitigate the severe shock of falling oil prices, experts say

With global oil demand decimated by virus panic and a price war threatening to flood the markets with cheap supply, oil prices have suffered some of their worst intraday declines since the first Gulf War in 1991. It seems like the worst possible moment for a small Middle Eastern country to list oil and gas assets, but Bahrain may have to.  When Bloomberg reported last week that Bahrain is hoping to emulate neighbouring Saudi Arabia in listing unspecified oil and gas assets, the report raised a lot of eyebrows.  “The current oil price environment is poor for such an attempt. In addition, Bahrain’s assets unfortunately compare unfavourably to those of its neighbour,” says Jan Kalicki, an energ