Despite the credit crisis and deteriorating economic outlook, Islamic corporate bond issuance in the Gulf soared over the past year, the Financial Times reported Tuesday.

The venture will be named K-Dow Petrochemicals and the chief executive will be James Fitterling, currently business group president at Dow's plastics division, the companies said.

The world's top oil exporter Saudi Arabia wants to see lower oil prices, Saudi King Abdullah said in an interview with Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

Qatar Oil Minister Abdullah al-Attiyah said on Friday that he saw no demand for the additional crude that Saudi Arabia has pledged over the past few months to pump Saudi Arabia, the world's top exporter, has promised to step up production to its highest rate in three decades in an effort to tame oil prices, which have surged nearly 50 percent this year, hitting a record high $145.85 a barrel last week.

Iran's OPEC governor said on Wednesday the oil market was saturated and blamed policies of the Group of Eight (G8) rich countries for a price surge, the state broadcaster reported on its website.

There is "no shortage" in the oil market and OPEC member countries and would prefer a lower price than the current highs, OPEC Secretary General Abdalla El-Badri told CNBC on Tuesday.

Oil prices would not ease even if production were raised because speculation and taxes are behind the soaring market, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah was quoted as saying in a Kuwaiti newspaper on Tuesday.

The current dip in gold prices is temporary and demand for the precious metal is likely to rise in the medium term, Ronald-Peter Stoferle, international equities analyst at Erste Bank, wrote in a market note Wednesday.

Transatlantic stock market operator NYSE Euronext said it would buy a 25 percent stake in the Doha Securities Market for $250 million, boosting its access to the fast-growing Middle East economy.

Eight-cylinder luxury cars will rumble along Jeddah's highways guzzling cheap Saudi gasoline as energy powers hold emergency talks in the Red Sea port this weekend to brake the free-wheeling rise in oil prices.

Federal regulators said they will place stricter limits on foreign exchanges that trade U.S. oil as concerns continue to grow about the role of speculation in rising fuel prices.

The market is full of oil and the rising price trend is "fake and imposed," Iran's president said on Tuesday, partly blaming a weak U.S. dollar which he said was being pushed lower on purpose.

More oil from Saudi Arabia or other OPEC producers would not ease high global oil prices because they are the result of market speculation, Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani told Reuters on Thursday.

The Abu Dhabi Investment Council is negotiating to buy a 75 percent stake in New York City's landmark Chrysler Building for $800 million, the New York Post reported on Wednesday.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Monday defended the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency and said its recent decline was only a small factor behind a surge in oil prices.