Abu Dhabi

Occidental Petroleum Corp. added to its Middle East portfolio Wednesday with an agreement to develop a pair of small oil and natural gas fields in Abu Dhabi, the largest of the United Arab Emirates. The company's preliminary pact with Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. gives Occidental full ownership and operational control of development projects in Abu Dhabi fields called Jarn Yaphour and Ramhan.

Occidental Petroleum Corp. has agreed to jointly fund energy production and refining projects with Abu Dhabi's International Petroleum Investment Co., the Westwood-based company said Monday. Ray Irani, chief executive of the nation's fourth-largest oil and gas company, said the deal was part of a move to broaden Occidental's operations in the Mideast and North Africa. The joint venture is the latest of several between Occidental and the government of Abu Dhabi. Occidental has partnered with the emirate in an exploration project in Libya an oil field development deal in Oman and the $5.7-billion Dolphin Energy project, which transports natural gas from offshore Qatar to the United Arab Emirates and Oman.

A Santa Monica architect known for his high-rise designs is working on what may be the ultimate "spec" building -- a 224-story skyscraper with green ambitions that would be the tallest structure in the world. The tower is envisioned for a man-made island in Abu Dhabi, if leaders of the oil-rich emirate decide they want to make a statement to rest of the world and perhaps one-up neighboring Dubai. A conceptual design for the $3.5-billion project in the United Arab Emirates is under consideration by an Abu Dhabi planning committee, said Tommy Landau, the architect who created the design and is part of an unusual team of U.S. real estate players trying to get the ambitious project launched.

Fortress of leisure A former Army post within Golden Gate National Park is poised to become a luxury resort that emphasizes the environment, lifelong learning and comfort. When it opens this summer, Cavallo Point, the Lodge at the Golden Gate, will be San Francisco Bay's only urban national park lodge. The group of historic buildings on expansive grounds is a mile from Sausalito in the former Ft. Baker. The compound features rooms that are a century apart in character and style.

It's A quiet Sunday morning in this city of cacophonous ambition. Construction has yet to hit a deafening pitch, and traffic is still moving. But, as the temperature rises, all sorts of art activity bubbles up in the historic Bastakiya district, a low-lying island of traditional Arabian houses in a sea of modern high-rises.

A unique Picasso retrospective has gone on display in Abu Dhabi, bringing some of the Spanish artist's favorite works to this Persian Gulf city-state that aspires to become the region's cultural capital. The show was put together by Madrid's Reina Sofia art museum, but many of the pieces come from the Picasso Museum in Paris. The Abu Dhabi collection includes 186 paintings, sculptures and drawings by one of the 20th century's defining artists.

General Electric Co. has agreed to a joint venture with an Abu Dhabi government investment company that will pump $4 billion of outside capital into its weakened commercial finance business, part of a new global partnership to expand on GE's fast-growing sales in the Middle East. The deal with Mubadala Development Co. will also launch or broaden several other ventures with the Persian Gulf investment vehicle, which expects to become one of the top 10 institutional investors in GE.

No, no, no, he assured one of the businessmen buying the ailing Manchester City soccer club. The price tag for the British team wasn't $4 billion, but a mere $400 million. Anil Bhoyrul, editorial director of Arabian Business magazine and a confidant to some of the Persian Gulf's super-rich and powerful, thought the Abu Dhabi investor would be pleasantly surprised. He was wrong.

Spacious and airy, the newsroom of the National seems a newfangled journalistic field of dreams, with its stylish furniture, flat-panel monitors and roomy, uncluttered desks. Though the new United Arab Emirates newspaper has a daily circulation of only 70,000 to 90,000, it has grand ambitions and leaders who are bullish on print journalism. "Don't panic!" editor Martin Newland advises his counterparts in the West. "Don't head to the hills yet.

Is the Louvre wrong to lend out treasures to Atlanta or Abu Dhabi in exchange for funding? An argument is dividing France's art world, with protesters circulating an online petition that declares, "Museums are not for sale." At issue is whether French museums, including the Louvre, are selling their souls by lending too many works to museums abroad and whether the government is turning France's rich artistic heritage into a commercial brand.