Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met in Munich on February 17 with the mediation of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. According to Azerbaijan's APA news agency, Scholz left the room at some point and the meeting continued in bilateral format. Afterwards, the sides expressed satisfaction with the meeting but offered few specifics on a way forward. It was the first meeting between the two leaders since last July, though they did have a brief encounter at a CIS summit in December. Читать дальше...
A day after a New York court ruling that Venezuelan law would determine the validity of bonds issued by state-run PDVSA oil company, Bloomberg reports that bonds have “collapsed”, slumping on questions over their validity. At stake is $2 billion in PDVSA bonds, and PDVSA notes dropped 17 cents following Tuesday’s ruling, according to Bloomberg. On Tuesday, the New York State Court of Appeals ruled on the matter after Venezuelan opposition, which controls the state-run oil company’s U.S. assets,... Читать дальше...
By Eric Kulisch of FreightWaves Air Canada expects the slow recovery in cargo volume that began in the fourth quarter to quicken in 2024, aided by the addition of two more freighter aircraft, but doesn’t anticipate gains in pricing power, Mark Galardo, executive vice president for network planning and revenue management, said Friday. The cargo division within Air Canada (TSX: AC) currently operates five converted and two factory-built Boeing 767-300 freighters. It is scheduled this year to receive... Читать дальше...
An armed group has taken control of and shut down Libya’s Al-Zawiya refinery and two oil complexes, demanding unpaid salaries and other benefits, Libya media report. The armed group, the Petroleum Facilities Guard (PFG), said in a Tuesday video statement that the refinery operators have five days to comply with their requests or face more closures from other PFG members at key facilities around Libya. The Mellitah and Misrata oil complexes have also been shut down by the PFG. This latest shutdown... Читать дальше...
Following a 4.7% month-over-month decline during January, aluminum prices fell an additional 1.9% throughout the first half of February. Despite these declines, aluminum prices continued to trade in their long-term sideways range. Meanwhile, the Midwest Premium also remains consolidated, with prices retracing to the downside following a short-lived bounce at the end of January. Overall, the Aluminum Monthly Metals Index (MMI) moved sideways, with a modest 1.8% decline from January to February. Aluminum Prices... Читать дальше...
Sri Lanka has repaid $20 million in oil debt to Iran with tea in a move that Sri Lanka officials say do not violate U.S. sanctions on Iran, Agence France Presse reports. In April 2022, Sri Lanka defaulted on $46 billion in foreign debt, earning a $2.9-billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and leaving it bereft of cash to pay its oil debt to Iran. Sri Lanka owes a total of $251 million in oil debt to Iran, of which $20 million has now been paid in the form of tea. “So far... Читать дальше...
Last year, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund became the world’s top spender, accounting for a quarter of the $124 billion that sovereign wealth funds invested in total. Saudi Arabia has been spending heavily both abroad and at home—the home of the world’s megaprojects, such as the $500-billion futuristic Neom project and a whole new airline, among others. As a result, last year, the Public Investment Fund’s cash and treasury assets slimmed from over $105 billion in 2022 to some $37 billion as... Читать дальше...
Turkey’s engineering group Kontrolmatik signed on Wednesday an agreement with a Chinese firm to build a wind farm and a 1 GWh energy storage facility in western Turkey, worth more than $600 million. Kontrolmatik’s unit Progresiva Enerji Yatirimlari Ticaret signed the deal with electric power plant equipment manufacturer Harbin Electric International (HEI), a unit of China’s Harbin Electric Co Ltd, at a ceremony in Ankara today. The investment for the 1 GWh energy storage facility is estimated in... Читать дальше...
Economic history dictates that the last leg of any battle against high inflation is the hardest, and so it is proving in the United States. Consumer price inflation remains sticky, increasing the likelihood that the Federal Reserve will have to engineer a so-called ‘hard landing’ (read recession) to bring inflation back to within its target range. Persistent high inflation or a recession - or both - are bad news for President Biden as he seeks reelection later this year against a resurgent Donald Trump. Читать дальше...
A nearly balanced market in the first half of the year and seasonal strengthening of demand in the second half are set to push the price of Brent Crude to $88 per barrel by the end of 2024, according to analysts at Deutsche Bank. “We look for continued OPEC+ discipline in a nearly balanced market for H1, and seasonal strength in H2,” the bank’s strategists wrote in a note on Wednesday carried by FXStreet. With the OPEC+ cuts in the first half of 2024, Deutsche Bank sees little upside to its H1 forecast... Читать дальше...
The electric vehicle (EV) market is on track for a watershed year in 2024 as emissions reduction targets clash with falling consumer spending amid enduring economic uncertainty. Rystad Energy research forecasts 17.5 million EV sales this year, an 18.5% annual increase. As a result, the share of new car sales that are either battery electric (BEV) or plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) will increase from 19.2% in 2023 to around 21.8% at the end of 2024. China will play a significant role in the... Читать дальше...
Canada is celebrating a milestone as oil and gas companies have now voluntarily relinquished the last remaining permits for oil and gas exploration and development off its Pacific Coast. Canada has a federal moratorium on all offshore oil and gas activities on its West Coast in place since 1972, following a provincial moratorium by British Columbia on oil and gas drilling from 1959. However, permits issued before 1972 were still valid. Now that Chevron relinquished the last remaining oil and gas development permits offshore Western Canada... Читать дальше...
Germany’s state-controlled firm Securing Energy for Europe (Sefe) plans to invest around $540 million (500 million euros) in repurposing some of its underground gas storage sites and gas pipelines into infrastructure fit for storing and transporting green hydrogen, Sefe’s CEO Egbert Laege told Reuters in an interview published on Wednesday. “The exact investment calculation is not yet available, but we are talking about sums in the mid-three-digit million-euro range for converting some of our gas... Читать дальше...
The growth in coal power generation in China is beginning to slow down as regional authorities seek to redirect investments to low-carbon energy, Bloomberg reports. The report notes the continual increase in coal production and coal-powered generation in China over the past seven years, with generation reaching a record in 2023. At the same time, however, Bloomberg reports that this growth has led to a glut that has pushed down coal companies’ bottom lines. China has set itself 2025 as a deadline for its coal demand peak. Читать дальше...
Chesapeake Energy reported expectation-beating profits for 2023 even though the figure was lower than the net result for 2022, standing at $2.4 billion, versus $3.5 billion for 2022. The company also reported net cash from operating activities at $2.4 billion for 2023, which was a much stronger figure than the one for 2022, which stood at $1.05 billion. In production, Chesapeake reported an average daily output of 3.66 billion cubic feet of natural gas equivalent. In the final quarter of the year... Читать дальше...
Australia’s energy major Santos reported net earnings of $1.42 billion for 2024, a drop of 42% on 2022, which was a deeper one than analysts polled by Reuters had expected. The company’s stock declined following the financial report, as it also said its revenues had declined substantially in 2023 as had earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, depletion, exploration, evaluation, and impairment. Cash flow was also down substantially, by 42%. A certain decline in financial performance last year... Читать дальше...
After a two-year hiatus, deal-making in the U.S. shale patch has hit high gear with the U.S. energy sector leveraging high stock prices to go on a $250 billion buying spree in 2023. Last quarter alone, U.S. oil majors Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE:XOM), Chevron Corp. (NYSE:CVX) and Occidental Petroleum (NYSE:OXY) struck deals worth a combined $125 billion to acquire low-cost oilfields with low breakeven oil price. And, activity is not slowing down in the current year. A couple of weeks ago, Midland, Tex.-based... Читать дальше...
Donald Trump, the most likely Republican presidential nominee, is set to overturn or at least try to dismantle many of President Joe Biden's energy and climate policies if the former president wins the November election. The Biden Administration's methane rules, LNG export pause, EV mandates, federal oil and gas leasing, and even the Inflation Reduction Act will be all on the chopping block in a second Trump term in office. Trump would look to boost oil, natural gas, and coal development in the United States and... Читать дальше...
Global policy around clean energy is shifting rapidly away from free trade and toward an era of protectionism as nations around the world race to gain a foothold in the burgeoning decarbonization sector. Anxiety about being left behind and rendered unable to compete on the global clean energy market has kicked off a global subsidy push. And as a result, it seems like Europe might be in trouble. After decades of global emphasis on liberalizing trade, we’re seeing a sea change in industrial policy... Читать дальше...
The city of Chicago has filed a suit against the five largest oil and gas companies, alleging that Big Oil has lied about oil, gas and the derived products and its effect it would have on climate change, the Chicago Sun-Times said on Tuesday. The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday in Cook County Circuit Court, claims that destructive climate change forces hurt the city of Chicago and its citizens, and names BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell—Big Oil’s Big 5. Chicago wasn’t the first to sue Big Oil. Читать дальше...
Following my previous story on the pause in U.S. liquefied natural gas exports, some readers had a hard time believing that the U.S. leads the world in reducing carbon emissions. Some suggested this was only true for per capita emissions, or that it isn’t true if you consider methane leaks. But, neither of those comments are accurate. Per the 2023 Statistical Review of World Energy, over the past 15 years, the U.S. has experienced the largest decline in carbon dioxide equivalent emissions of any country. Читать дальше...
