General Motors Co.'s Cruise autonomous driving unit is preparing to resume robotaxi testing with safety drivers in Houston and Dallas metro areas in the coming weeks, following the nationwide grounding after one of its robotaxis ran over a pedestrian in San Francisco in October, according to Bloomberg News. People familiar with the conversations say Cruise executives and officials in several metro areas, including the two Texas cities, are discussing the return of the robotaxi with safety drivers on public roads. Читать дальше...
A first electric coach service will be launched in England and Wales, as part of a three month trial led by the travel tech firm FlixBus. Travellers will be able to try out routes between London, Bristol and Newport in South Wales from June 2024. Ticket prices will start at £2.99 and the 46-seat coach includes USB charging points, free wifi and a toilet. The zero-emission vehicle will save 352kg of carbon emissions per day compared to its diesel-fuelled counterparts, the equivalent of a reduction of more than 21 tonnes of CO2. Читать дальше...
Flows of gas from Libya to Italy and production at Libya’s Wafa field resumed on Monday after being shut down last week by protesting Petroleum Facilities Guard (PFG) forces over non-payment of salaries. On Sunday, Libya's interim prime minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah approved a decision to increase salaries for PFG forces, responsible for the security of the country’s oil and gas facilities. Last week, the PFG announced the closure of oilfields, valves and pipelines across the country, with various... Читать дальше...
Via Metal Miner The world may have come to expect near-perfection from Elon Musk and his products, resulting in the slightest problem with any of them getting amplified in the media. Nonetheless, the latest U.S. steel news has not been kind to Tesla’s recently-launched and significantly delayed electric Cybertruck. The truck started shipping last December, having seen several years of delays. Now, complaints are already trickling in about rust spots sprouting up on the truck’s “ultra-hard stainless steel” body... Читать дальше...
First LNG at BP’s delayed Greater Tortue Ahmeyim export project offshore Mauritania and Senegal is now expected for the fourth quarter of 2024, project partner Kosmos said on Monday in an update confirming further slipping of the start-up date. BP and Kosmos are developing the Greater Tortue Ahmeyim Phase 1 project, which will use a floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) vessel to produce LNG from the massive natural gas find offshore Mauritania and Senegal in West Africa made in 2015. The Greater... Читать дальше...
As the war rages on in Gaza, Israel has reported that its gas supplies to Egypt and Jordan soared by 25% last year, despite the temporary halt of one of Israel’s offshore gas fields due to the conflict in October. On Monday, Israel not only said that gas supplies to both Egypt and Jordan had increased by one-quarter, but that exports would be boosted further, in line with Israel’s ambitions of becoming an important energy hub supplying Europe. Europe is a potential destination for Israeli gas via... Читать дальше...
South Africa’s energy and chemicals firm Sasol booked a 34% decline in its core earnings for the second half of 2023 due to lower crude oil and petrochemicals prices. Sasol reported on Monday core headline earnings per share (HEPS) of $0.95 (18.39 South African rand) for July to December 2023, down from $1.27 (24.55 rand) for the same period of 2022, dragged down by lower earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) due to “challenging market conditions.” “Sasol’s performance for the first six months... Читать дальше...
Big Oil and its allegedly exclusive role in bringing about apocalyptic climate change has been the ultimate villain in the eyes of climate activists. Calls for a forceful death of the industry have become the norm, and protests against oil and gas production are an everyday occurrence in the West. But activists are not only targeting their ultimate villain directly. They are also attacking proxy industries such as banks, which lend to the oil and gas industry. The offensive is yielding results: bank... Читать дальше...
India has raised by 5% its previous projection for peak electricity demand in the financial year 2031-2032, due to surging demand last year that outpaced the government’s forecasts, sources with knowledge of the latest forecast told Bloomberg on Monday. In the FY 2031-2032, between April 2031 and March 2032, India expects to have electricity demand surge to 384 gigawatts (GW), which is 5% higher than a previous government estimate from 2023. To compare, India’s peak power demand hit 243 GW last year... Читать дальше...
Azerbaijani Energy Minister Parviz Shahbazov visited Washington on February 20-21. He held meetings with senior U.S. officials and secured an agreement that could be a significant step towards boosting Azerbaijani gas exports to Europe. The sides "agreed to cooperate in the direction of US support for the expansion" of the Southern Gas corridor - the three pipelines that carry Azerbaijani gas exports to Europe, according to the Azerbaijani Energy Ministry's readout. "We have considered opportunities... Читать дальше...
Faster-than-expected land inventory drawdowns due to seaborne trade disruptions from the Red Sea crisis have prompted Goldman Sachs to revise up its forecast for summer peak Brent Crude prices to $87 per barrel, up by $2 from earlier expectations. “OECD commercial stocks on land have drawn somewhat faster than expected as the redirection of flows away from the Red Sea has increased inventories on water,” analysts at the investment bank wrote in a Sunday note, as carried by Reuters. According to Goldman... Читать дальше...
Denmark is dropping the investigation over what it described as a “deliberate sabotage” of the Nord Stream gas pipelines in 2022, due to insufficient grounds to pursue a criminal case, the Copenhagen police said on Monday. Gas leaks in each of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines were discovered at the end of September 2022 from the infrastructure just outside Swedish and Danish territorial waters in the Baltic Sea. Nord Stream 2 was never put into operation after Germany axed the certification process... Читать дальше...
U.S. diesel exports to Europe have tumbled so far in February amid lower refinery output and tighter supplies in America, which have decreased arbitrage opportunities and further tightened European diesel supplies. Europe’s imports of U.S. diesel have nearly halved so far in February to 6.65 million barrels, down from a seven-year high imports of 11.44 million barrels in January, according to an analysis by ship tracking firm Kpler cited by Reuters. The lower imports of U.S. diesel have added... Читать дальше...
QatarEnergy, the state company of one of the world’s biggest LNG exporters, is adding another major LNG expansion project to its two ongoing projects, aiming to raise its total LNG export capacity by 85% from current levels by 2030. QatarEnergy said on Sunday it is proceeding with a new LNG expansion project, the North Field West project, after drilling appraisal wells at the world’s largest natural gas field, the North Field it shares with Iran, and finding “huge additional gas quantities” in the field. Читать дальше...
The Yemeni Houthis fired a ballistic missile at a U.S.-flagged and operated tanker in the Gulf of Aden but missed, the U.S. Central Command has said. The Houthis also reported they had targeted the MV Torm Thor on Sunday, with "a number of appropriate naval missiles," according to a Reuters report. Central Command said the USS Mason—a guided missile destroyer—shot down one ballistic missile in the area, adding it was likely to have been the one launched at the MV Torm Thor. U.S. forces also shot down two one-way drones... Читать дальше...
Bitcoin miners in Texas have filed a lawsuit accusing the Department of Energy of trying to collect data illegally after the department asked that they disclose their electricity consumption. The Texas Blockchain Council called the request “an unprecedented and illegal data collection demand” in a letter sent to the Energy Information Administration at the end of last week. The EIA backed down and said it would not enforce the mandatory energy consumption survey on the bitcoin miners, instead using data it already had... Читать дальше...
Argentina’s oil-producing provinces have threatened to cut off oil supply to the rest of the country if the government of Javier Milei goes through with plans to withhold billions in federal tax revenues. "Not a drop of oil will come out on Wednesday if they don't respect the provinces once and for all and take their foot off our back," the governor of the southern Chubut province, Ignacio Torres, told a local TV channel, as quoted by AFP. The central government wants to withhold the equivalent of... Читать дальше...
Since November, Yemen's Houthi rebels have repeatedly attacked cargo ships passing through the strait of Bab al-Mandab that splits north-east Africa from Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula. The Iran-backed rebels have been targeting vessels with connections to Israel and Western countries, forcing dozens of shipping companies to take a 4,000-mile detour around the continent of Africa at significantly higher costs and extra shipping days. Unfortunately, resurging attacks coming from notorious piracy hotspots... Читать дальше...
For decades, the Eastern Hemisphere had been the biggest driver of global oil production growth. Until a decade ago, when the Middle Eastern oil producers – bound by the OPEC cartel – started yielding the growth momentum to the Western Hemisphere with their pursuit of high oil prices and unwittingly helping the first stage of the U.S. shale revolution. Sure, the Eastern Hemisphere, mostly the Middle East, continues to be the most formidable force in global oil production and markets. But the Western Hemisphere ... Читать дальше...
