Just when you thought the EV market couldn't get more saturated or competitive in China, sales have once again slowed and the country's market leader, BYD, is once again implementing price cuts. Sales of BEVs were up 18.2% in January-February compared to 20.8% for 2023, according to China Passenger Car Association reported by Reuters. When added to hybrids and new energy vehicles, sales were up 37.5% in the period, compared to 36.2% for all of 2023, proving that the EV market continues to gravitate toward. Читать дальше...
A few days after losing $14 billion in market value, Brazil’s state-run oil company, Petrobras, said it may dole out a special dividend after all, CEO Jean-Paul Prates said Monday, which could be the subject of a vote during April’s meeting of shareholders. Brazil's shares crashed on Friday, shaving $14 billion off the company’s market value after it disappointed investors by skimping on its dividend, with the ramifications spilling beyond Petrobras and into the wider Brazilian stock market. Also... Читать дальше...
It’s no secret that lab-grown diamonds are disrupting the mined diamond industry, but recent results from international diamond miners suggest the shift may be happening faster than analysts anticipated. Underlying EBITDA for DeBeers, the world’s second-largest diamond miner, fell by 95 per cent year on year in 2023. At Vale, an international miner, the underlying EBITDA of diamonds fell by 56 per cent year on year. Demand for mined diamonds has “collapsed”, according to Max Spicer, sales consultant... Читать дальше...
The United States produced more crude oil than any other country in 2023, for the sixth year in a row, with production averaging 12.9 million barrels per day, up from 12.3 million bpd in 2019, which set a global record at the time, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). The U.S. also set a monthly global production record in December, hitting 13.3 million bpd that month. The potential for any other country to beat this monthly record in the short term is very low, according to the EIA, based on capacity. Читать дальше...
Via Metal Miner The European aluminum manufacturing industry is under attack from two short- and medium-term threats, both of which have the potential to significantly impact aluminum consumers across the region. Threat #1: Potential Russian Aluminum Ban, Aluminum Manufacturing Shortage The first threat is the widely debated possibility of the EU banning Russian aluminum. While the UK has already banned imports of Russian primary and semi-finished aluminum, the EU has left it up to member states... Читать дальше...
The Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem), the UK’s energy market regulator, has opened an investigation into an unnamed company for alleged abuse of dominant position. “The opening of this investigation does not imply we have made any findings about whether there has been an infringement of competition law,” said Ofgem, which is investigating via its Gas and Electricity Markets Authority (GEMA). “GEMA has launched an investigation under Chapter II of the Competition Act 1998 into suspected... Читать дальше...
Authored by Ven Ram, Bloomberg cross-asset strategist, Gold is still hovering near a nominal record, but the scope for further gains from here may be limited. Bullion approached $2,200 an ounce last week, annexing a new record, though stated in real terms, gold is still shy of its previous peak set more than a decade ago. Even at current levels, an investor who bought gold at the end of 2012, when it was trading around $1,675 an ounce, would still be sitting on losses of more than 3% after adjusting... Читать дальше...
Morocco is looking to attract green hydrogen investments by allocating 1 million hectares of public land to projects, the government said on Monday. The first stage of the hydrogen project development will include providing investors with a total of 300,000 hectares of plots of land ranging from 10,000 to 30,000 hectares, according to the size of the expected projects, Morocco said. The so-called “Morocco Offer” to boost green hydrogen development is also based on a competitive infrastructure that is planned... Читать дальше...
Over $8 billion in investments in renewable energy are now at risk in the wake of a ban on some renewable projects by Canada’s Alberta province, according to a new study by an Alberta-based clean energy think tank, Reuters reports. The study, by the Pembina Institute, also said the ban puts 6.3 gigawatts of solar and wind power capacity at risk, noting that a total of 36 out of 111 solar and six out of 34 wind projects could be negatively impacted. Alberta initially announced the moratorium on... Читать дальше...
Just weeks after posting $2.4 billion in trading profits from liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the fourth quarter of last year, the long-time head of Shell’s LNG, natural gas and power trading unit, Steve Hill, is stepping down, the supergiant announced on Monday. Hill will officially step down from his position as head of Shell Energy on March 28 and hand control over to a successor that has yet to be announced, Reuters reports. Hill has held this position since 2016, when Shell acquired BG Group in a $53-billion deal. Читать дальше...
Saudi Arabia is receiving record income from its cash cow, the state oil giant Aramco, which raised its total 2023 dividend payment by 30% to nearly $98 billion. Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil firm by both production and market capitalization, reported on Sunday a 25% drop in earnings for 2023 due to lower oil prices and lower oil sales. The Kingdom was restricting output by around 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) for the better part of last year—500,000 bpd from cuts by several OPEC+... Читать дальше...
U.S. gasoline prices rose for a second week in a row, to average $3.40 per gallon on Monday, up by 6.2 cents from a week ago, amid rising demand, ongoing refinery maintenance, and the switch to summer gasoline, GasBuddy said today. Still, the national average price of regular gasoline is 4.5 cents per gallon lower than a year ago, said GasBuddy, which has compiled price data from more than 12 million individual price reports covering over 150,000 gas stations. The national average price of diesel... Читать дальше...
Nickel prices are proving a headache for miners across the world: oversupply of the metal plus low electric vehicle (EV) demand has created a profit-stealing two-year price slide. Anglo American’s nickel revenues fell by around 23 percent in 2023, according to its latest earnings report. The EBITDA for nickel at Vale fell by 56 percent over the same period, from £1,924mn to £668m. The nickel price is down 27 percent year on year. How have prices fallen so far, so quickly? Oversupply from Indonesia... Читать дальше...
Bank of America is looking to expand its business related to the energy transition, boosting carbon trading, and power and natural gas markets trading, senior executives have told Bloomberg. Banks in the United States and Europe are looking to boost exposure to trading products and financing projects that are deemed of key importance to the energy transition. Bank of America (BofA) will hire people for trading roles as client demand for energy transition-related products is rising. The U.S. banking... Читать дальше...
EQT Corporation has entered into a merger agreement to buy Equitrans Midstream Corporation and create an integrated U.S. natural gas company with an initial enterprise value exceeding $35 billion, the top American natural gas producer said on Monday. In the latest merger deal in the U.S. oil and gas industry, EQT will combine with Equitrans, which has strategically located infrastructure assets in the Marcellus and Utica regions and is a shareholder in the Mountain Valley Pipeline project, expected... Читать дальше...
Saudi oil giant Aramco is cutting supply of its heavier crudes to Asia in April, due to field maintenance, despite meeting full volume nominations for next month, multiple sources familiar with the plans told Reuters on Monday. Most buyers in China and India will receive the full contractual volumes they had asked for, although the supply slate of grades is being reshuffled to include fewer barrels of heavier crudes, according to the unnamed sources who have spoken to Reuters. At least one Chinese... Читать дальше...
Europeans are not fond of the idea that their gasoline and diesel-powered cars could soon be banned, a new survey has found. Conducted among 15,000 people in Germany, France, and Poland, the survey found that the ban on internal combustion engine cars is the least popular of the European Union’s climate policies. The list of policies had 40 entries. !function(e,n,i,s){var d="InfogramEmbeds";var o=e.getElementsByTagName(n)[0];if(window[d]&&window[d].initialized)window[d].process&&window[d].process();else... Читать дальше...
Chinese oil demand is back in the spotlight, exerting pressure on oil prices to start the new trading week with a loss, extending losses booked last week. "Worries over weak demand in China outweighed the extension of supply cuts by OPEC+," a Nissan Securities analyst told Reuters. The worries came after the research arm of state-owned Chinese energy major CNPC forecast last week that China is entering a slow oil demand period thanks to the uptake of electric cars and LNG-fueled trucks. Growth in... Читать дальше...
A team of oil industry experts from Brazil’s state energy major Petrobras have traveled to Venezuela at the invitation of President Nicolas Maduro despite U.S. sanctions against Venezuela’s oil industry. Citing unnamed sources, Bloomberg reported that the Petrobras delegation had visited several oil fields in Lake Maracaibo, a top oil-producing region in Venezuela, and a logical priority for the government, which wants to reverse years of declining production. This visit is the latest in a string... Читать дальше...
For many years, electric vehicle critics have been pessimistic that EVs will ever go mainstream because they, have argued, will always be more expensive than fossil fuel-powered vehicles. Market experts have repeatedly pointed out that EVs need to achieve cost parity with ICE vehicles if they ever hope to displace them from our roads. Luckily for EV buffs, there’s growing evidence that this might happen sooner than many expect. Stiff competition, especially from China, as well as an oversupplied... Читать дальше...
U.S. oil and gas companies spent a combined $250 billion in mergers and acquisitions last year. More than half of that came from just two megadeals: Exxon's acquisition of Pioneer Natural Resources and Chevron's takeover of Hess Corp. The buying spree, according to analysts, was mostly motivated by a drive to secure future production at a relatively low cost while there's cash in the bank after the record-breaking 2022. Analysts have commended the attitude to energy supply security. Congress Democrats, however, have not. Читать дальше...
