Can President Biden Avoid A Critical Metals Crisis? (28 February 2021): By Ag Metal Miner - President Joe Biden’s latest executive order seeks to secure a variety of important supply chains. For example, in one higher-profile case, General Motors recently announced it would extend downtimes at several plants as a result of a semiconductor shortage. As we’ve noted in our Rare Earths Monthly Metals Index (MMI) series, rare earths supply has long been a point of concern for the US, particularly the Pentagon. (Recently, MetalMiner’s Stuart Burns delved into China’s overwhelming control of the rare earths processing market and indications Beijing is considering tighter rare earths export regulations.) In that vein, the president’s latest executive order — his 33rd in just over a month in office, which the White House said he would sign Wednesday — aims to secure those critical supply chains. (Source: Oil Price)
The World’s Largest Money Managers Hold $170 Billion In Coal Assets (27 February 2021): By MINING.com - The world’s two largest money managers have built a combined $170 billion investment portfolio in coal using money from people’s private savings and pension contributions, despite a global push for carbon neutrality, a new report shows. The eye-popping figure pales in comparison to the astronomical $1 trillion in coal investments held by 4,488 institutional investors as of January this year, a report by more than 25 green groups led by German non-profit Urgewald, reveals. US asset managers BlackRock and Vanguard, the world’s No.1 and No. 2 investment firms respectively, hold $86 billion and $84 billion worth of coal assets each. “While many large EU investors have begun screening coal companies out of their portfolios, the vast majority of US investors have refused to adopt coal exit policies,” Katrin Ganswindt, head of financial research at Urgewald, said in a statement. (Source: Oil Price)
Reuters Poll: Bankers See Steady Rise In Oil Prices (26 February 2021): By Irina Slav - Brent crude will average $59.07 per barrel this year, according to a Reuters survey of analysts. This is up from last month’s consensus on an average of $54.47 a barrel, reflecting growing optimism about the immediate future of the world’s most traded commodity. “Travel and leisure activity look set to catch up to buoyant manufacturing activity due to the mix of stimulus, confidence, vaccines, and more targeted pandemic measures,” one of the survey respondents, Norbert Ruecker from Swiss Julius Baer, told Reuters. The combination of accelerating vaccination drives, government stimulus, and continued supply discipline, notably among OPEC+ members and U.S. shale producers, has lifted oil prices recently, with a number of banks revising their oil price forecast upwards. Bank of America, for instance, recently said it expected oil prices to grow at the fastest rate in three decades. The bank forecast Brent will average between $50 and $70 over the next five years. (Source: Oil Price)
How Hard Did The Texas Freeze Hit U.S. Shale Production? (23 February 2021): By Charles Kennedy - U.S. shale oil production in the first quarter will be lower than previously expected because of the sub-zero temperatures and snowstorms that put Texas in the spotlight last week and pushed oil prices higher. Reuters cites several shale oil producers, including Occidental and Diamondback Energy, which expect a slow recovery in production as frozen pipelines and well equipment removed some 2 million bpd from the U.S. total. What’s more, some of the lost production may never return because it would be too expensive to restart some smaller wells, analysts said. The wells that will be restarted will need about two weeks, according to the oil companies Reuters talked to. The news of lower output for longer pushed oil prices up by $1 on Tuesday in Asian and European trading, helped by continuing vaccine optimism. “The positive momentum continues in the oil complex, with investors unabashedly predisposed to a bullish view,” Reuters quoted the chief global markets strategist of Axi, Steven Innes, as saying. (Source: Oil Price)
Qatar's LNG Megaprojects Are Making Markets Increasingly Competitive (22 February 2021): By Vanand Meliksetian - Qatar Petroleum’s recently set a new record for the largest LNG export project ever. By 2026, the country will once again become the world's largest supplier of liquefied natural gas by overtaking Australia. The signing of the contract was delayed for a year due to economic uncertainty as a direct consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic. With the mega-expansion, the market could be oversupplied for years and the feasibility of other projects that are awaiting their investment decision could be in jeopardy. For years Qatar Petroleum was the de-facto leader of the global LNG industry. The self-imposed moratorium was intended to ensure competitiveness in the long-term by preventing oversupply. Currently, Qatar produces 77 million tons per annum (mtpa). With the first phase expansion, the country will increase its capacity to 110 mtpa by 2026. By 2026 this should rise to 126 mtpa after completion of the second phase. (Source: Oil Price)
Even Bill Gates Is Struggling To Go Completely Green (21 February 2021): By Haley Zaremba - We’ve all heard about campaigns urging institutions, wealthy individuals, and world leaders to divest from fossil fuels. On the surface, it makes a lot of sense: in order to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial averages, which scientific consensus has demarcated as a necessary threshold to avoid the worst effects of catastrophic climate change, somewhere between two-thirds and four-fifths of the Earth's remaining fossil fuels must remain in the ground. While the act of divestment and the reasons behind it seem simple enough, however, the reality--as always--is more complicated. First of all, divestment campaigns are generally based on a two-pronged set of reasoning: moral and financial responsibility. But the reality is that divestment alone is not going to successfully defund the fossil fuels industry. (Source: Oil Price)
Offshore Wind Industry Looks To Add Nearly 1 Million New Jobs (20 February 2021): By Rystad Energy - The Covid-19 downturn has once again caused employment rates to plummet in the oil and gas industry. Even though some uptick is expected when the recovery arrives, employment will never return to the glories of just a few years ago. However, there is an energy segment that will be the new hiring haven for energy jobs, a Rystad Energy analysis shows – offshore wind. Demand for offshore wind staff will triple by the end of the decade, surging to 868,000 full-time jobs from an estimated 297,000 in 2020. In fact, the hiring spree will already be visible in the middle of the decade, as jobs demand could reach about 589,000 in 2025. Rystad Energy estimates offshore wind installed capacity could rise to 110 gigawatts (GW) by 2025 and 250 GW by 2030. This prolific growth will require a lot of skilled employees. In our analysis we have calculated the staffing needs in the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) workers – one year of full-time employment for one person regardless of actual hours – and included only direct and indirect jobs driven by offshore wind capacity deployment globally. (Source: Oil Price)
Big Oil To See Production Peak In 2028 (19 February 2021): By Tsvetana Paraskova - The pandemic shock to demand and the energy transition strategies are set to bring peak crude and natural gas production for Big Oil in 2028, at a lower volume and earlier than previously expected, Rystad Energy said in an analysis this week. The five integrated supermajors – ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell, and Total – will see their combined crude oil and natural gas production peak at 18 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) in 2028, compared to projections from before COVID-19 that had expected the combined production to continue rising until 2030 at over 20 million bpd. Last year, Big Oil’s combined oil and gas production declined by close to 5 percent, or by 900,000 boepd, compared to 2019, according to Rystad Energy. In 2020, the five supermajors also incurred a record combined $76 billion loss due to the crash in oil prices and oil demand, the analysts said. Over the past year, emission reduction targets and strategies have altered the long-term outlook for the supermajors’ production. (Source: Oil Price)
Flying Car Stocks Are Going Viral In 2021 (18 February 2021): By Alex Kimani - Flying cars, also known as electric air taxis, have been around us for a long time thanks to sci-fi staples such as "Back to the Future" and "The Jetsons." But with major brands like Boeing (NYSE:BA), Airbus (OTCPK:EADSF), Hyundai and Toyota (NYSE:TM) now promising to whisk riders through the skies in flying taxis and receiving a heady dose of Wall Street endorsement, the dream is increasingly getting closer to reality. Indeed, many experts are now upbeat that air mobility over short distances is closer to becoming reality than ever before in history, thanks mainly to massive advancements in battery technologies and autonomous flight. And make no mistake about it: Flying taxis have real potential to completely restructure public and private transportation, decongest our roads and lower greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, a Morgan Stanley Research study says the autonomous urban aircraft market will continue to mature during the current decade and then boom globally to reach $1.5 trillion by 2040. (Source: Oil Price)
Not Every New ‘Energy’ Company Has Tesla’s Resilience (16 February 2021): By Alex Kimani - Over the past two decades, the renewable energy sector has been besieged by a smorgasbord of challenges, including regulatory issues, U.S. sequestration, overcapacity, bankruptcies, and even the lure of other cheap energy solutions. However, Renewable Energy 2.0 could very well fall victim to Wall Street’s newest bogeyman: Overvaluation and poor fundamentals. Over the past three years, the stock markets have been running amok; yet the S&P 500 looks headed for yet another gangbusters performance during president Biden’s first term in office. Wall Street is almost unanimous in predicting the good times to keep rolling, with Goldman Sachs foreseeing another 10.6% jump to 4,300 by year-end. Still, the clean energy sector has been going even wilder, with the iShares Global Clean Energy ETF (ICLN) up 7.4% YTD; Invesco WilderHill Clean Energy ETF (PBW) has gained 28.5%, First Trust NASDAQ Clean Edge Green Energy Index Fund (QCLN) is up 23.9% while ALPS Clean Energy ETF (ACES) has rallied 22.3% over the timeframe. (Source: Oil price)
Texas Freeze Raises Cost Of Charging A Tesla To $900 (16 February 2021): By Charles Kennedy - The electricity shortage in Texas amid the cold snap has sent spot electricity prices soaring so much that the surge in power prices equals a cost of $900 for charging a Tesla. The typical full charge of a Tesla costs around $18 using a Level 1 or Level 2 charger at home, according to estimates from The Drive. This estimate is based on an average price of $0.14 per kWh of power. However, the extreme winter weather this week has sent Texas spot electricity prices soaring, as the wind turbines froze in the ice storms and reduced the wind power generating capacity in the Lone Star State by half. Spot electricity prices at the West hub have soared above the grid’s $9,000 per megawatt-hour cap, compared to a ‘normal’ price of $25 per megawatt-hour, FOX Business notes. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) called early on Monday for rotating outages across the state as extreme winter weather forced wind power generating units offline, while electricity demand set a new winter peak record. (Source: Oil Price)
Scientists Use Lithium To Control Heat In Nuclear Fusion Reactors (15 February 2021): By MINING.com - Researchers at the US Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory have created a plan using liquid lithium to control the extreme heat that could strike the exhaust system inside tokamak fusion reactors. A tokamak is a confinement device that uses a powerful magnetic field to confine plasma in the shape of a torus and whose work is to produce controlled thermonuclear fusion power. Fusion, on the other hand, is the nuclear reaction that occurs when atoms collide and fuse together, releasing huge amounts of energy. This process is what powers the Sun. In a paper published in the Journal of Fusion Energy, the PPPL scientists explain that heat flow inside a tokamak could seriously damage the walls of the divertor at the heart of the device’s exhaust system and shut down fusion reactions in the doughnut-shaped facilities. According to the team led by physicist Masayuki Ono, the problem arises because the energy stored in the core of the plasma that will fuel future tokamaks is expected to be 1,000 times greater than in facilities used today. Thus, if just 1% of the stored energy flared out of the core of a future reactor and reached the divertor, the damage could be extensive. (Source: Oil Price)
Can China Shake Its Dangerous Addiction To Oil? (14 February 2021): By Haley Zaremba - In order to avoid the worst effects of global warming, the world will have to make drastic changes this decade. In a damning report released by the United Nations at the end of 2019, that we are on track to see average temperatures soar to 3.2 degrees Celsius (5.8 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial averages, more than double the amount that experts on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) say is the threshold between us and global climate goals. In a business-as-usual scenario, we will see coral reefs die and dissolve into increasingly acidic ocean waters, coastal cities will be plagued by and even lost to rising sea levels and severe heat will wreak havoc on global weather patterns, agriculture, and ecosystems. In order to avoid the worst of this nightmare scenario, drastic and urgent action is needed worldwide--and this decade will make all the difference. In order to meet the 1.5 degree Celsius target set by the IPCC, we will need to cut oil use by 37% and gas use by 25% by just 2030. (Source: Oil Price)
Is China Headed To Peak Oil Demand? (12 February 2021): By Tsvetana Paraskova - The world's top oil importer, China, could be just years away from its own peak in domestic demand for oil products, Chinese refiners have started to warn, but consumer preferences and government policies about transport electrification and support for EVs are likely to determine whether Chinese domestic oil consumption will peak around 2025. China's largest refiner, Sinopec, said at the end of last year that domestic demand for oil products would peak by 2025 due to COVID impacts and the rise of electric vehicles, Argus reported, citing Sinopec's research think-tank as saying in its annual report. "China's oil products will enter a final growth phase before peaking in the next five years," the Economics and Development Research Institute (EDRI) at Sinopec said, as carried by Argus. According to the research institute, gasoline demand in China will likely peak in 2025, while demand for diesel could peak as soon as this year. (Source: Oil Price)
Utility-Scale Batteries Return 82% Of Stored Electricity (12 February 2021): By Charles Kennedy - The utility-scale batteries operating in the United States had an efficiency of retrieving the stored electricity at 82 percent in 2019, data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) showed on Friday. Pumped-storage facilities—the largest energy storage resource in the U.S. with 21.9 gigawatts (GW) of capacity accounting for 92 percent of total energy storage capacity as of November 2020—had a round-trip efficiency of 79 percent, the EIA said. Utility-scale battery capacity in the United States has been growing exponentially in recent years as it has been increasingly paired with soaring new wind and solar capacity installations. So battery capacity has become the second-largest source of electricity storage. As of November 20, 2020, utility-scale batteries had 1.4 GW of operational capacity. This year alone, 4 GW of battery capacity is scheduled to come online, according to EIA’s Preliminary Electric Generator Inventory. (Source: Oil Price)
Is This The Carbon Capture Technology Of The Future? (10 February 2021): By Fernando C. Hernandez - As the world increases its Net Zero and decarbonization efforts, many Energy Transition technologies are being introduced to meet the Paris Agreement’s global temperature targets, an agreement which the U.S has now rejoined. Direct Air Capture (DAC) is one such technology that aims to reduce carbon emissions by removing CO2 from the atmosphere. However, this green-friendly technology has a not-so-green side as well, as it can be used to enhance oil and gas production by injecting the captured CO2 into reservoirs: this method has been used by oil producers for years. In November, Occidental (OXY) announced their Net Zero program, becoming the first U.S. oil major to target the complete decarbonization of operations by 2040 and counteract indirect emissions by 2050. (Source: Oil Price)
How Much Higher Can Oil Prices Go? (10 February 2021): By David Messler - Oil prices have rallied back to the point they are almost ready to match pre-Covid levels. There are two key drivers for this miracle, which no one predicted early on as being possible in this period of time. The first is the production curbs by U.S. producers and of course, the millions of barrels of oil per day withheld by the OPEC+ cartel. The second is recovering demand, putting-so far, slight pressure on supplies, and creating a market condition known as “Backwardation.” A market condition where the future price of a commodity is higher than the present, or “spot” price. This is bullish for long term crude prices. Another driver for the current push higher in oil prices is the expectation for continued stimulus for the U.S. economy. So far this expectation has buoyed prices over the concerns raised by Friday’s Labor report, suggesting that employment levels continue to cast a pall on the overall recovery. One aspect of the speed at which this recovery has taken place is the meteoric rise of the share of many energy companies, with ExxonMobil, (NYSE: XOM), and ConocoPhillips, NYSE: COP) outperforming the rest of the market in the last couple of months. Shares of each are up 10% since late January, 2021. John Kilduff, a well-known energy analyst was quoted in a recent WSJ article as saying, “The market definitely has some momentum! WTI is going to be targeting $60, too.” (Source: Oil Price)
UAE Aims To Triple Its Solar Installations By 2025 (9 February 2021): By Rystad Energy - The installed renewable capacity of the United Arab Emirates, which until recently was nearly non-existent, concluded 2020 at 2.3 gigawatts (GW), around 91% of which comprises of solar PV projects, a Rystad Energy analysis shows. Solar PV additions are going to pile up, especially from 2022, and drive the country’s total renewable capacity to an impressive 9 GW by the end of 2025. Rystad Energy, evaluating activity in the country, expects solar PV capacity to reach 8.5 GW in the UAE by the end of 2025, being by far the technology that will contribute the most to diversifying its energy mix. The share of renewable energy in the UAE’s power generation mix is set to increase from 7% in 2020 to 21% in 2030, and to 44% by 2050. Previous targets for 2020 have already been achieved, and a robust project development pipeline suggests that the 2030 target is within reach. It is too early to predict the achievability of the country’s 2050 target, but the resilience and determination shown by the UAE’s renewable sector amid Covid-19 will surely make it attractive for investors and developers alike. This, together with some of the world’s lowest power purchase agreement (PPA) prices, suggests that 2050 targets are well within reach. (Source: Oil Price)
Oil Hits $60 For The First Time Since Pandemic Started (8 February 2021): By Tsvetana Paraskova - Brent Crude prices hit $60 a barrel early on Monday, rising above that threshold for the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic early last year. As of 8:54 a.m. ET on Monday, Brent Crude was trading at $60.10, up by 1.28 percent, and WTI Crude was up 1.25 percent at $57.56. Continued production restraint from the OPEC+ group and the extra cut from the alliance’s key member and world’s top oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, supported oil prices at the start of this week, after oil posted last week its third consecutive weekly gain. The tightening of the oil market, combined with prospects of a rise in demand later this year with COVID-19 cases now falling and vaccination rates increasing, have been boosting oil prices since the start of February. The Brent futures curve is also strengthening in backwardation, the state of the market signaling tighter supplies with the prices of the nearer futures contracts higher than those further out in time. Prompt oil prices are now at more than a one-year high—the last time Brent was above $60 a barrel was in late January 2020. (Source: Oil Price)
China Has Just Launched The World's Largest Carbon Market (6 February 2021): By Alex Kimani - For many years, China sacrificed environmental stewardship at the altar of economic growth, adopting a growth-at-all-costs strategy. The economy-first mentality helped Beijing lift 850 million of its citizens from dire poverty but also made the country the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. However, that has been rapidly changing under president Xi Jinping who has vowed to adopt more stringent environmental policies as he seeks to temper the hardline stance that dominated previous administrations. Shortly after Xi Jinping's election in 2013, China introduced the "Green Fence" operation designed in part to improve the quality of the plastics waste coming into the country before following it up two years later with the "National Sword Campaign" that effectively banned the importation of plastics into the country. Last year, the president reiterated his environmentally friendly stance after he announced that the country had set a firm goal to become carbon neutral by 2060. (Source: Oil Price)
Can Nuclear Power Make A Comeback This Decade? (6 February 2021): By Viktor Katona - 2020 will go down in the history of energy as one of the worst examples of the global economy swiftly tanking in almost complete unison, virtually every region has suffered dreadfully from the manifold impacts of coronavirus. If one is to assess the global energy impacts of 2020 it becomes evident that every single type of fuel has declined last year except for renewables and biomass. Almost every single sector of economy – agriculture, industrial, commercial and residential – has seen its aggregate consumption drop, only the petrochemicals industry was able to pull off a meagre 1% year-on-year increase. Yet of all types of energy nuclear power has arguably suffered the most, virtually lacking any success story that could mitigate the overall decadence of 2020. Oil or gas had likewise experienced all sorts of hardships throughout 2020, however, in some regions or industry segments they’ve managed to increase their footing. Finding stories of growth, generally speaking, is quite difficult considering that consumption of primary energy has dropped on every single continent last year, no major region was spared of the devastating effects of COVID-19. Perhaps surprisingly, despite having the most COVID cases in absolute terms North America was not the worst-hit continent, seeing its overall intake drop 9% year-on-year, Europe (and particularly Western Europe) witnessed an even more severe decline of 12% from its 2019 numbers. In nominal terms, European energy consumption stood at 1.77Btoe in 2019 and it had dropped to 1.56Btoe last year. (Source: Oil Price)
South Korea To Build World’s Largest Offshore Wind Farm (5 February 2021): By Irina Slav - South Korea will invest some $43 billion in constructing what is to be the world’s largest offshore wind farm, Reuters reports, adding that the project should be completed by 2030. The plan is part of the country’s Green New Deal that seeks to transition South Korea to a more sustainable energy future. “With this project, we are accelerating the eco-friendly energy transition and moving more vigorously toward carbon neutrality,” President Moon Jae-in said at the signing ceremony for the 8.2-GW project, which will help the country’s wind power capacity to 16.5 GW by 2030 from the current 1.67 GW. South Korea announced its Green New Deal in May 2020. Under the plan, total renewable energy generation capacity would increase to 40 percent of the country’s energy mix by 2034. That’s up from just 15 percent at the moment. Currently, LNG is the biggest portion of South Korea’s energy mix, followed by coal, at 27.1 percent of the total. Nuclear energy accounts for 19.2 percent of energy generation. By 2030, plans have nuclear’s share in the mix shrink to 11.7 percent, and then falling further to 9.9 percent by 2034. Also, by 2030, the share of renewables should rise to 33.1 percent before hitting the 40-percent goal four years later. Offshore wind appears to have a big role to play in that shift. (Source: Oil Price)
Shell Sees Return To ‘Normal’ Oil Demand In 2022 (4 February 2021): By Charles Kennedy - Royal Dutch Shell expects global oil demand to return to some sort of normalcy next year, chief executive Ben van Beurden said on Thursday as the supermajor reported another set of weak Big Oil results affected by the pandemic. “I believe 2022 is going to be sort of back to normal” regarding global oil demand rebounding to the levels seen before the pandemic, Argus quoted van Beurden as saying. Full recovery of oil consumption will have to wait for a recovery in the aviation industry, Shell’s top executive said. “Aviation will be a very significant contributor to that remaining recovery that we need to see,” said van Beurden, echoing estimates from analysts who see jet fuel demand as the main drag on global oil demand recovery. Continued low demand for jet fuel will account for 80 percent of the 3.1-million-bpd gap in oil demand this year compared to pre-pandemic levels, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in December. (Source: Oil Price)
Another Oil Giant Joins The Blockchain Bandwagon (3 February 2021): By Felicity Bradstock - As oil majors rally from last year’s dip in demand and price, most are looking for new technologies to ensure the safety of their future. Driving down costs and enhancing green practices is at the top of these companies’ priority list going into the next decade, and blockchain is offering them a way to do this. The latest company to buy into blockchain technology is Norwegian firm Equinor. Equinor is 70 percent owned by the government, meaning oil production must go hand in hand with environmental policy. To this end, CEO Anders Opedal aims to make Equinor carbon-friendly, the first “net-zero” oil company by 2050. Johan Sverdrup, Equinor’s new 300-foot-tall platform, incorporates cutting-edge blockchain technology, installed with sensors that track the drilling of new wells, the quantity of oil being produced, and many other core functions. The information is all being transmitted to a startup based in Houston, Data Gumbo, which compiles this vital information into its blockchain ledger GumboNet. (Source: Oil Price)
OPEC+ Now Sees Weaker Oil Demand Growth For 2021 (2 February 2021): By Tsvetana Paraskova - OPEC+ expects global oil demand to rise by 5.6 million barrels per day (bpd) this year—lower estimated growth than OPEC’s assessment of 5.9-million-bpd demand increase from less than three weeks ago, according to the group’s Joint Technical Committee (JTC), which met via videoconference on Tuesday. Last year, oil demand is estimated to have crashed by 9.72 million bpd, Amena Bakr, Deputy Bureau Chief and Chief Opec Correspondent at Energy Intelligence, tweeted quoting the JTC’s assessment, which also notes that this year, global oil demand is forecast to rise by 5.60 million bpd compared to 2020. Less than three weeks ago, OPEC said it expected demand to rise by 5.9 million bpd in 2021 from an estimated average demand of 90 million bpd in 2020, leaving its 2021 demand growth forecast unchanged from December but warning that the pandemic was still skewing risks to the downside. (Source: Oil Price)
Will France Abandon Nuclear Power? (1 February 2021): By Tatiana Serova - On Wednesday January 27th, the International Energy Agency (IEA) released a long-awaited report called “Conditions and requirements for the technical feasibility of a power system with a high share of renewables in France towards 2050”. Yet, that document was given a cold welcome by the French nuclear industry, as behind this somewhat complex title hides a key message : a scenario of 100% renewable energy is “technically possible” in 2060 in France. This implies that the country would potentially no longer need nuclear energy to meet its domestic demand. The nuclear sector accounts for around 70% of today’s French electricity mix, and over 40% of final energy demand. Back in the 1970’s, France decided to take the nuclear path, aspiring to move away from oil and achieving energy independence. Since then, not only did the country guarantee its own security of electricity supply, but it could also export it towards neighboring EU countries. Killing two birds with one stone, France boasted some of the cheapest electricity in Europe and was proud to have an almost fossil fuels free electricity generation system. (Source: Oil Price)