Shale Gas Reactor Could Saves Millions in Propylene Production (25 April 2024): By Brian Westenhaus - University of Michigan engineers have designed new chemical reactor to make an important ingredient for plastics, adhesives, carpet fibers, household cleaners and more from natural gas. The idea could reduce manufacturing costs in a post-petroleum economy by millions of dollars. The research paper has been published in the journal Science. The reactor creates propylene, a workhorse chemical that is also used to make a long list of industrial chemicals, including ingredients for nitrile rubber found in automotive hoses and seals as well as blue protective gloves. Most propylene used today comes from oil refineries, which collect it as a byproduct of refining crude oil into gasoline. As oil and gasoline fall out of vogue in favor of natural gas, solar, and wind energy, production of propylene and other oil-derived products could fall below the current demand without new ways to make them. ... (Source: Oil Price)
$2-Trillion Funding Gap Casts Shadow over Energy Transition (24 April 2024): By Irina Slav - Investments in the energy transition are falling way short of what is needed for its success. The fresh warning comes from BlackRock, which said annual investments in the shift away from hydrocarbons need to almost double from their current record levels. But it’s getting less likely this would ever happen. In a new edition of its Investment Institute Transition Scenario, the bank said that moving the transition forward would require more money from both public and private sources and that, for its part, would require “alignment between government action, companies and partnerships with communities,” according to Michael Dennis, head of APAC Alternatives Strategy & Capital Markets at BlackRock, as quoted by CNBC. ... (Source: Oil Price)
IMF Praises UK's Digital Infrastructure for AI Readiness (23 April 2024): By City A.M - The UK economy is uniquely positioned to benefit from the roll out of artificial intelligence. Politicians on all sides should be championing policies that help secure these benefits as soon as possible, Chris Dorrell writes. Amid a slew of warnings about slow growth and rising national debt, it was easy to miss that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had some good news for the UK economy last week. Modelling the potential impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on both UK productivity and output, it suggested that the size of the UK economy could grow by an enormous 16 per cent. Perhaps more striking, the IMF suggested that these gains would take place “primarily in the first decade of transition”. Productivity gains from AI were expected to range from 0.9 to 1.5 per cent a year, compared to a global average of between 0.1 per cent and 0.8 per cent. ... (Source: Oil Price)
Tech Leaders Big Big On Green Energy Startups (22 April 2024): By ZeroHedge - Sam Altman and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz are betting on solar power and energy storage that can supply a low-carbon future to artificial intelligence data centers. Altman, the face of the AI chatbot boom, has also invested in nuclear power technology to fuel America's powering up with clean, reliable energy. The Wall Street Journal reports that Altman and the private US venture capital firm are among the investors putting $20 million into Exowatt, a company that aims to solve the clean-energy needs of AI data centers. Exowatt declined to provide details about how its technology works. However, WSJ provided a brief understanding: Instead of solar panels arrayed across a field, Exowatt has developed modules roughly the size of shipping containers that contain solar lenses. The lenses convert energy from the sun into heat. That heat can then be used to warm up cheap, basic materials much like electricity heats up a toaster, allowing the modules to store energy for up to 24 hours a day. ... (Source: Oil Price)
Geopolitical Tensions Fail to Spark Oil Price Surge (20 April 2024): By Tsvetana Paraskova - The tensions in the Middle East have highlighted the ebb and flow of the geopolitical risk premium in oil prices so far this month. Analysts believe that oil currently includes between $5 and $10 per barrel in premium to reflect a risk of escalation in the Israel-Iran conflict. The past week has illustrated how traders perceive geopolitical risk. Just as Brent Crude prices had eased to the upper $80s after the Iranian drone attack against Israel in the April 13-14 weekend, oil spiked by 3% early on April 19 amid reports of an Israeli missile hit in Iran. The fluctuating prices in response to the tensions in the Middle East show that traders continue to price in various degrees of escalation or de-escalation in the conflict on any given day or minute. ... (Source: Oil Price)
Arab Nations Act Against Iran-Israel Escalation (18 April 2024): By RFE/RL staff - As the world anxiously awaited the outcome of Iran's large-scale attack against Israel, some Arab countries had already taken steps to blunt its impact. When the dust from the April 13 attack settled, the vast majority of the hundreds of drones and missiles launched by Iran had been shot down -- by Israel, its Western allies, and Jordan, despite its strong opposition to Israel's ongoing war in Gaza. At least two other Arab states -- Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), which have been highly critical of the Gaza war and have joined Iran and other Muslim states in pushing for a cease-fire -- also reportedly played a role in intercepting the Iranian assault by sharing intelligence information. ... (Source: Oil Price)
China Dominates Global Hydropower Generation (17 April 2024): By ZeroHedge - China is the world’s biggest hydro power producer, having generated an estimated 1,303 terawatt hours of hydropower in 2022, according to data published by Ember, a UK-based energy think tank. As Statista's Anna Fleck shows in the chart below, this equates to approximately 31 percent of global hydropower that year. Following some way behind comes Brazil (427 TWh), Canada (398 TWh), the United States (249 TWh) and Russia (198 TWh).When looking at hydropower’s share of total electricity production for each of these countries, then Norway comes first with a high 87.5 percent of its electricity energy mix having been accounted for by hydropower in 2022. Only Paraguay comes higher in terms of share of total electricity production, at 99.7 percent. If this chart were extended, it would feature in rank 15. ... (Source: Oil Price)
Institutional Investors Double Down On Oil Despite Divestment Pledges (16 April 2024): By City A.M - The campaign for institutional investors to divest from oil giants like BP and Shell hasn’t made any progress due to the way index providers dominate the market, a new study has found. Only 60 institutional investors worldwide have sold all of their shares in BP and Shell, representing about three per cent and four per cent of their shareholders, a paper published earlier this year by David Whyte of Queen Mary University of London has revealed. These shares have all been promptly bought up by massive asset managers like Blackrock and Vanguard, who have risen to popularity through their market-tracking index funds. With Shell currently the largest company listed in the UK, and BP number five, tracking the index has meant buying more and more of their shares, and the passive giants have been happy to do so. ... (Source: Oil Price)
Scientists Warn Gulf Stream Slowdown Could Begin as Early as 2025 (15 April 2024): By Kurt Cobb - There were two pieces of recent news which highlight why what was once most often referred to as global warming is now called climate change. Yes, the globe is heating up. But effects vary depending on where you live for various reasons. First, a report from India calls out problems with the criteria used by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) to issue a heatwave warning: The criteria do NOT consider humidity, only temperature. Anyone who lives in a hot climate or any climate that includes hot summer days knows that humidity can make a huge difference in whether one can stay cool in hot weather. It turns out that the IMD criteria fail to recognize that temperatures below what is considered a heatwave may be just as dangerous to human health when humidity is high and even be downright life-threatening. In short, India is already experiencing conditions that at times are at or near the limits of human suvivability. ... (Source: Oil Price)
A Rarely Used Technique Could Double U.S. Grid Capacity (13 April 2024): By Felicity Bradstock - As the U.S. introduces a wide array of alternative energy options, the government is rapidly seeking ways to improve and expand the grid system. Much of the grid infrastructure is outdated, built to rely on electricity supplies from a few major energy hubs. However, as more green energy projects crop up in atypical locations – such as rural regions and offshore sites – it is becoming increasingly difficult to ensure that energy will reach the grid for distribution. Many energy experts believe it will take a complete overhaul to prepare the grid for the rapid growth of the country’s renewable energy capacity. Yet, some believe it may be possible to roll out a rarely used technique to upgrade old power lines across the U.S. ... (Source: Oil Price)
Plant Vogtle: Boon or Bust for the Future of U.S. Nuclear Power? (11 April 2024): By Haley Zaremba - The United States has big plans to expand its nuclear energy industry. The country already boasts the biggest nuclear fleet in the world and is solely responsible for about a third of the world’s total nuclear energy output, and the Biden administration is set on dramatically increasing output over the next decade or so. However, the United States nuclear energy sector has been neglected and underfunded for decades now, and many of the nation’s reactors are scheduled to be retired in the near future. Turning this down-trend around to rapidly expand the sector will be an extraordinarily expensive and difficult endeavor, but experts contend that it’s absolutely essential to make good on climate pledges within or even anywhere close to the agreed-upon time frame. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration EIA), the United States was home to 93 operating commercial nuclear reactors at 54 nuclear power plants over 28 states as of August 1, 2023. But that number is set to rise dramatically if the United States makes good on a brand new pledge to triple nuclear power production by 2050. ... (Source: Oil Price)
What Does Neom’s Downsize Means for Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030? (9 April 2024): By ZeroHedge - The scaling back of the megacity project is attributed to budget constraints, with the Public Investment Fund's cash reserves dropping to $15bn in September 2023.Saudi Arabia has scaled back some of its ambitions for its desert megacity Neom, according to a report by Bloomberg. The $1.5 trillion megacity project, which organizers claim will be 33 times the size of New York City, is due to include a 170km straight-line city. When launching The Line in 2021, the Saudi government had announced that 1.5 million people would be living in the city by 2030. Officials now expect there to be fewer that 300,000 residents by that time, according to a source cited by Bloomberg.The source said that officials expected only 2.4km of the 170km city to be completed by 2030. As a result of the scaling back, one contractor dismissed some of the workers it employs on site, according to a document seen by Bloomberg. ... (Source: Oil Price)
Pemex Oil Platform Fire Claims At Least One Life (8 April 2024): By Charles Kennedy - One person has been killed, with two others in critical condition, following a fire over the weekend at an offshore platform operated by Mexico’s state-run Pemex in the southern Gulf of Mexico. Nine workers were injured in the fire that started on Saturday at Pemex’s offshore Akal-B platform, according to Reuters. Initially, on Sunday, Pemex had reported that the fire had resulted in injuries for two people, none critical, claiming that the fire had been brought under control in a matter of minutes. On Monday, however, new reports emerged of the true extent of the damage and at least one fatality. No additional information was yet available on the critically injured workers at the time of writing, nor was there any indication from Pemex as to the impact on the platform’s oil and gas production, with the investigation continuing. ... (Source: Oil Price)
Could Fracking Tech Be the Key to Tapping Geothermal’s Potential? (7 April 2024): By Haley Zaremba - Geothermal energy provides one of the cleanest and most consistent sources of renewable energy on Earth. In theory, there is enough geothermal energy under the Earth’s crust to sustainably power the entire planet – so why aren’t we using so incredibly little of it? The issue is tapping into that radiant heat – only a tiny fraction of the Earth’s thermal energy can be accessed profitably. But a team of researchers out of MIT thinks they may have achieved a technological breakthrough with the ability to tap into a whole lot more of the Earth's geothermal energy potential. Currently, geothermal energy is almost exclusively produced where heat from the Earth’s core bubbles up to the surface, such as where there are naturally occurring geysers and hot springs. For this reason, geothermal accounts for a mere 0.5% of renewable energy on a global scale. Its share of the broader energy mix, including fossil fuels, is infinitesimal. Raising the bar for geothermal energy production will require the ability to drill much, much deeper into the Earth to tap into radiant heat from the Earth’s core, and to do so efficiently and affordably. ... (Source: Oil Price)
Oil Surges Over $90 as UAE Cuts Diplomatic Ties with Israel (4 April 2024): By ZeroHedge - At this point Israel's ties with key Gulf countries like the UAE are near breaking point, after only a few short years ago diplomatic normalization was hailed through Trump's Abraham accords. But international and Israeli press reports are confirming the UAE has announced it is halting all coordination on humanitarian aid with Israel. Further, as Israeli media reports: "The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has announced a suspension of diplomatic coordination with Israel in the wake of the death of seven World Central Kitchen humanitarian workers in Gaza." Simultaneously, Israel is busy putting its embassies across the world on high security alert due to the "heightened Iranian response threat" in the wake of Monday's Israeli attack on the Iranian embassy in Damascus. All of this served to send Brent soaring in the last two hours, with Brent spiking above $90 for the first time since October.... (Source: Oil Price)
Thermal Batteries Are the Hottest New Thing in Energy Storage (3 March 2024): By Haley Zaremba - The energy storage sector is on the verge of explosion. As leading economies around the world race to install more and more renewable energy production capacity, the nature of our energy landscape is changing, and the grid will need significant advances and infrastructural supports to keep up. One of these key supports is energy storage, which can manage and even out the variable flow of renewable energy to and from the grid. Due to its central role in energy security in an increasingly decarbonized world, the energy security sector could double in size over the course of 2024. The majority of energy storage is currently accomplished with the use of lithium-ion batteries, but there are a few problems with the wide-scale employment of this technology. First, lithium is a highly sought-after finite resource that is yielding an increasingly negative environmental and health impact in the places where it is mined. Moreover, it’s an essential component of electric vehicle batteries and photovoltaic solar panels, meaning that competition over lithium resources is already fierce and heating up. A 2023 report from Popular Mechanics estimates that “an electrified economy in 2030 will likely need anywhere from 250,000 to 450,000 tonnes of lithium.” For reference, “in 2021, the world produced only 105—not 105,000—tonnes.” ... (Source: Oil Price)
New-World Climate Regulation Clashes with Old-World Capitalism (1 April 2024): By ZeroHedge - “Facts that don’t align with ill-informed prejudice are often infuriating. That doesn’t make them wrong. Someone needs to tell the truth about what it’s going to take to get to a net-zero future,” Emily Mir, a spokeswoman for Exxon, said earlier this month. And that's exactly what Judson Berkey at UBS has done, the focus of a new Bloomberg report. Berkey let loose on a recent conference call with regulators about how unrealistic climate goals were for banks trying to integrate them into their respective economies. The report covering Berkey's outburst simply concluded that the "world’s biggest banks can’t live up to the green regulatory ideal unless they start dumping huge numbers of clients worldwide at a reckless pace and also roil economies in large swathes of the globe that primarily rely on dirty fuels."ip Ad ... (Source: Oil Price)