Solar Could Be Europe’s Top Power Source In 5 Years (29 September 2020): By Tsvetana Paraskova - Solar power could be Europe’s biggest energy source in terms of installed capacity by 2025 if the European Union (EU) stays on track for its net-zero targets, the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on SolarPower Europe’s Solar Power Summit on Tuesday. “Our numbers show that if Europe is keen and able to follow a net-zero goal, within five years of time solar will be the number one electricity capacity in Europe, overtaking everybody,” IEA’s Executive Director Fatih Birol said on the summit, as carried by Recharge. The numbers Birol was referring to will be published in IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2020 on October 13. “Clean energy must be at the heart of the global economic recovery. Solar was essential in offering resilience during the pandemic and with the help of the #EUGreenDeal, Europe will lead the world in providing solar and renewable technologies,” Birol said today. (Source: Oil Price)
NASA Doubles Down On Nuclear Fusion Ambitions (28 September 2020): By Jon LeSage - Energy analysts tend to agree that nuclear fusion will have to replace fission at power plants to bring back more support for nuclear as a clean energy source. The challenge here will be speeding up the development process and cutting down the huge costs for bringing fusion online as climate change mandates approach. A NASA research project may offer a pathway to making nuclear fusion commercial. The space agency has been releasing results from testing "lattice confinement," which could transform production scale and bring costs way down for much-anticipated nuclear fusion energy. It may be able to remove, or at least reduce, a key barrier that has kept fusion years away from being deployed. (Source: Oil Price)
Boris Johnson: UK Will Lead The World In Transition To A Net-Zero Economy (25 September 2020): By City A.M - Boris Johnson has said that the UK will lead the world in the world in the transition to a net-zero economy, saying that climate action cannot be “another victim of coronavirus”. Speaking to a United Nations roundtable on climate change this afternoon, the PM said that the UK will serve “as a launchpad for a global green industrial revolution”. Appearing by video link at the panel, Johnson said: “As the world continues to deal with coronavirus we must look ahead to how we will rebuild, and how we can seize the opportunity to build back better. “The UK will lead by example, keeping the environment on the global agenda and serving as a launch pad for a global green industrial revolution. But no one country can turn the tide – it would be akin to bailing out a liner with a single bucket. (Source: Oil Price)
Are Small Scale Plants The Future For LNG? (24 September 2020): By Haley Zaremba - Three years ago, Strategy&, the strategy consulting arm of global finance powerhouse PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), published a report that proclaimed that small-scale liquefied natural gas (ssLNG) may be “the next big wave.” This small-scale approach to LNG requires far less capital than traditional LNG ventures and enables production at remote locations. The 16-page Strategy& report details why they thought that ssLNG, “a niche but nascent industry that is already profitable and scalable,” was poised to disrupt the energy industry. According to Strategy&, ssLNG “is well placed to meet the growing demand from the shipping and trucking industries for fuels that are more environmentally friendly than oil and diesel. ssLNG also enjoys advantages in addressing off-grid power generation for industrial and residential needs in remote locations.” (Source: Oil Price)
EIA Sees Global Oil Market Balancing By End-2021 (23 September 2020): By Charles Kennedy - The OPEC+ production cuts and curtailments in the United States are set to help global inventories to continue drawing down for the rest of the year and most of next year, resulting in a relatively balanced market by the end of 2021, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Wednesday. The OPEC+ deal and the production drops elsewhere, most of all in North America, have brought global supply below the level of demand for the first time since the middle of 2019, the EIA estimated, noting that the supply deficit has helped bloated global inventories to decline since June. “EIA expects inventories to continue declining in the second half of 2020 and during most of 2021, resulting in a relatively balanced market by the end of next year,” it said in its Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) for September. (Source: Oil Price)
Chinese Oil Giant Could Buy Exxon's North Sea Assets (22 September 2020): By Irina Slav - Sinopec and a private equity-backed company are among some half a dozen candidates to acquire Exxon’s North Sea assets that the supermajor put up for sale earlier this year. Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration, Siccar Point, and Tailwind Energy—in partnership with Mercuria—are also among the bidders, Bloomberg reports, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter. Reports of the planned sale emerged in June, but the first mention of Exxon’s plans to exit the legacy oil producing region surfaced in August 2019. In that, the U.S. supermajor followed in the footsteps of other large oil companies from the States, while European majors have stayed on. For Exxon, the sale follows a wider exit from Europe, that also saw it leave Norway, after selling its asset there for $4.5 billion to Var Energi. Exxon’s plans got delayed by oil prices but this year, after benchmarks crashed to the lowest in years, it likely decided to cut its losses. A sale of all its assets in the North Sea in 2019 was estimated to bring in as much as $2 billion but now that the oil demand outlook has grimed considerably, the price tag may be lower. There was no mention of price or value in the Bloomberg report. (Source: Oil Price)
Shell May Cut Upstream Oil Operations By 40% (21 September 2020): By Tsvetana Paraskova - Oil and gas supermajor Shell is looking to slash as much as 40 percent of its upstream oil and gas operations as it is redesigning its business toward a greener portfolio, sources in Shell involved in the costs review told Reuters. As early as in June, which capped one of the worst quarters for oil in recent decades, Shell was said to be planning to announce by the end of the year a significant restructuring to reflect its net-zero emissions goal for 2050 and to align itself with a green recovery from the pandemic. On the Q2 earnings call at the end of July, chief executive Ben van Beurden said that the company had started a program “to redesign and restructure toward a fundamentally simpler, more effective organization that can deliver the very best from our traditional businesses, from our customer-centric businesses as well and rapidly and purposefully innovate for our future business models. You will hear more about all of this in time, but I can tell you now that besides reshaping and redesigning, we will also resize as appropriate.” (Source: Oil Price)
Is Wind Energy The Most Stable Renewables Investment? (20 September 2020); By Alex Kimani - The Covid-19 pandemic has wrought one of the most significant disruptions the energy market has ever faced. A decidedly gloomy long-term future outlook due to rampant fossil fuel divestments, climate change policies, and decarbonization has been unexpectedly aggravated by a short-term, but even more severe, shock by the health crisis, and thrown the pivotal energy sector into one of its worst existential crises. Project developers, private capital, companies, institutional investors, and public markets have now shifted their attention to sustainable practices, businesses, and assets. Suddenly, everybody seems to be reading from the same page: We have to dramatically increase our investments in renewable energy and cut our heavy reliance on high-carbon fuels. (Source: Oil price)
UK Energy Firms Could Switch Off EV Chargers As Demand Peaks (18 September 2020): By Charles Kennedy - New rules proposed in the UK could see electricity distributors switching off electric vehicle (EV) chargers at home connected to the smart meter system to prevent grid overloads in case of ‘emergency’ peak electricity demand. Under the proposed plan, “the technical solution proposed to allow Distributors control of consumer devices (such as Electric Vehicles) connected to Smart Meter infrastructure will only be used as a last resort measure in the event that market mechanisms fail or do not deliver to the extent anticipated.” The proposed changes would give power distributors in the UK the right to decide when the grid overload is in an ‘emergency’ situation and switch off high-usage devices such as EV chargers at home. (Source: Oil Price)
Bullish Goldman Sachs Expects Brent To Hit $49 By Year-End (18 September 2020): By Tsvetana Paraskova - Goldman Sachs is bullish on oil, expecting the market to be in a deficit of around 3 million barrels per day (bpd) by the fourth quarter and Brent Crude prices to recover to $49 a barrel by the end of this year, from $43 early on Friday. According to a new report from Goldman analysts, carried by Reuters, the recent floating storage of oil is more "transient inventory allocation dynamics" instead of a signal of a new glut. "We estimate that the oil market remains in deficit with speculative positioning now at too low levels," Goldman Sachs said, keeping its Brent Crude target at $49 by end-2020 and $65 by the third quarter of 2021. Earlier this month, Goldman Sachs forecast Brent Crude to reach $65 a barrel in the third quarter of 2021, although it could end next year lower, at $58 a barrel. Goldman Sachs also expects WTI Crude to rally to $55.88 a barrel by the third quarter of 2021, up from $51.38 a barrel in earlier forecasts. (Source: Oil Price)
The $60 Trillion Price Tag For A World With Net-Zero Emissions (17 September 2020): By Tsvetana Paraskova - The world can achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by the middle of this century for an annual investment of US$1 trillion-US$2 trillion, or up to US$60 trillion over the next 30 years, a coalition of major oil firms, companies in other energy-intensive industries, and banks said. The Energy Transitions Commission (ETC) is a coalition of 45 leaders from energy producers, energy-intensive industries, financial institutions, and environmental advocates, including BP, Shell, Sinopec Capital, Rio Tinto, ArcelorMittal, Bank of America, HSBC, Iberdrola, Ørsted, and Vattenfall. In a new report this week, ‘Making Mission Possible,’ the coalition said that “it is undoubtedly technically feasible and economically affordable for the whole world to achieve net-zero GHG emissions by mid-century, with all developed economies meeting that objective by 2050 and all developing economies within the following 10 years.” (Source: Oil Price)
Oil Tanker Industry Is In An Ocean Of Trouble (16 September 2020): By Irina Slav - There has been more than enough written about the woes of various segments of the oil industry and related industries so far this year. But there is one industry that actually thrived during the worst of the crisis: as the world drowned in oil amid slumping demand and excess supply, tanker owners enjoyed a bounce in freight rates as these vessels remained the only storage space for unsellable crude. But things have changed. OPEC+ oil production cuts helped bring down global inventories, including the massive amounts of oil in floating storage. This brought down freight rates from over $250,000 per day for a Very Large Crude Carrier to less than $30,000 per day, leaving tanker owners wondering how much longer they could survive. Right now, they have one hope, just like air travel: a successful vaccine. (Source: Oil Price)
Google Sets Aggressive Carbon Reduction Target For 2030 (15 September 2015): By Michael Kern - Big Tech is in the race of a lifetime, and now it’s not just about data. This time around, they’re facing off to see which giant can go green - and fast. From Facebook to Microsoft, tech giants are ramping up their efforts to pivot to renewable energy. But the biggest, and maybe most surprising announcement to date has come from Google, which just pledged to run on 100% carbon-free energy within the next 10 years. On Monday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai spoke with Reuters, explaining that “We have until 2030 to chart a sustainable cause for our planet or face the worst consequences of climate change,” adding. “We are already feeling those impacts today from historic wildfires in the US to devastating flooding in many parts of the world.” (Source: Oil Price)
Saudi Aramco Retakes Crown From Apple As World’s Most Valuable Company (14 September 2020): By Tsvetana Paraskova - Saudi Arabia’s oil giant Aramco reclaimed the spot of the world’s most valuable company after a relatively steady performance in Riyadh so far this month, while shares in Apple plunged amid a wider sell-off in tech stocks in New York. According to estimates from Bloomberg, Aramco – which became the world’s largest listed firm by market capitalization with its listing in December 2019 – has regained the top spot that Apple has held since July 2020 when U.S. equities and tech stocks in particular rallied on U.S. economic stimulus. At the end of July, Apple unseated oil giant Saudi Aramco as the world’s most valuable company amid a broad rally in U.S. stocks, especially tech stocks. The rally continued into August but came to a halt in September. (Source: Oil Price)
Solar Windows Will Soon Become A Commercial Reality (13 September 2020): By Alex Kimani - Last year, the United Nations sent out a grim warning: The world has a very short 10-year window to act to avert catastrophic and irreversible climate change. Not surprisingly, the clean energy drive has gone full circle as the ongoing ESG investment craze is now proving amidst the worst pandemic in modern history. By and large, fossil fuels still power the global economy, but are rapidly being shunned in favor of renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and geothermal. At a time when the oil and gas sector is facing its worst existential crisis in modern history, the demand for renewable energy has continued to grow unabated. Renewable energy truly is having its moment in the sun, with previously arcane subjects such as hydrogen power, solar windows and even anti-solar panels enjoying a grand renaissance--and every little bit counts. (Source: Oil Price)
$65 Oil And $5000 Gold: Traders Expect Volatility In Key Commodities (12 September 2015): By Tsvetana Paraskova - The year of the pandemic put two commodities under the spotlight, but for different reasons. Gold prices hit an all-time high in August, while crude oil slipped into negative for a day in April, when demand crashed and inventories soared. Both oil and gold have seen much volatility this year. Oil prices started 2020 at over $60 a barrel, dipped to the low teens in April – with front-month WTI Crude futures settling one day at a negative price – and rose to $40 in the summer, staying rangebound since then. The crash in demand pushed oil lower, while increased uncertainty over the economic and oil demand recovery, as well as the fears of a second COVID-19 wave, pushed investors to seek safe havens such as gold, driving the precious metal’s price to an all-time high of $2,075 an ounce last month. (Source: Oil Price)
How COVID-19 Is Transforming The Auto Industry (11 September 2020): By Oxford Business Group - Automotive players in Turkey expect up to 8m used car sales in 2020 as a pre-pandemic shortage of new vehicles is exacerbated by supply chain disruptions attributed to the virus. Some 2.1m cars and light commercial vehicles were sold in the first quarter of the year, putting the market on a path to surpass the record 7.6m units sold in 2019. With many residents of major Turkish cities moving away from public transport in favour of private cars, second-hand vehicle prices increased by nearly 10% between mid-April and mid-May. Meanwhile, a July survey by classified advertisements website OLX Indonesia found that 54% of respondents in South-east Asia's largest economy were considering buying a used vehicle over a new one. (Source: Oil Price)
The Nine Key Points In Biden’s Energy Strategy (10 September 2020): By Robert Rapier - Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has laid out an ambitious energy plan. His campaign has released nine key elements of Biden’s plan for a Clean Energy Revolution and Environmental Justice. Here are the nine key elements, with some commentary by me below each one. 1). Take executive action on Day 1 to not just reverse all of the damTage Trump has done, but go further and faster. This involves reinstating some Obama-era policies that President Trump rolled back, like methane limits on oil and gas operations. In some areas it would exceed Obama’s policies by eventually requiring all new light- and medium-duty vehicles to be zero emission vehicles. There would also be new restrictions on oil and gas leases on public lands and waters. ... (Source: Oil Price)
Russia's Gazprom Boosts Natural Gas Supplies To China (9 September 2020): By Charles Kennedy - Russia's natural gas monopoly Gazprom has increased its natural gas supply to China via the new pipeline Power of Siberia in July and August, compared to June, a senior Gazprom official said. Russia's supply of natural gas to China via the Power of Siberia rose to 12 million cubic meters per day in July and August, from 10 million cubic meters supplied in June, Vladislav Borodin, director general at the gas giant's unit Gazprom Transgaz Tomsk, said in the company's corporate magazine. Gazprom, which started up the Power of Siberia in December 2019, looks to increase its deliveries via the pipeline to China every year, Borodin wrote in the magazine. Annual supplies to China are expected to rise from 21 billion cubic meters in 2019 to 24-25 billion cubic meters at the end of this year, the executive said. (Source: Oil Price)
Global Oil Demand To Return To Pre-Crisis Levels In Three Years (8 September 2020): By Tsvetana Paraskova - It will take three years for global oil demand to rebound to pre-pandemic levels, as jet fuel consumption continues to trend much lower than last year’s levels, according to Bank of America Securities. While road fuel demand has recovered to nearly pre-COVID-19 levels, aviation fuel demand is struggling to take off materially as air travel is still significantly down compared to ‘normal’ levels from before the pandemic, BofAS said in a weekly energy reported carried by TradeArabia. Air travel will not rebound until an effective vaccine or cure for COVID-19 is rolled out, the BofAS analysts said. An effective vaccine, however, is still 12 to 18 months down the line, according to the bank. Data from global flight tracking service Flightradar24 showed last week that in August, commercial flights made it up to 45.2 percent below August 2019 levels, but grew at a much slower pace than June and July. (Source: Oil Price)
IEA: Oil Demand Recovery Has Stalled (7 September 2020): By Tsvetana Paraskova - The International Energy Agency (IEA) joined the chorus of analysts saying that the pace of global oil demand recovery has stalled in recent weeks on the back of weak refining margins, a lack of recovery in jet fuel demand, and uncertainties over global economic growth, including in the world’s top oil importer, China. Although the IEA doesn’t forecast major slowdowns in demand going forward, global oversupply has yet to show strong signs of drawdowns, Keisuke Sadamori, Director, Energy Markets and Security at the IEA, told Reuters. “It doesn’t seem like a massive stock draw seems to be happening yet,” Sadamori told Reuters, noting that “We are not seeing a robust pickup in refining activity, and jet fuel is the big problem.” (Souece: Oil Price)
The Nano-Diamond Battery That Lasts For 28,000 Years (5 September 2020): By MINING.com - U.S. startup NDB, a company that says it has created the first and only universal, self-charging nano-diamond battery that provides thousands of years of charge, announced that two of its proofs of concept achieved a breakthrough 40% charge. This is a significant improvement over commercial diamonds, which have only a 15% charge collection efficiency. The two proofs of concept were led by University of Cambridge physicist Sir Michael Pepper, and in both cases the 40% charge achieved was attributed to the batteries’ nanodiamond surface treatment that actively extracts the electric charge from the diamond, allowing the battery to make use of significantly more power than any other battery before it. “Our team is bringing together leaders in the nanotechnology, nuclear science and diamond fields with military, academic and research backgrounds, and combining our unique mix of expertise has made it possible for us to crack the code in developing this groundbreaking, life-changing solution,” Nima Golsharifi, CEO and co-founder of NDB, said in a media statement. (Source: Oil Price)
Microgrids Are The Future Of Energy (5 September 2020): By Irina Slav - The vision of a household with a solar rooftop, a battery pack, and an EV in the garage is not just Elon Musk’s vision of the future of energy. It is a vision that many proponents of the renewable shift share, and it may be growing increasingly more realistic, thanks to information technology. Distributed energy resources, the small-scale generation facilities such as rooftop solar installations that generate power to be used either on-site or near the site of generation, are an essential part of the renewable energy future. And software platforms for the management of these small-scale generation facilities are the key to making them work, according to analysts from Wood Mackenzie. In a recent report, Wood Mac’s researchers said they expected the amount of solar generation capacity and storage in North America, Europe, and Oceania to rise twofold by 2025. In the United States alone, solar capacity and storage are seen jumping by 127 GW between 2016 and 2025, the energy consultancy’s grid edge research content lead, Elta Kolo, and research manager Fei Wang said. Meanwhile, charging points for electric vehicles will increase sevenfold. (Source: Oil Price)
Big Oil’s Risky Plastic Bet Could Lead To $400 Billion In Stranded Assets (4 September 2020): By Irina Slav - Oil companies are risking some $400 billion in stranded assets with their focus on petrochemicals production growth that relies on strong growth in demand for plastics, Carbon Tracker has said in a new report. “The oil industry is pinning its hopes on strong plastics demand growth that will not materialise, as the world starts to tackle plastic waste and governments act to hit climate targets,” the organization said. Big Oil companies are banking on demand for plastics replacing much of the demand for oil from the transport sector as EVs displace internal combustion engines. But Carbon Tracker’s The Future’s Not in Plastics report suggests that growth in plastics demand will actually be much weaker than Big Oil needs because of an expected shift “from a linear plastic system to a circular one and governments act to hit climate targets.” (Source: Oil Price)
Can Tesla Live Up To Its $400 Billion Valuation? (3 September 2020): By Alex Kimani - By any yardstick, the world's most popular electric vehicle manufacturer, Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA), is enjoying a banner year. Tesla's parabolic rally has been nothing short of extraordinary, with the shares at one time exceeding a 1,000% gain over the past 12 months and nearly 500% in the year-to-date. At one point, Tesla was even more overbought than Bitcoin during the mad December 2017 rally after TSLA's 14-day relative strength index (RSI) metric touched 92.5 compared to Bitcoin's all-time high of <91. The mad rally has forced even permabears such as Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas and Bank of America's John Murphy to capitulate on their Sell ratings as everything seems to go Tesla's way. That said, TSLA finally appears to be cooling off, shedding 11% just two days after the company announced a $5B capital raise by selling shares in the secondary market, a move that represents a mere ~1% share dilution. (Source: Oil Price)
Is It Possible To Make Steel Without Fossil Fuels? (2 September 2020): By Josh Owens - Steel is arguably the single most important resource when it comes to constructing infrastructure. From roads, to railways and the skeleton of most buildings, it is at the very heart of nearly every city on earth. Within those cities, the cars on the road, the cutlery in our kitchens and the furniture in our offices all rely on steel production. Steel production, however, is an incredibly energy intensive process, and the vast majority of this energy comes from fossil fuels. Globally, steel is responsible for 7-9 percent of all direct emissions from fossil fuels. Most of those emissions come from the burning of coal, which makes up 89 percent of the energy input for blast furnace-basic oxygen furnace (BF-BOF) and 11 percent of the energy input of electric arc furnaces (EAF). Of those two types of steel production, BF-BOF is far more common, making up 75 percent of steel that is produced compared to 25 percent from EAF. (Source: Oil Price)
Nuclear Power Could Win Big In U.S. Elections (1 September 2020): By Jon LeSage - The world’s largest nuclear power market is ready to gain more government backing for the energy — no matter who wins in November. For nearly a half century, the Democratic Party’s election year party platform has excluded nuclear energy, but that’s not the case this year. The newly-released party platform says It favors a “technology-neutral” approach that includes all zero-carbon technologies, including hydroelectric power, geothermal, existing and advanced nuclear, and carbon capture and storage. It's the first time since the 1972 election year that the party has had any positive statements to make about nuclear power, which did include early testing of fusion nearly a half century ago. That year, the Democratic party said it supported “greater research and development” into “unconventional energy sources” including solar, geothermal, and “a variety of nuclear power possibilities to design clean breeder fission and fusion techniques.” (Source: Oil Price)