Energy News Beat

Flex LNG’s 2019-built 173,400-cbm, Flex Constellation, will be available for charter later this year after a trading house decided not to utilize its extension option.

In May 2021, the shipping firm controlled by billionaire John Fredriksen announced a three-year charter for this ME-GI LNG carrier with the trading house, said to be Trafigura, with an option for three more years.

However, the charterer has decided not to utilize its extension option, and Flex expects to take redelivery of the ship during the second quarter of 2024.

Flex LNG’s chief executive, Øystein Kalleklev, said the redelivery of the vessel “fits well” with its scheduled five-years special survey which is due during second or third quarter of 2024.

For 2024, Flex LNG has two ships scheduled for drydock, in contrast to four ships during 2023, and the charter coverage for the company is 95 percent following the redelivery of Flex Constellation.

Kalleklev said that Flex Constellation has been on a time charter with a fixed rate of $80,000 per day, in line with the time charter equivalent guidance for the company’s fleet in 2023.

“The term rates for one to ten years charters are currently being quoted at $90-100,000 per day according to most brokers. Consequently, we believe the vessel is well positioned to be recontracted at more attractive levels than the previous contract,” he said.

“Once we have completed the special survey of Flex Constellation, we will market her for short- and long-term opportunities ahead of the winter season which we consider a good timing,” Kalleklev said.

Flex LNG owns 13 LNG carriers, and 12 of these vessels are on fixed hire time charters, including to US LNG exporter Cheniere, while one ship, Flex Artemis, is on a variable time charter.

The firm reported higher revenue and lower net income in the third quarter compared to the same period last year, and it expects a further increase in revenue in the fourth quarter.

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Energy News Beat

The transaction was concluded through a unique debt repayment scheme, according to a report 

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LNG giant Shell is expecting “significantly” higher trading and optimization results for its integrated gas business in the fourth quarter of 2023 compared to the previous quarter.

The UK-based firm revealed this in its fourth-quarter update note on Monday.

According to Shell, trading and optimization results for integrated gas are expected to be “significantly higher than Q3’23 due to seasonality and increased optimization opportunities.”

Shell’s adjusted earnings reached $6.22 billion in the third quarter, a drop of 34.2 percent compared to $9.45 billion in the year before, while the company’s integrated gas segment reported adjusted earnings of about $2.53 billion in the third quarter.

This compares to $2.32 billion in the same period a year ago and $2.5 billion in the prior quarter.

Shell sold 16.01 million tonnes of LNG in the July-September period, while its liquefaction volumes dropped to 6.88 million tonnes in the third quarter compared to 7.24 million tonnes in the same quarter last year.

The firm said in the update it expects liquefaction volumes to reach about 6.9-7.3 million tonnes in the fourth quarter.

Shell previously expected liquefaction volumes to reach about 6.7-7.3 million tonnes in the fourth quarter.

In December, Shell’s huge Prelude FLNG located offshore Western Australia shipped its first LNG cargo since August last year when it started scheduled maintenance.

Moreover, Shell expects integrated gas production to reach 880–920 kboe/d in the fourth quarter, while upstream production is expected to be at 1,830-1,930 kboe/d.

Shell also expects impairment charges of about $2.5 billion to $4.5 billion for the fourth quarter.

“Impairments are primarily driven by macro and external developments as well as portfolio choices, including the Singapore chemicals and products assets,” it said.

Shell plans to publish its results on February 1.

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​

Community solar is inherently a way to expand equity in solar access, as advocates describe it, since it makes clean energy and savings accessible to people who lack the capital or the space to install their own arrays.

The Inflation Reduction Act has the potential to drive a boom in community solar development, with bonus tax credits for community solar that serves low-income residents or is located in low-income areas, in addition to the 30% Investment Tax Credit available to all solar projects.

Since the IRA offers direct payment in lieu of tax credits, it also makes it more possible for nonprofit organizations — which don’t pay taxes — to develop community solar.

But there are serious challenges to making sure low-income people are able to reap savings from community solar. Those challenges include the often onerous and intimidating process of qualifying a household as “low-income,” and the challenge of gaining trust and raising awareness among marginalized communities who have been largely left out of the clean energy shift.

Many states lack legislation that encourages and facilitates community solar development. And utilities also must cooperate, including by facilitating bill consolidation so people’s community solar savings are directly credited to their energy bill.

During the first 30-day application period for solar and wind projects seeking the IRA low-income bonuses — 10% to 20% of a project’s cost — the federal government received 46,000 applications representing 8 GW, more than four times the amount of capacity available for the bonuses this year.

The Department of Energy’s dashboard shows applications representing almost 4 GW were filed under Category 4 of the IRA program, the category most suitable for community solar. It provides an extra 20% tax credit and requires that at least 50% of projects’ financial benefits go to low-income subscribers, and that they receive 20% bill savings.

That category’s total capacity for 2023 is only 700 MW.

“I think the cap is going to be a problem,” Ramsey-Williams said. “It will be an extremely oversubscribed program. The first thing we want to do as advocacy groups is approach Congress about lifting that cap. But that might be hard to do until the programs hit the ground.”

Community solar projects could also qualify for Category 1 incentives — a 10% tax credit — by locating in a low-income community or on Native American land. The applications are being reviewed, with 42 MW worth of Category 4 projects approved thus far. Those that don’t receive tax credit or direct pay allocations can reapply in a future cycle.

“The demand for the program is further proof that President Biden’s Investing in America agenda is delivering investments and opportunities in clean energy to communities that have been left behind,” says a December 4 press release from the U.S. Treasury Department, which administers the program along with the Department of Energy.

Half of the capacity within the low-income program is reserved for projects that meet additional criteria, including “where households spend the highest percent of their income on energy, and/or have had the lowest levels of historical investment, or are owned by emerging market participants, such as: tribal enterprises; tax-exempt entities including nonprofits, local or tribal governments; consumer or worker cooperatives; and emerging renewable energy companies,” as the Treasury Department press release puts it.

The documentation and planning required to apply for the bonuses is complicated, especially for entities that are new to the market. The federal government is accepting new applications on a rolling basis for that reason, as some couldn’t meet the initial deadline.

“Community solar developers are also navigating how they will take advantage of new IRA incentives,” notes the third-quarter 2023 report by the Solar Energy Industries Association and consulting firm Wood Mackenzie. “As in other segments, qualifying for any of the three available ITC adders will prove more difficult than originally expected due to complex requirements.”

In order for a community solar project to tap the low-income bonuses, they need to officially designate subscribers as low income. Each state determines how this will be done. In some cases, individuals need to provide tax returns and other documentation to prove they qualify. Advocates say this will make people reluctant to participate, and make it difficult for community solar developers to enroll low-income subscribers or reap low-income bonuses.

Federal law now allows LIHEAP funds — the longstanding federal energy subsidies — to be used for community solar subscriptions. LIHEAP eligibility can also be used as a measure of eligibility for low-income solar bonuses, as can enrollment in SNAP food assistance or other supportive programs.

States can also designate geographic areas as low-income, so that subscribers within that area automatically meet the criteria, rather than having to qualify based on their individual income.

A report by community solar developer Nautilus Solar Energy notes the IRA provisions will make it easier to attract investment for community solar.

“The new ITC provision will attract an additional pool of investors that will have the opportunity to enter into much simpler agreements with a developer while enjoying the benefits of the ITCs that year,” says the report. “Because of the extra incentives, developers will be able to reach more low-income customers and provide clean power at a higher discounted rate than they would otherwise pay to the local utility company.”

But, it continues, “to realize the full objective of the IRA and facilitate the adoption of community solar in low-income communities, there are several barriers that will need to be removed in the short run, namely the qualification of low-income customers, the integration and cooperation of the utilities, and program education and building trust in the low-income communities.”

Convincing low-income residents to subscribe to community solar is a challenge, especially in some states where predatory retail energy suppliers have targeted such communities with bad deals for clean energy.

“Trust is such an important part of this work,” said Sarah Gyurina, partnership development associate for Solstice, a community solar broker and subsidiary of the global company Mitsui. “Community solar is a hard concept to understand. And with the deregulated energy market the past two decades [in states like Illinois], there have been a lot of bad actors in the energy industry who have come through and created a lot of mistrust.”

Solstice and Illinois’s Cook County housing authority are trying to address the issue by training public housing property managers and behavioral health coordinators to answer questions and enroll residents at more than 100 housing authority sites. They offer community solar enrollment while taking applications for LIHEAP assistance, a process that residents are familiar and comfortable with.

“These programs have real benefits for the residents,” said housing authority spokesperson Marcus King. “We all should handle this with a sense of urgency. It’s advantageous as well as courageous to create these programs for our vulnerable and historically marginalized populations.”

Solstice co-founder and CEO Steph Speirs said the Cook County housing authority project is just one example of how “Solstice is accelerating our efforts to drive energy equity across the United States with growing trends under IRA.”

“Community solar farms were created to take advantage of solar power without having to own a home or have the right credit score,” Speirs said. “The target pool of beneficiaries is low-income communities that community solar is supposed to serve but [currently] does not. It’s an exciting time for the advent of low-income inclusion in community solar. It really does take dedicated focus, dedicated organizing skills, and dedicated partnerships to make this happen.”

Summit Ridge, the nation’s largest community solar developer, is among the companies who work with third party contractors to recruit low-income subscribers.

“You’re going to see a greater influx of subscriber acquisition companies — third parties who are really trying to work with low-income communities and housing authorities to receive that tax credit,” said Summit Ridge vice president of political and regulatory affairs Leslie Elder.

Summit Ridge has 40 community solar projects in northern Illinois, making it the largest community solar developer in the state. Utility ComEd consolidates community solar credits on customers’ bills and allows them to subscribe for up to 200% of their past energy use, with any “unused” clean energy going to other customers.

The IRA will allow Summit Ridge to increasingly prioritize community solar on large rooftops like warehouses, instead of farmland, said Elder. That alleviates tension over use of agricultural land for solar, and allows community solar in more densely populated areas.

Rooftop community solar is usually more expensive than ground-mounted community solar. It’s harder — if not impossible — to use panels that track the sun; roof repairs or rebuilding may be needed; infrastructure like AC ducts creates complications; and building owners may be leery of making long-term commitments, Elder noted. That’s where the incentives created by the IRA can make the difference.

“We are seeing projects on the margins of being able to pencil before, that can pencil now,” said Elder. “That’s why we can look at doing more of these rooftops. It’s how we can pull some of these projects off agricultural land, put them in urban epicenters where the load is, coupled with workforce development programs where you can pull in folks traditionally left out of the clean energy economy.”

Summit Ridge funded a workforce development hub on the West Side of Chicago that graduated its first class in July, and aims to train 10,000 people in 10 years. The training center is run by 548 Enterprises, a company launched in Chicago in 2019 to develop affordable housing in tandem with clean energy.

Along with the low-income tax credit bonuses, the IRA created the $7 billion Solar for All program wherein states, tribal governments, municipalities and non-profit organizations can apply for grants to make solar available to low-income households. Community solar projects that enroll individual households as subscribers are eligible for the program, which is run by the EPA.

“There’s a lot of synergy here,” Ramsey-Williams said. “If states have applied for Solar for All funding, they might want to look at how they’ll make themselves attractive for the industry.”

In December, Reactivate announced Illinois’s 100th community solar project, in Chicago Heights, a suburb south of Chicago where about a quarter of the population lives in poverty and more than a third of households are renters. Led by trailblazing Black entrepreneur Utopia Hill, Reactivate’s mission is to bring community solar to low-income and environmental justice communities. Reactivate has six more community solar projects totaling 10.5 MW in the works in low-income Northern Illinois areas that would be eligible for IRA incentives.

Reactivate’s projects are possible because of Illinois’s robust state solar program, with specific incentives for community solar and solar in low-income areas. Speirs of Solstice, which partners with Reactivate, said some Illinois subscribers will save 60% on their energy supply bills thanks to community solar.

Summit Ridge has similarly tapped the Illinois Shines state program to increase its community solar deployment.

Since 2017, Elder said, Summit Ridge has invested about $1 billion in Illinois on more than 100 projects in 35 counties, creating over 3,500 construction jobs. A 2017 state law created solar subsidies, and Illinois’s 2021 Climate & Equitable Jobs Act fixed problems that had initially created a glut of community solar applications, including unviable ones.

Now, Elder said, the IRA equity incentives are all the more reason for states to develop their own community solar programs, by passing community solar enabling legislation and creating incentive programs like Illinois Shines.

“How is the IRA going to change state programs, and how is that going to look in a couple years after we see the impact of federal policy on market behavior?” asked Elder. “We don’t know yet, but we’re very excited about the IRA.”

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Saudi Arabia’s move is aimed at supporting the market amid a seasonal drop in demand.

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Some are hot, some are cold. And a special look at employment in oil & gas drilling and in mining.

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

in the jobs data for December on Friday, we saw what we’d expect from an economy that is plugging along just fine, and we saw that wage increases have been reheating again for the past few months, despite the Fed’s 5.5% policy rates. But not every industry is in the same boat. In some industries, employment hit new highs, according to data by the Bureau of labor Statistics. In others, such as Information, employment had dropped sharply since mid-2022 but started picking up again in recent months. And in other industries, employment is on a long-term decline because of structural changes. And then there are the jobs in federal, state, and local governments that we’ll take a closer look at.

The month-to-month changes are expressed in three-month moving averages (3MMA) which iron out the monthly squiggles that are just noise.

The categories are by work location. The surveys are sent to business facilities by address. The primary activity at that facility is what determines the category. Just to illustrate: A worker at an Amazon fulfillment center counts under “transportation and warehousing”; a driver operating out of an Amazon delivery center also counts as “transportation and warehousing”; a worker at an office of Amazon’s AWS division would count under “Professional and business services”; a worker at a location that deals with the retail aspects of Amazon’s business would count under “Retail”; a worker at an office that primarily works on the software aspects of Amazon’s ecommerce business might count under “Information.”

The private sector.

Construction, all types of construction, from single-family housing to highways. Employment has been rising to new all-time highs for two years. The construction industry also has a record number of job openings.

Total employment: 8.06 million, new all-time high
3MMA growth: +17,000

Oil & Gas Extraction is a fun one. First a word about the boom in fracking that we at Wolf Street have followed with fascination since our beginning in 2011.

US become the largest oil and gas producer in the world. Due to the boom in fracking, first natural gas production has grown from all-time high to all-time high, turning the US into the largest natural gas producer in the world, and exporting large quantities via LNG terminals and pipelines.

Then oil production has grown from all-time high to all-time high, turning the US into the largest oil producer in the world. The US has become a net exporter of petroleum and petroleum products.

Constant and relentless technical innovation, driven by the terrible economics of early fracking, have made fracking vastly more productive and more cost-efficient – including labor costs. So here we go.

Employment in oil & gas extraction are the people who actually work out in the oil field, not the engineers, coders, specialists, lawyers, administrators, etc. in offices and other facilities. And so employment in the oil field has dropped due to technical innovation despite the historic boom in oil and gas production, and the number of people actually working in the oil field has become small:

Total employment: 119,000
3MMA: +0

Mining, excluding oil & gas: There also have been innovation and automation. But coal mining descended into mayhem when the price of natural gas collapsed in 2009 due to the fracking boom.

In terms of coal mining, roughly two-thirds of production comes from surface mines, and one-third from underground mines (EIA data). Total production peaked in 2008. By 2009, the nascent fracking boom caused the price of natural gas to collapse, and together with combined-cycle natural gas powerplants with thermal efficiencies of over 60%, natural gas become far cheaper to generate electricity with than coal. Power generators dispatched more generation to their natural gas plants, and built combined-cycle natural gas plants while retiring old coal plants in large numbers. In recent years, the falling costs of wind and solar power have caused power generators to shift more generation away from coal, and demand for coal for power generation has plunged.

From 2008 through 2020, coal production plunged by 54%. But in 2021 and 2022, coal production increased by 11% on increased exports, driven by metallurgical coal.

In the overall mining sector, in all types of mines and quarries, employment has sharply increased from the low point in 2020. But since 2008, employment is still down by 17%.

Total employment: 188,000 – highest since late 2019.
3MMA 1,000

Healthcare and social assistance:

Total employment: 21.9 million, new all-time high
3MMA: +74,000

Manufacturing: Employment has plateaued all year, except during the strikes in the auto industry in October, when employment dipped, and then recovered back to the plateau.

Total employment: 13.0 million
3MMA: -2,000
6MMA: +1,000

Wholesale Trade:

Total employment: 6.1 million, new all-time high
3MMA: +6,000

Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation includes spectator sports, performing arts, amusement, gambling, recreation, museums, historical sites, and similar:

Total employment: 2.5 million, new all-time high
3MMA growth: +11,000

Financial activities (finance and insurance plus real estate renting, leasing, buying, selling, and management). Employment peaked in August and September and since then tapered off just a tad.

Employment in mortgage lending has taken a massive hit since 2021 when mortgage rates began to rise and refi volume, a big part of the business, collapsed and purchase-mortgage volume plunged.

Total employment: 9.15 million
3-MMA growth: -2,000

Leisure and hospitality – restaurants, lodging, resorts, etc.

Total employment: 16.8 million, almost back to pre-pandemic levels.
3MMA growth: +26,000

“Information,” a small sector that includes work sites by some of the tech and social media companies. Other tech company work sites are included in Professional and business services (below), or other categories.

Information includes facilities where people primarily work on web search portals, data processing, data transmission, information services, software publishing, motion picture and sound recording, broadcasting including over the Internet, and telecommunications.

Total employment: 3.05 million
3MMA growth: +6,000

Professional and business services. Largest sector by employment. It includes facilities of some tech and social media companies; others are in “Information” (above) or in other categories.

The category includes facilities whose employees work primarily in Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services; Management of Companies and Enterprises; Administrative and Support, and Waste Management and Remediation Services.

Total employment: 22.95 million
3MMA growth: -11,000

Retail trade includes workers at brick-and-mortar retail stores – malls, auto dealers, grocery stores, gas stations, etc. – and other retail locations such as markets. It does not include the tech-related jobs of ecommerce operations, drivers, and warehouse employees. A big portion of this sector has been under heavy pressure from ecommerce operations:

Total employment: 15.5 million
3MMA growth: +3,000

Transportation and Warehousing: You can see the decline after the huge boom in 2021 and 2022:

Total employment: 6.6 million
3MMA growth: -19,000

Jobs in government.

First, we’re going to look at total government jobs – federal, state, and local – as a percent of total employment. Some things to note:

Spikes occur every 10 years in federal employment when the census is taken.
When total employment collapsed in early 2020, government employment did not collapse as much, and the percentage of government jobs to the collapsed total jobs spiked briefly.
A majority of local government jobs and a portion of state jobs are in education, from preschool to state universities, and include community colleges, trade schools, etc.

Federal government civilian employment: the spikes occur every 10 years when the census is taken.

Total civilian employment: 2.96 million
3MMA growth: +5,000

Federal employment as percent of total employment (1.9% in December):

Federal employment in millions of employees:

State governments (includes education, such as at state universities).

Total employment: 5.3 million
3MMA: +13,000

Local governments – employment is dominated by education. After the lockdowns of schools, districts struggled with large-scale teacher shortages. Employment is finally back where it had been before the pandemic.

Total employment: 14.7 million
3MMA growth: +32,000

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Texas leads the nation in clean and renewable energy production, and it’s largely due to its geography, federal energy subsidies, deregulated energy market and state-run energy grid.

Texas is one the leading US energy producers — and renewables are a big reason why.

Traditionally considered to be “oil country,” Texas continues to have a heavy fossil fuel presence in the state. Though it may not seem like the likeliest candidate on the surface, the state is a pioneer of clean and renewable energy production. Texas generated roughly 15% of the country’s electricity from all-renewable sources in 2022, according to the Energy Information Association.

While it was wind power that helped blow Texas to the top of the clean energy production charts, increased solar capacity in recent decades has helped its standing. Through 2022, Texas was the second-largest producer of solar energy behind California, according to data from the Solar Energy Industries Association.

Yet, the political pushback happening in Texas could play an outsized role on the future of renewable energy production in the state. While the growth over the past couple of decades is and has been rather remarkable — creating a model that many other states may try to replicate — it has been largely in part due to a unique combination of forces.

Texas’ unique geography, some changes to federal energy subsidies, and a unique mix of deregulated energy and state-wide energy grid, are just a few of the driving forces behind Texas’ developed renewable energy production. But shifts in political influence could change things.

How has Texas become a clean energy leader?

Geography

Experts say that Texas’ ascent to clean energy leader in the US is largely because it’s a geographically large state, and that the western portion of it, in particular, tends to be very windy.

“It is windy in Texas, and particularly windy in West Texas,” said Ross Baldick, PhD, an emeritus professor in the Chandra Family Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, and a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Baldick said Texas had an advantage over other parts of the country in harnessing wind power because there were existing transmission capabilities, allowing for the building of turbines and transmission of the resulting electricity to larger cities — such as San Antonio, Houston and Dallas — in the East.

“Most other places that are very windy don’t have many people or transmission” capabilities, he said. “Texas was unique in that it could get things going without having to build transmission” in wind-rich areas.

Besides geography helping Texas become the country’s leading renewable producer, there are a couple of other important factors at play.

Federally funded financial incentives

Federal subsidies played a big role, according to Baldick, which made it more feasible and affordable for wind turbines and wind-power production projects to get off the ground. “Decades ago, the federal government established the production tax credit,” he said. “At the time, the capital cost of building a wind farm was pretty expensive, but by adding subsidies and more, it made it a potentially profitable way to generate electricity.”

Along with federal subsidies and tax credits, an opening up of the wholesale market in Texas was also important.

Deregulated energy market

Texas’ deregulated electricity market and standalone energy grid (called ERCOT, short for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas) created a unique set of economic incentives and opportunities. In short, the deregulated market, combined with special standards concerning ERCOT, allowing almost anyone to enter the grid and contribute to it, allowed many entities to start generating power and supplying it to the rest of the state.

Legislators wanted to spur more development in the relatively sparsely populated western part of the state over the past few decades, and the economic incentives to create wind farms helped lead to economic growth in many areas. Again, though, Baldick said a lot of this comes back to the fact that Texas is naturally windy and had transmission infrastructure in place or easily built — factors that aren’t necessarily present in many other parts of the country.

How does the Texas oil and gas industry affect its renewable industry?

Though Texas has seen immense growth in renewable energy capacity and production over the past couple of decades, the fossil fuel industry is still as powerful a lobby as there is in the state, and it’s throwing its weight around.

Earlier Republican administrations leading the state presided over the fast growth of wind and solar in Texas — including former Governor George W. Bush, who pushed hard for more renewable energy production in the late 1990s. Baldick said, however, that especially over the past few years, “Republican leadership has decided that wind and solar are not what it’s really keen on.”

“If you follow the money and campaign contributions, you might find that natural gas interests have realized that renewables are eating their lunch, and have called in a few favors to try and limit the further growth of renewables,” Baldick said.

There’s something to that hypothesis, too. Data from OpenSecrets shows that 93% of the oil and gas industry’s political contributions to state-level races during the 2022 election cycle went to candidates in Texas, including more than $12.2 million to Governor Greg Abbott. Fossil fuel interests appear to be seeing results, too, as many of the state’s leaders, including Abbott, have increasingly criticized renewables, and have worked to try and pass legislation that would help increase fossil fuel-derived energy production or stymie new wind and solar development.

The future of renewable energy in Texas

While politicians, for the time being, appear to be turning against renewable production in favor of fossil fuels — often along with the public who were calling for fewer renewables in recent years after large storms led to widespread power outages — all things being equal, there’s no reason that Texas can’t continue to see growth in the sector.

The post Texas’ Unique Energy Industry Is Helping the State Become a Renewables Leader appeared first on Energy News Beat.

Energy News Beat

Takeover chatter dominated trading rooms as speculation swirled that BP could be a target this year amid chaos at the oil giant.

Rumours that rival energy major Shell could be a candidate for a mega-merger with BP went into overdrive in the City.

US firm Chevron, which bought competitor Hess for £42bn last year, was also thrown into the ring as a credible option to buy the London-listed company.

BP has a market capitalisation of more than £80bn, which would probably make any offer one of the biggest in the world in 2024.

The firm was thrown into disarray last year after the shock exit of disgraced ex-chief executive Bernard Looney over former relationships with colleagues. It denied Looney £32m in pay and bonuses over ‘serious misconduct’ but the saga is far from over.

BP’s board is yet to appoint a permanent boss nearly four months on, with interim chief executive Murray Auchincloss trying to steady the ship. Investors hope that reports of a replacement early this year are correct.

Both BP and Shell’s share prices were buoyed as oil prices rose around 1pc over concerns about Middle Eastern oil supply.

It followed disruption at a field in Libya and heightened tension around the Israel-Hamas war.

Brent crude rose 70 cents, or 0.9pc, to $78.95 a barrel by around midday. BP shares rose 0.3pc, or 1.2p, to 473.45p while Shell was up 0.1pc, or 1.5p, to 2594.5p.

AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould said: ‘The UK does not own a golden share in BP, unlike say BAE Systems or Rolls-Royce, so from that perspective an approach is not impossible. We have also seen large mergers and acquisitions deals in the US in the energy sector, while BP shares have lagged those of oil major peers for some time, not least because investors did not wholeheartedly buy in to Looney’s strategy.

‘Absence of a permanent chief executive, a less indebted balance sheet and a lowly valuation may also catch the eye, while the prospect of interest rate cuts and cheaper debt could prompt some into reviewing the situation.’

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Energy News Beat

Minerals Deal Evaluation: A Comprehensive Guide and Live Analysis

Michael and Stu take a look at a Minerals deal and analyze the asking price, and show how fast you can look at a minerals deal. A shout out to EnergyNet, an acquisition and divestment platform for the land energy industry. https://www.energynet.com/

We would also like to give a shoutout to our sponsors ComboCurve and WellDatabase for the Deal Spotlight as well.

https://welldatabase.com/

https://combocurve.com/

Let us know if you agree with our assessment, and if you would like us to look at your deal, just reach out to us at [email protected]

00:00 – Intro: New minerals deal evaluation template on GitHub, focusing on simplicity and key metrics. Guide on using Energy Net for informed valuation.

01:30 – Introduction to lot 114, Cattlemen Minerals, LaCava County, Texas. Seven Baytex-operated wells, monthly net revenue around $3,000. Emphasis on understanding production trends.

06:01 – Appreciation for Energy Net and CEO Chris Atherton. Anticipation of live minerals deal evaluations during NAPE, discussing potential intelligent well pads in the area.

07:56 – Use of Well Database and Combo Curve, synergy between tools, insights from an Oxy deal analysis, and refining forecasts using the proximity forecast feature.

11:00 – Explanation of proximity forecast in Combo Curve for refining production forecasts by selecting common wells and normalizing data.

16:47 – Value of detailed steps in mineral deal analysis. Humorous discussion on closing date and various parameters.

19:44 – Continued analysis, adjusting parameters like gas shrinkage, addressing taxes, emphasizing percentage conversion, and demonstrating the export process.

22:47 – Completion of cash flow analysis, highlighting small net volumes, emphasis on swift evaluation based on reserve price to decide whether to proceed.

25:11 – Outro

1031 Exchange E-Book

ENB Top News 
ENB
Energy Dashboard
ENB Podcast
ENB Substack

The post ENB Deal Spotlight #3: A Minerals Deal Evaluation: A Comprehensive Guide and Live Analysis – LaCava County, Baytex wells, and are they worth the asking price? appeared first on Energy News Beat.

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 are close to a merger that would create a roughly $17 billion company ranking as one of the largest natural-gas producers in the U.S.

A deal could come together as soon as next week, according to people familiar with the situation, provided the talks don’t hit a last-minute snag.

The post Southwestern, Chesapeake Near $17 Billion Merger appeared first on Energy News Beat.