Energy News Beat

Nov 10 (Reuters) – China’s oil imports from Iran have hit record highs as Iran ramps up output despite the threat of further U.S. sanctions.

Existing sanctions were implemented over Iran’s nuclear programme, and U.S. lawmakers are seeking to exert further pressure after the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas, which has long been backed by Iran, although Tehran has denied any involvement.

U.S. lawmakers are now considering legislation that could impose measures on foreign ports and refineries that process petroleum exported from Iran.

Here are key facts on Iran’s oil trade with China:

HOW MUCH IRANIAN OIL IS CHINA BUYING?

China, the world’s largest crude importer and Iran’s top customer, bought an average 1.05 million barrels per day (bpd) of Iranian oil in the first 10 months of 2023, according to shiptracking data from Vortexa. This is 60% above pre-sanction peaks recorded by Chinese customs in 2017.

Imports jumped this year after Tehran raised output and offered steep discounts.

Tehran’s October output edged up to 3.17 million bpd, a Reuters survey found, the highest since 2018, when Washington re-imposed sanctions on Iran, according to Reuters surveys and OPEC figures.

China’s October imports from Iran are estimated to have reached around 1.45 million bpd, the highest monthly level ever, Vortexa data showed.

HOW DOES IRANIAN OIL ENTER CHINA?

Except for two cargoes in December 2021 and January 2022, China’s customs has not recorded any direct imports from Iran since December 2020.

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Russian lawmaker Dmitry Gusev says such a network would help preserve traditional values

 

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A federal judge upheld the Biden administration’s approval of ConocoPhillips’ 600-million-barrel Willow oil development in Alaska, a blow to environmentalists who argued it would imperil wildlife and exacerbate climate change.

The ruling by Alaska-based US District Judge Sharon Gleason means ConocoPhillips can continue developing the $7.5 billion project in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska that promises to eventually yield some 180,000 barrels of oil per day.

While equipment is being fabricated at Gulf Coast facilities, ConocoPhillips is preparing to resume on-site work during Alaska’s short, winter-operating season that could begin as soon as next month.

At issue is the Interior Department’s March approval of the controversial Willow project following a fierce lobbying battle, an opposition campaign that went viral, and fraught deliberations inside the administration, where the issue was seen as testing President Joe Biden’s campaign commitments to combat climate change.

Environmental and indigenous groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sovereign Inupiat for a Living Arctic, argued the government violated the National Environmental Policy Act and other laws by failing to consider the full impacts of the project on climate change and species in the region. They said the government didn’t adequately consider options to meaningfully constrain the project’s oil production — and therefore its resulting carbon dioxide emissions — even as it ignored the greenhouse gas releases that could be unleashed from future developments that could be facilitated by Willow.

Some of the project’s challengers also took aim at the Fish and Wildlife Service’s determination that Willow wouldn’t harm polar bears that have dens in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska; the opponents argued instead that industrial oil operations pose a multi-faceted threat to the animals.

Gleason brushed aside those assertions Thursday, saying the Fish and Wildlife Service’s decisions — including its conclusion that Willow-related work was unlikely to injure non-denning polar bears — were “reasoned” and within the bounds of law. Environmental groups failed to prove the agency disregarded better available scientific evidence about the impacts of greenhouse-gas emissions from the project, Gleason said.

Erec Isaacson, president of ConocoPhillips Alaska, celebrated the ruling, saying it “confirms our confidence” the government review complied with all legal requirements.

“Willow underwent nearly five years of rigorous regulatory review and environmental analysis, including extensive public involvement from the communities closest to the project site,” Isaacson said in a statement. “We now want to make this project a reality and help Alaskan communities realize the extensive benefits of responsible energy development.”

Erik Grafe, deputy managing attorney of the Alaska office for Earthjustice, which represented the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife and other organizations, called the ruling “disappointing” and said the challengers planned to appeal.

“Beyond the illegality of Willow’s approval, Interior’s decision to greenlight the project in the first place moved us in the opposite direction of our national climate goals in the face of the worsening climate crisis,” Grafe said.

Siqiñiq Maupin, executive director of Sovereign Inupiat for a Living Arctic, said the ruling shows “the oil and gas industry exerts incredible power over those whose health and food are most impacted and who will most experience the climate harm and disaster this project will flame.”

The project’s backers have argued the government’s review was expansive. They also emphasized that crude extracted from the site inside the 23 million-acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska would be produced under more stringent environmental protections than elsewhere in the world, helping to bolster US energy security and provide an alternative to supplies from Russia.

Source: Bloomberg: 

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ENB Pub Note: The European Big Oil companies seem to have returned to their core business even after their 90-degree turn away from “Renewable.” 

France’s TotalEnergies is looking to expand in the US
Gas plants have become more valuable in the Texas market

TotalEnergies SE is nearing a deal to buy a fleet of natural gas-fired power plants in Texas as it looks to expand in the US market, according to people familiar with the matter.

The 2.3-gigawatt portfolio is owned by independent power producer TexGen Power LLC and provides capacity equivalent to more than two nuclear reactors. That’s enough to serve nearly half a million homes on the hottest days in the US state, based on figures from the Texas grid operator.

A transaction could be announced as soon as next week, said the people, who asked not to be identified as the information is private. While talks are advanced, they could still be delayed or fall apart, the people said. If completed, the deal could be worth several hundred million dollars, according to some of the people.

TotalEnergies, based near Paris, declined to comment on “market rumors,” while adding that the company is “interested in acquiring gas-fired power plants to complement its renewable assets in the US” and that’s currently in “discussions with several potential sellers on this subject.”

TexGen didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

TotalEnergies has pursued gas plants to complement its growing fleet of wind and solar farms that provide more sporadic generation. Chief Executive Officer Patrick Pouyanne said last month that the company might make such an acquisition in Texas. The French oil major is aiming to reach 100 gigawatts of renewable power globally by 2030, up from 20.2 gigawatts at the end of the third quarter.

Gas plants have become more valuable in the last couple of years amid supply issues, the rise of intermittent wind and solar generation and higher power prices in key markets like Texas. Total, which has been acquiring gas-fired plants in France, Belgium and Spain, plans to invest about $4 billion a year on power generation on top of expanding oil and gas production.

In Texas, many generators are reaping record revenues, or close to it, after the state grid operator pushed through reforms to help avoid a repeat of widespread blackouts in a deadly 2021 winter storm.

A critical driver of those reforms has been boosting profits at thermal plants — those running on nuclear, coal and gas — and to create incentives for new generation. Developers have been reluctant to pour billions of dollars into projects because of uncertainty about ongoing reforms and concerns that the flood of solar and battery facilities will curb power prices.

The purchase of TexGen plants would complement TotalEnergies’ recent foray in the US clean power market. The French company had a gross installed capacity of 6.2 gigawatts of solar and wind power in North America and a further 3 gigawatts in construction on the continent at the end of the third quarter, thanks to recent acquisitions such as a 50% stake in Clearway Energy Group.

Last month, the French energy giant started commercial operations at a 380-megawatt solar farm located south of Houston, which the company said produces enough green electricity to cover the equivalent consumption of 70,000 homes.

Source: Bloomberg: 

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Oil and gas are “not the problem” for the climate, but the carbon emissions arising from them are, the UK’s net zero minister has told MPs.

In words that suggested the UK could place yet more emphasis on technologies to capture and store carbon, Graham Stuart said fossil fuel production was not driving climate change, but demand for fossil fuels was.

His statements were a bullish defence of the government’s much-criticised stance.

“I don’t think supply is the key driver – it is demand we need to focus on,” said Stuart, who will attend the Cop28 UN climate summit that begins later this month, where the future of oil and gas production will be under scrutiny.

Earlier this week, in the king’s speech, the government set out plans for new oil and gas licensing in the North Sea, which opposition parties and green campaigners said ran contrary to the UK’s climate goals.

Stuart said the UK had “no problems” on climate policy and was leading the world, in response to questioning from parliament’s environmental audit committee on Wednesday.

“If you really care about climate change, the last country you need to worry about is the UK,” he told MPs. “We are not the problem, it’s encouraging others to follow us on the net zero pathway, that is the biggest challenge.”

The UK’s statutory advisers, the committee on climate change (CCC), has warned that the UK is not on a pathway to meet its net zero goals. However, Stuart said the CCC had found aspects of climate policy that were improving.

A group of more than 80 countries, including the UK, called for the phaseout of fossil fuels at the Cop27 UN climate summit in Egypt last year, and are expected to make the same demand at Cop28 in Dubai.

However, Stuart’s comments to the committee raised questions over whether the UK would take such a strong position this year.

He told MPs: “There is nothing fundamentally wrong with oil and gas, it’s emissions from oil and gas that are the problem and that we must focus on.”

Focusing on emissions rather than fossil fuels is regarded as a distraction by many campaigners, or as cover for relying on technology for carbon capture and storage, which is not yet used at scale and may never be.

Jamie Peters, climate coordinator at Friends of the Earth, said: “Thank goodness Graham Stuart has enlightened us that there are no fundamental problems with continuing to back oil and gas, because it’s only the government’s own climate advisers, the International Energy Agency and the world’s top scientists who’ve strongly stated otherwise.”

Ami McCarthy, political campaigner at Greenpeace UK, called Stuart’s remarks “laughable”.

They said: “This government is completely failing on both supply and demand. It scrapped its own energy efficiency taskforce that was established to reduce demand through schemes like insulating our heat-leaking homes and upgrading boilers.

“To put the blame on demand from consumers, who have been left unsupported by this government, is a new low for a Conservative party who are hell-bent on attempting to weaponise climate action to sow division.”

Robbie MacPherson, political lead at the campaigning group Uplift, said the government was not a world leader on the climate while it was pursuing the expansion of fossil fuels.

“Greenlighting fields like Rosebank tells the world that the UK cannot be trusted in phasing out fossil fuels at exactly the time we need the world to come together at Cop28 to make progress on this issue,” he said.

“The UK has been and can again be a world leader in reducing emissions but for that to happen the government must rapidly end its political gameplaying on oil and gas.”

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The nation’s electric grid experts and operators now work in a constant state of emergency. There’s little if any respite in the change of seasons. Fears of soaring electricity demand overwhelming power supplies during searing summer heat are now matched by an equally unnerving fear millions will be left shivering in darkness during the coldest days of winter.

The question is no longer will there be rolling blackouts or grid emergencies but rather when or where.

This week, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is taking up the issue of grid reliability at a technical conference, pulling together some of the nation’s key stakeholders on the issue. This is an extraordinarily important opportunity to shed light on a catastrophe in the making and the policy decisions driving it.

Warnings over the threat posed by the loss of dispatchable sources of generation – namely fuel-secure coal power – have reached a crescendo over the past few months. And while the experts charged with keeping the heat and lights on have begged for policy relief, they’re getting just the opposite.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) regulatory agenda is making an alarmingly dangerous situation all but untenable.

EPA has launched a blitz of rulemakings at the U.S. coal and gas power plant fleets that threatens to dismantle 60% of the nation’s power supply nearly overnight. The U.S. coal fleet – a grid reliability backstop that regularly fills power supply gaps when other sources cannot, particularly during biting cold – is facing six rules designed to work in unison to accelerate plant closures.

Headlining this blitz is the so-called Clean Power Plan 2.0. The proposed rule would force coal and gas plant owners to make decisions almost immediately about the future of their plants and the adoption of technologies that – despite EPA’s claims otherwise – are nowhere near ready for commercial deployment. EPA’s mandate is a barely camouflaged order to close plants.

Grid operators, utilities, electric co-ops and even the nation’s federal energy regulators have made it abundantly clear that while the nation has been teetering on the edge of catastrophe, EPA’s agenda – if fully enacted – will likely be the dreaded push over the edge.

FERC Chairman Willie Phillips, handpicked by the Biden administration, recently told Congress, “I am extremely concerned about the pace of retirements we are seeing of generators which are needed for reliability.”

Jim Robb, the president and CEO of North American Electric Reliability Corporation, was asked during Congressional testimony if the generating capacity EPA’s regulatory agenda is forcing off the grid can be sufficiently replaced without incurring reliability impacts. He said, “Not in the timeframe we’re looking at. No.” He added, “Interagency coordination is absolutely needed for policies that impact generation, especially coal resources, to keep reliability at the forefront of the policy table.”

But interagency coordination – especially the robust collaborative work needed to evaluate the cumulative impact EPA’s rulemakings will have on grid reliability and resource adequacy – simply hasn’t happened. EPA has frankly rebuffed the expertise of the nation’s foremost reliability experts.

In fact, while EPA claimed it consulted FERC over the reliability impact of the proposed Clean Power Plan 2.0, commissioner James Danly submitted a blistering letter to the agency correcting the record. “The EPA did not consult the Commission,” he wrote. “I was not asked what I thought of the Proposed Rule’s effects on electric reliability, and I am not aware of my fellow commissioners having had their feedback solicited.”

Danly requested that EPA extend the comment period for the rule to wait for FERC’s reliability conference to help inform EPA’s administrative record. He wrote, “until the record of FERC’s technical conference is submitted in the docket, the EPA will lack the record evidence necessary to make an informed decision.”

Despite his letter and warning – and Congressional oversight expressing strong concerns at the lack of interagency coordination and a true cumulative impact analysis – EPA closed the comment period, only underscoring the agency’s dangerous nonchalance over the impact of its rulemakings.

FERC now has a chance to publicly hold EPA’s plans to account.

It’s past time the nation’s reliability regulators address the cumulative impact of EPA’s rulemakings and make the Biden administration answer to the danger posed by its regulatory onslaught.

The reliability of the nation’s power supply hangs in the balance. If EPA is unwilling to change course and recognize the threat posed by its rulemakings, FERC, Congress and the states must step in. The stakes are too large. It is common sense that the nation’s foremost reliability experts – not the EPA – should have the final say over the reliability and security of the nation’s supply of electricity.

Rich Nolan is president and CEO of the National Mining Association.

Source: Real Clear Energy 

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VIDALIA, Ga.—Electric cars. The solar build-out. Washington’s rural-broadband initiative. Utilities bracing the grid for stronger storms. They all depend on the same thing: big trees.

The utility-pole business is booming, thanks to a flood of public and private infrastructure spending. So the hunt is on for the tallest, straightest, knot-free conifers, which are peeled, dried and pressure-treated at facilities such as

 pole plant in southeastern Georgia’s pinelands.

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The time is not yet ripe for peace talks, but “fair and good negotiations” may be possible in the future, the French president says

 

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