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Ronald Spithout from OneHealth by VIKAND gives his impression on how PEMEs should become a more valuable “health pulse” for crew and industry.

PEMEs are an accepted method of Pre-Employment Medical Examination and are meant to safeguard vessel operations and crew welfare. They are widely used by shipowners and operators to evaluate whether potential employees are fit to work in the demanding and often challenging maritime environment.

Yet, mounting evidence suggests that the current regime in which PEME’s are deployed is far from optimal where it comes to supporting sustainable improvements for crew and shipping industry.

As current PEMEs are merely a ‘snapshot’ – detecting the moment rather than being a component in the execution of a social strategy – they are in practise mostly functioning as an ‘exclusion tool’, driving a culture that discourages full disclosure of health information, and as a result the current level of non-disclosure is causing an estimated three out of 10 onboard medical cases.

And despite that PEMEs are widely used, and to be fair, also regularly ‘improved’, the number and size of health-related claims is consistently growing….

The fact that PEMEs are snapshots also implies that they often do not address critical health concerns – in particular mental health issues – that may only become apparent any time on board, long after a fit for duty PEME.

Studies indicate that PEMEs do not adequately screen for or support seafarers with mental health challenges. A 2019 investigation by the International Maritime Health journal found that 25% of seafarers exhibited symptoms of depression, and 17% suffered from anxiety. The ITF Seafarers’ Trust in 2021 also reported that 20% of seafarers had suicidal thoughts while at sea.

Despite this growing awareness, only about 1% of PEME submissions disclose a mental health history. Many seafarers avoid full disclosure for fear of being deemed unfit for duty, leading to undiagnosed or hidden conditions that pose a serious risk at sea.

In fact, most PEMEs rely on self-reported tools such as PHQ-9 and GAD-7, but with job security at stake, many seafarers choose not to reveal their conditions. It is clear that without standardised psychological evaluations, the industry cannot effectively mitigate mental health risks.

Another issue with PEMEs as an exclusion tool is flagged by the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) which highlighted that PEMEs fail to provide long-term monitoring or lifestyle intervention advice, particularly for conditions such as hypertension and cardiovascular disease – both leading causes of medical disembarkations.

This has a double effect as those people forced to leave the industry as a result of any of these chronic illnesses (to the tune of 10,000 per year) are leaving at a time that they are the most experienced and valuable for shipping companies and the industry at large.

It would be much better if the PEME would form an integrated part of a longer-term individual health and wellbeing improvement plan, focused to keep our most valuable asset (our crew) on board and in the job.

The industry could reform PEMEs into regular “Health Pulse checks” to ensure these fulfil their intended purpose of safeguarding crew health and vessel safety, and become an effective risk management tool without the current downsides.

These repeated health checks exist on shore and are widely used at shore-based corporations to maintain healthy workforces. With these in place seafarers with manageable health conditions should not face blanket disqualification.

Aggregated and anonymized outcomes could form the basis for fleet wide proactive health care approach, aimed to keep everyone healthy, while individual outcomes should lead to lifestyle improvement advise and progress monitoring.

Until these shortcomings are addressed, the maritime industry may continue to face preventable medical disembarkations, loss of talent and experience, avoidable safety risks at sea for a long time.

But since these recommendations are neither impossible nor costly, given the available technology and potential industry-wide cost reductions, I’m optimistic that regulatory and economic factors are aligning to drive adoption, making the industry more sustainable and attractive to the next generation of seafarers.

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By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

Inflation dished out another bad surprise with a big increase in January from December, which wasn’t a surprise because inflation, once it gets going, is known to do that. This time, the hot spots were durable goods, fueled by the continued massive month-to-month increases in used vehicle prices, and non-housing services, such as auto insurance, admissions, subscriptions, etc.  Food and energy prices also jumped in January. Rent inflation accelerated. But at least the CPI for apparel and shoes dropped in January.

The overall Consumer Price Index rose by 0.47% (+5.7% annualized) in January from December, the worst month-to-month increase since August 2023. It has been accelerating relentlessly since the low point in June (blue). This acceleration pushed the year-over-year increase to 3.0%, the worst increase since May.

• 3-month CPI: +4.5% annualized, sharpest increase since November 2022, and sixth month-to-month acceleration in a row (not shown in the chart).
• 6-month CPI: + 3.6%, worst increase since September 2023. Inflation is going in the wrong direction (red):

Month-to-month “Core” CPI, which excludes food and energy components to track underlying inflation, jumped by 0.45% (+5.5% annualized) in January from December, the worst increase since April 2023, (blue in the chart below).

The 6-month average “core” CPI accelerated to +3.7% annualized, the third month in a row of acceleration and the worst since May (red).

The major components, year-over-year:

• Overall CPI: +3.0% (yellow), worst since May 2024
• Core CPI +3.26% (red), has not improved at all since June 2024
• Core Services CPI: +4.33% (blue). As we’ll see in a moment, month-to-month, it spiked by 6.35% annualized, the worst increase since February.
• Durable goods CPI: -1.21% (green). Month-to-month: +4.6% annualized on a spike in used vehicles, which sharply reduced the year-over-year deflation in durable goods.

“Core services” CPI.

Month-to-month, the core services CPI, which are all services less energy services, spiked by 6.35% annualized (+0.51% not annualized) in January from December, the worst increase since February 2024 (blue line in the chart below).

The three-month core services CPI accelerated to +4.35% annualized, the worst increase since October.

The 6-month core services CPI, which irons out a lot of the month-to-month squiggles, accelerated to 4.4% annualized, the worst since June (red).

Some services raise their prices annually in January, and those price increases then help produce the spikes of the services CPI in January and February. But we did not see those kinds of price spikes in the Januarys and Februarys before the pandemic; they’re signs of persistent high inflation in services that had not occurred before the pandemic:

Housing components of core services.

The Owners’ Equivalent of Rent CPI accelerated slightly to +3.8% annualized in January from December (+0.31% not annualized). The three-month average decelerated a hair to +3.6% annualized.

OER indirectly reflects the expenses of homeownership: homeowners’ insurance, HOA fees, property taxes, and maintenance. It’s the only measure for those expenses in the CPI. It is based on what a large group of homeowners estimates their home would rent for, with the assumption that a homeowner would want to recoup their cost increases by raising the rent.

As a stand-in for homeowners’ insurance, HOA fees, property taxes, and maintenance costs, OER accounts for 26.3% of overall CPI and estimates inflation of shelter as a service for homeowners.

Rent of Primary Residence CPI accelerated to +4.2% annualized in January from December. The 3-month rate accelerated to +3.6%.

Rent CPI accounts for 7.5% of overall CPI. It is based on rents that tenants actually paid, not on asking rents of advertised vacant units for rent. The survey follows the same large group of rental houses and apartments over time and tracks the rents that the current tenants, who come and go, pay in rent for these units.

Year-over-year, rent CPI (blue in the chart below) barely budged in January at +4.24% from +4.27% in December. OER CPI decelerated to +4.6% in January from +4.8% in December (red).

“Asking rents…” The Zillow Observed Rent Index (ZORI) and other private-sector rent indices track “asking rents,” which are advertised rents of vacant units on the market for rent. Because rentals don’t turn over that much, the spike in asking rents through mid-2022 never fully translated into the CPI indices because not many people actually ended up paying those jacked-up asking rents.

For December, the ZORI (seasonally adjusted) rose by 0.28% month-to-month and by 3.4% year-over-year.

The chart shows the CPI Rent of Primary Residence (blue, left scale) as index value, not percentage change; and the ZORI in dollars (red, right scale). The left and right axes are set so that they both increase each by 55% from January 2017:

• Since January 2017: ZORI +52%, CPI Rent +42%.
• Since January 2020: ZORI +34%, CPI Rent +27%.

Rent inflation vs. home-price inflation: The red line in the chart below represents the CPI for Rent of Primary Residence as index value. The purple line represents Zillow’s “raw” Home Value Index for the US. Both indexes are set to 100 for January 2000 [home price inflation by metro: The Most Splendid Housing Bubbles in America ]:

The CPI for motor-vehicle maintenance & repair jumped by 6.2% annualized in January from December. Year-over-year, the index rose by 5.9%, the worst increase since May. Since January 2020, the index has surged by 40%. This chart shows the price level, not the year-over-year percentage change:

The CPI for motor vehicle insurance spiked by 26.7% annualized in January from December (2.0% not annualized), the worst increase since March 2024. Year-over-year, the index spiked by 11.8%.

Since January 2022, motor vehicle insurance prices have exploded by 55%, fueled by the historic spike in used vehicle prices in 2021 and 2022 (=replacement costs for insurance companies) and by surging repair costs.

Note the spike in January:

Food away from Home CPI rose by 2.9% annualized in January from December, and by 3.4% year-over-year, the smallest increase since July 2020.

These food services include full-service and limited-service meals and snacks served away from home, such as in restaurants, cafeterias, at stalls, etc.

The table below shows the major categories of “core services.” Combined, they accounted for 64% of total CPI:

Major Services excluding Energy Services	Weight in CPI	MoM	YoY
Core Services	64%	0.3%	4.8%
Owner’s equivalent of rent	26.3%	0.3%	4.6%
Rent of primary residence	7.5%	0.3%	4.2%
Medical care services & insurance	6.7%	0.0%	2.7%
Food services (food away from home)	5.6%	0.2%	3.4%
Motor vehicle insurance	2.8%	2.0%	11.8%
Education (tuition, childcare, school fees)	2.5%	0.2%	3.6%
Admission, movies, concerts, sports events, club memberships	2.1%	1.5%	4.0%
Other personal services (dry-cleaning, haircuts, legal services…)	1.6%	-0.5%	2.3%
Public transportation (airline fares, etc.)	1.5%	0.7%	4.9%
Telephone & wireless services	1.5%	0.2%	0.0%
Lodging away from home, incl Hotels, motels	1.3%	1.4%	2.2%
Water, sewer, trash collection services	1.1%	0.7%	4.4%
Motor vehicle maintenance & repair	1.0%	0.5%	5.9%
Internet services	0.9%	1.1%	-0.5%
Video and audio services, cable, streaming	0.8%	2.0%	3.2%
Pet services, including veterinary	0.5%	0.1%	5.9%
Tenants’ & Household insurance	0.4%	1.1%	2.1%
Car and truck rental	0.1%	1.7%	-3.6%
Postage & delivery services	0.1%	-1.2%	7.6%

The core services CPI overall has risen by 24% since January 2020.

Prices of Goods.

The used vehicle CPI jumped by 2.2% not annualized (29.7% annualized) in January from December, seasonally adjusted, the fifth month-to-month increase in a row, and the worst since May 2023 (red in the chart below).

Not seasonally adjusted, the index jumped 0.5% not annualized (6.5% annualized), though it would normally decline in January (blue).

The surge over the past five months has flipped the 10% year-over-year plunges in June and July into a year-over-year increase of 1.0%, the first year-over-year increase since October 2022 back when the historic price spike was unwinding.

The plunge of used vehicle retail prices from early 2022 through August 2024 was a powerful factor in the cooling of CPI inflation. But this U-turn has now become fuel for the re-acceleration of overall inflation, amid structurally tight retail inventories, strong demand, and surging wholesale prices.

Prices are still up by 33% from January 2020, and it now seems unlikely that they will give up more of the pandemic price spike.

New vehicles CPI edged up by a hair in January from December, seasonally adjusted. Not seasonally adjusted, the index rose by 0.26% (not annualized). This whittled down the year-over-year drop to just 0.3%.

New-vehicle prices have been sticky, unlike used-vehicle prices, despite abundant supply of new vehicles now on many lots, as automakers and dealers are trying to preserve their profit margins. The big incentives and discounts in recent months mostly just undid part of the increases in MSRPs. Since January 2020, the index is up 20.7%.

Durable Goods are dominated by new and used vehicles. Starting in mid- to late 2022, all major durable goods categories experienced price declines (deflation), off the price spike during the pandemic. But the month-to-month price drops in motor vehicles ended months ago, and prices have risen since then. And the other major categories of durable goods prices have slowed or ended their month-to-month declines:

Major durable goods categories	MoM	YoY
Durable goods overall	0.4%	-1.2%
New vehicles	0.0%	-0.3%
Used vehicles	2.2%	1.0%
Household furnishings (furniture, appliances, floor coverings, tools)	-0.2%	-0.9%
Sporting goods (bicycles, equipment, etc.)	0.2%	-3.8%
Information technology (computers, smartphones, etc.)	0.0%	-8.2%

Food Inflation.

The CPI for “Food at home” – purchased at stores and markets and eaten off premises – jumped by 5.7% annualized in January from December (+0.46% not annualized), the worst increase since October 2022.

This pushed the year-over-year price increase to 1.9%, the biggest increase since October 2023. Since January 2020, food prices have surged by 28%.

After a brief lull at painfully high price levels, food price inflation has been re-accelerating sharply for the past five months.

Part of this re-acceleration is due to the spiking prices for eggs, where the avian flu has been wreaking havoc since early 2024.

Beyond eggs, big month-to-month increases also occurred with beef, pork, fish and seafood, fresh fruit, and juices and nonalcoholic drinks.

MoM	YoY
Food at home	0.5%	1.9%
Cereals, breads, bakery products	-0.4%	0.4%
Beef and veal	0.7%	5.5%
Pork	0.7%	2.8%
Poultry	-0.1%	0.4%
Fish and seafood	0.8%	0.9%
Eggs	15.2%	53.0%
Dairy and related products	0.3%	1.2%
Fresh fruits	0.5%	1.4%
Fresh vegetables	-1.7%	-0.6%
Juices and nonalcoholic drinks	1.1%	1.9%
Coffee, tea, etc.	-0.1%	3.1%
Fats and oils	0.1%	0.4%
Baby food & formula	-0.3%	1.1%
Alcoholic beverages at home	0.1%	0.8%

Apparel and footwear.

The CPI for apparel and footwear dropped by 1.4% (not annualized) in January from December, which reduced the year-over-year increase to 0.5%.

Energy.

The CPI for gasoline makes up about half of the overall energy CPI. It jumped 1.8% in January from December, seasonally adjusted, which about ended the year-over-year decline.

Not seasonally adjusted, gasoline also rose, when it normally declines during the low-demand winter months.

Compared to the peak in the summer of 2022, gasoline prices plunged by 28% seasonally adjusted (red), and by 36% not seasonally adjusted (blue). This had been a big factor in the deceleration of overall CPI inflation.

The CPI for energy, which covers energy products and services that consumers buy and pay for directly, including gasoline, jumped by 1.1% in January from December, and rose by 1.0% year-over-year, the first year-over-year gain since July.

CPI for Energy, by Category	MoM	YoY
Overall Energy CPI	1.1%	1.0%
Gasoline	1.8%	-0.2%
Electricity service	0.3%	2.5%
Utility natural gas to home	1.8%	4.9%
Heating oil, propane, kerosene, firewood	4.1%	-1.3%

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The post Beneath the Skin of CPI Inflation: Worst Month-to-Month Acceleration of CPI since Aug 2023, on Spikes in Used Vehicles, Non-Housing Services, Food, Energy appeared first on Energy News Beat.

 

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Greater ChinaTankers

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BRUSSELS – Donald Trump said on Wednesday he and Vladmir Putin had agreed to open talks to end Russia’s war in Ukraine “immediately”, after his defence secretary said it was “unrealistic” that Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders would be restored.

As his top diplomatic trio continued their first European tour, US President Trump on Wednesday made an unexpected move and spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Both leaders agreed to “start negotiations immediately” on the war in Ukraine in a “lengthy and highly productive phone call”, Trump said on Truth Social. The encounter is the first publicly revealed between the two leaders since Trump took office.

“We both agreed, we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the War with Russia/Ukraine,” Trump wrote.

“President Putin even used my very strong Campaign motto of, ‘COMMON SENSE.’ We both believe very strongly in it. We agreed to work together, very closely, including visiting each other’s Nations,” he added.

The move took Europeans by surprise, mildly speaking.

Hopes that the US side would lay out details of how it intends to make good on Trump’s pledges to swiftly advance peace talks to end the conflict were already smashed before Wednesday’s meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Brussels.

The only thing the Trump administration so far had been clear about was it would stop Russian efforts in Ukraine – as long as Europe takes the lead – and directly negotiate with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.

At the Contact Group – a format formerly chaired by the Americans and now taken over by the UK – several of Ukraine’s Western supporters are expected to make announcements of new military support for Ukraine.

While Washington was widely not expected to make new announcements this week, it nonetheless signalled some major policy shifts.

US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth stunned his colleagues by drawing new red lines on Ukraine.

A return of Ukraine to its pre-2014 borders, before Russia’s invasion of Crimea and its capture of four eastern regions,  was “an unrealistic objective”, Hegseth said, adding that “chasing this illusionary goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering.”

He doubled down by saying US troops won’t be deployed to Ukraine as any part of security guarantees – it was for Europeans “to step into the arena” – and any troops from NATO members would not be covered by the alliance’s Article Five, the mutual defence clause.

A peace deal allowing for eventual NATO membership was not feasible, he added, which runs contrary to the careful language the alliance has so far adopted without taking a definite position on the matter.

“Honesty will be our policy going forward,” Hegseth said.

His brief remarks quickly had ripple effects. One European NATO diplomat described the policy change as akin to forcing Ukraine’s “preemptive surrender”.

Several NATO diplomats told Euractiv they were unpleasantly surprised such statements were coming before Ukraine peace talks had even started – though the comments are perhaps less surprising after Trump’s call with Putin.

European NATO allies had nervously anticipated the first visit of the new US administration – typically an opportunity to gently sniff each other out and find common ground.

But Hegseth, arriving in Brussels on Wednesday, brushed aside the usual decorum and jumped straight to the point.

“Arrived at NATO HQ. Our commitment is clear: NATO must be a stronger, more lethal force — not a diplomatic club,” Hegseth wrote on X. “Time for allies to meet the moment.”

Hegseth’s talk with NATO counterparts and Ukraine are part of a flurry of visits to Europe this week by top US officials, including the AI Summit in Paris and, later this week, the Munich Security Conference.

On both Ukraine and Europe ‘pulling its weight’ on security, Hegseth was expected to deliver Trump’s message that Washington expects Europeans to step up – and carry the burden themselves.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte told reporters before the talks that compared to 2023, there was a 20% increase in defence spending from non-US NATO allies last year.

The figures mark “a big step in the direction of what President Trump has called for – I agree with him that we must equalise security assistance to Ukraine,” Rutte said.

But NATO officials increasingly believe a rational run-down of spending figures is unlikely to be enough to sway Washington easily.

[OM]

“}]] 

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Shell released its 2025 energy security scenarios, reimagining its Archipelagos and Horizon scenarios in the context of a world using artificial intelligence.

The company also added a third scenario, Surge, which explores the prospect of a new wave of economic growth driven by productivity improvements catalyzed by AI.

In Archipelagos, technology development is hampered by global concerns about resource, border and trade security, while Horizon takes a normative approach to investigate what the world would need to do to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 and global warming limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

In all three scenarios, LNG shows significant growth in the near term, fuelled by ongoing projects in Qatar and the USA, reaching around 550 million tonnes per year (mtpa) by the end of the decade, Shell said.

According to Shell, divergence between the scenarios is a function of project timelines up until about 2030, but after that the scenarios diverge significantly as the different scenario drivers take hold.

Shell said Surge envisions growing demand for natural gas throughout the 2030s, as developing economies seek to use as many different types of energy as possible to meet their increasing needs.

Without major international pipelines, LNG supply continues to grow, reaching 700 mtpa, with most new projects located in North America, some of which will involve new field production and new LNG facilities.

Shell said LNG’s market share of overall global gas demand reaches around 25 percent by 2050, up from around 14 percent in 2024.

Moreover, Archipelagos presents a more prolonged use of gas, but peak demand is more modest than in Surge.

Shell said a heightened focus on energy security is evident in different ways: the EU continues to import LNG from the USA to offset the loss of Russian pipeline production, while China relies on gas imports from Central Asia and domestic production to moderate its LNG demand.

The net effect is a well-balanced and stable LNG market throughout the 2030s, plateauing at around 600 mpta, according to Shell.

In Horizon, the global decline in gas demand that begins in the 2020s as a normative requirement for net-zero emissions in 2050, starts to affect LNG, with demand peaking in the early 2030s, Shell said.

This results in existing infrastructure operating at low utilization rates as demand falls faster than the natural decline rate of the assets, Shell added.

Shell sold 65.82 million tonnes of LNG in 2024, a 2 percent decrease from 67.09 million tonnes of LNG in 2023.

On the other hand, Shell’s liquefaction volumes increased 3 percent to 29.09 million tonnes in 2024.

The company plans to release its 2025 LNG outlook on February 25.

Source: Lngprime.com

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President Trump’s return to the White House appears poised to throw a wrench into the U.S.’s energy transition — though not to stop it.

Trump repeatedly pledged on the campaign trail to implement policies favorable to the fossil fuel industry and roll back incentives that have boosted the renewable energy sector in recent years. On his first day in office, he signed executive orders to bolster oil and gas drilling, halt all new offshore wind leases and freeze funding from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which allocated billions toward clean-energy projects.

Trump is expected to continue pursuing a fossil fuel-friendly agenda moving forward, and his picks to lead the federal government’s energy and environmental agencies look set to follow his lead.

Their moves are likely to hinder the pivot to lower-carbon energy sources, experts within the burgeoning renewables industry say. But they note that much of the transition is already underway, and they say the administration’s policies are not likely to stop or reverse it entirely.

The administration’s opposition to renewables comes in the context of massive private growth in the industry that’s unlikely to come to a grinding halt.

In recent years, even as domestic oil and gas production have climbed to already record levels, the country — and the world — have also drawn an increasing share of their power from renewables such as solar and wind. In 2023, according to the Energy Information Administration, such sources supplied about 21 percent of electricity generated in the U.S.

In its 2024 report, the International Energy Agency projected that renewables will comprise half of global electricity demand by 2030, with 80 percent coming from solar.

The report, which predates the presidential election, attributes much of the anticipated growth to “supportive policies and favorable economics,” but the U.S. and its policies in particular were not projected to play the largest role even before Trump’s return to the White House: China is expected to drive up to 60 percent of the growth, while India’s renewables sector is growing faster than any major economy.

Lori Bird, director of the World Resource Institute’s (WRI) U.S. Energy Program, noted that the sector also saw growth during Trump’s first term, and that incentives aimed at supporting its continued development are likely to remain in place over the next years.

The fate of renewable energy tax credits included in the IRA, which even some Republicans have called to retain, will be one of the most pivotal open questions for energy going forward, she said.

“That’s one of the biggest things that’s really important for the clean energy industry, particularly on the power sector side of things,” she said.

But in addition to those tax credits, Bird noted that efforts by municipalities, states and large corporations are ongoing, even if they don’t have support in the White House.

And demand from the private sector is continuing to build.

“The tech sector, in particular, a lot of these large companies … they do have 100 percent renewable commitments, and have been making large-scale investments to try to meet them, and they’re driving a lot of the load growth, so they’re trying to figure out how to make that happen,” she said.

Endeavors that consume a significant amount of energy, like artificial intelligence data centers and building electrification, are also likely to drive up demand for power in the years ahead.

“We’re going to need all power generation sources to move this to meet that demand,” she said. “We need more transmission, and we need it quickly to meet these numbers that we’re seeing. So the tax credits are really important to that in terms of bringing on new generation quickly.”

In the event that U.S. policy drives a broader retreat from renewable growth, other countries are likely to step in to fill the gaps, said Jennifer Layke, the WRI’s global director for energy

“If the U.S. steps back from being a lead on either the financing, the foreign aid [or] the technology support, that leaves open a space for other countries to come in, other countries that have technological or financial or political agendas that stand to gain by being part of that clean energy transition in [the] country,” she said.

On the other side of the equation, she noted, numerous businesses, including many based in the U.S., rely heavily on international markets, which are likely to continue their expansion in renewables.

“So there’s both the [question of] how do businesses respond and there’s the [question of] how will governments respond in trying to incentivize their businesses to take that that space over,” she said. “So I can imagine … both will be dynamics that we should be watching.”

Bird acknowledged Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s history of downplaying both climate change and the robustness of the energy transition. Wright, who previously worked as CEO of one of the nation’s largest fracking companies, said years before his nomination that “there is no climate crisis and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition either.”

But she noted that despite that history, Wright has also invested in next-generation geothermal energy corporation Fervo Energy, which suggests “we could see some gains on some parts of the clean energy sector and industry on the utility side.”

Concerns about electric grid resilience are bipartisan, she noted, and “we’re going to need a lot of different solutions here, wind and solar, I think, and renewables have advantages in that they can be built quickly if you can get them interconnected. It’s a lot quicker to do wind and solar plants than it is to build a natural gas facility.”

Source: Thehill.com

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Crude oil reclaimed the 50-Day MA at $72.83, signaling strength. Watch resistance between $74.60-$74.89 and potential support at $70.91.

Crude oil further confirmed the recent swing low of $70.91 as support. On Tuesday, crude triggered a continuation of the rally from that low, reaching a new high of $73.99 for the bounce. Strength was also indicated by the reclaim of the 50-Day MA today, now at $72.83. Resistance was seen at the 50-Day line on Monday.

Today’s decisive breakout above the 50-Day line shows strength that should be sustained towards a test of higher prices. The day is likely to end with crude in a relatively strong position, in the top third of the day’s trading range. That top third of the range is above $73.54. Also, be aware that today’s low was a successful test of support at the 50-Day MA, which is a sign of strength.

The post Crude Oil Price Forecast: Crude Oil Reclaims $72.83, Targets Higher Resistance Levels appeared first on Energy News Beat.

 

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While some U.S. refiners are scaling back, Saudi Arabia’s Motiva Enterprises just made a power move. The Saudi Aramco-owned refinery in Port Arthur, Texas, has quietly expanded its capacity, now processing a record 654,000 barrels per day—officially making it the largest refinery in the United States above Exxon’s Beaumont and Marathon’s Galveston Bay.

Motiva pulled this off without a flashy billion-dollar project—just good old-fashioned optimization, removing bottlenecks in the system to squeeze out more production. And they did it at a time when smaller, less efficient refineries are dropping like flies. LyondellBasell’s Houston plant is closing. Phillips 66’s Los Angeles refinery is shutting down.

Unlike its smaller refining peers, Port Arthur is doubling down, proving that size absolutely matters in refining.

Motiva’s expansion fits into a bigger industry shift, where mega-refineries are getting even bigger while smaller plants either shut down or pivot to biofuels. The rationale? If you can’t be nimble, be massive. And while U.S. refiners whine about demand uncertainties and ESG pressures, Aramco isn’t here to play defense—it’s here to dominate.

The real question now is whether Motiva will finally pull the trigger on its long-rumored petrochemical expansion. Back in 2021, Aramco was considering pouring $6.6 billion into turning Port Arthur into a full-fledged petrochem hub—a move that would’ve put the plant even further ahead of its competition. That plan seemed to fizzle out, but given this latest expansion, it might just be back on the table.

Motiva, of course, isn’t saying much—declining to comment so far when asked by media. But with oil demand holding strong, shuttered competition, and its parent company sitting on a cash pile the size of some national economies, it’s hard to imagine Port Arthur isn’t gearing up for more.

By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com

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