Energy News Beat
The combined crude oil exports from Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the United States fell by nearly 700,000 barrels per day in August.
The decline was primarily driven by a drop in U.S. exports, followed by Saudi Arabia and Russia.
Tightening U.S. crude supplies and rising domestic demand in Saudi Arabia contributed to the lower exports.

The world’s ‘Big 3’ crude oil exporters – Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the United States – saw their combined shipments slump by nearly 700,000 barrels per day (bpd) in August from July to a multi-year low share of global seaborne crude exports, an analysis by oil flow tracking firm Vortexa showed on Wednesday.

Total crude exports from Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the U.S. fell to 12.7 million bpd last month, down by nearly 700,000 bpd month-on-month.

Despite the major drop in ‘Big-3’ exports, global exports fell by just 260,000 bpd in August from July, as other exporters raised shipments, Jay Maroo, Head of Market Intelligence & Analysis (MENA) at Vortexa, wrote in the insight.

The U.S. saw the steepest plunge in exports among the Big 3, with shipments falling by about 540,000 bpd. Saudi Arabia, the world’s top crude oil exporter, saw its exports drop by 110,000 bpd and Russia’s shipments fell by 40,000 bpd in August compared to July.

U.S. exports declined to their lowest monthly total since January 2023, Vortexa’s data showed. Shipments of 3.7 million bpd in August saw an especially slow start to the month.

“Tighter US crude supplies, as seen via sharp draws in Cushing inventories, have come partly as a result of struggling US production growth,” Vortexa’s Maroo noted.

August, however, was likely the bottom for U.S. crude exports as flows to Europe have been ramping up, according to Vortexa.

The lower Saudi crude exports weren’t surprising for the month of August, considering the higher demand for oil burn for power generation in the Kingdom, Vortexa’s analysis showed.

In the coming weeks, Saudi exports may pick up, as domestic power generation needs are expected to wane, potentially freeing up supply for exports.

Russia’s exports fell slightly in August, but they could further drop if China’s oil demand continues to deteriorate. Moscow – unlike Riyadh – doesn’t have willing buyers of its crude lining up to snap up Russian crude, Vortexa notes.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

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Group had scheduled October production boost of 180,000 b/d
Rethink comes after downbeat economic data from China, US

OPEC+ is close to agreement on delaying a planned increase in oil production after prices plunged amid fragile demand and plentiful supplies.

Key coalition members likely won’t go ahead with the scheduled hike of 180,000 barrels a day in October, according to delegates who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. The rethink came after crude prices slumped below $73 a barrel earlier this week, reaching the lowest since late 2023, following downbeat economic data from China and the US, the biggest consumers.

Led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, OPEC+ agreed in June on a road map for gradually restoring supplies halted since 2022. But it vacillated as soon as the plan was unveiled, repeatedly stressing the increases could be “paused or reversed” if necessary. A major output disruption in Libya seemed to offer the group space to go ahead, but members are now leaning toward caution.

Postponing the rise might avert the surplus that prominent market-watchers such as the International Energy Agency and trading giant Trafigura Group were expecting in the fourth quarter. Conversely, opening the taps could initiate a slump toward $50 a barrel, Citigroup Inc. warned.

— With assistance from Nayla Razzouk and Ben Bartenstein

(Updates throughout.)

Source: Bloomberg

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Drought has hit Schleicher County hard. Lots of the stock tanks are dry. The only plants that appear to be thriving on this part of the Edwards Plateau are scrawny mesquite trees and the ever-present prickly pear cactus. As we turned onto County Road 339, the clouds of dust from the unpaved road were so thick that I slowed down to assure there was at least 100 yards between my vehicle and the tailgate of Ray and Sandra Pfeuffer’s pickup. It was the afternoon of August 15. The dashboard in our 4Runner showed the outside temperature was 103 F. The sun was relentless. There was almost no wind. A bare handful of clouds dotted the sky.

The Pfeuffers, who raise goats and cattle on a 3,300-acre ranch about a dozen miles southeast of Christoval, led us to a remote spot in a remote county: the Carmelite Monastery of Our Lady of Grace.

Sandra wanted me to meet the nuns at the monastery because, like the Pfeuffers and many others in Schleicher County, they were dead set against a “green” hydrogen project called Tierra Alta, that has been proposed for their neighborhood by ET Fuels, an Irish corporation that’s backed by private equity firms based in Zurich and Paris. At the monastery, we were warmly greeted by Sister Mary Grace and Sister Mary Michael. Both were quick to explain why they are opposing the project. Not only would it include dozens of wind turbines that would be visible from the monastery, it would also require lots of water. Sister Mary Grace spoke first. She told me, “We are all about prayer. We are all about justice. And we are all about people.”  She went on to say the project would completely change the region’s character.

Sister Mary Michael, who relied on a wheelchair, spoke softly but cut right to the chase: “We’re in a drought, and they want to take more water,” she said. “It’s a ridiculous amount of water.”

“Ridiculous” is the right word. But the water needs of the proposed “green” hydrogen-to-methanol projects are only one absurdity in a corral-full of absurdities propelled by the outrageous amount of federal money available to corporate subsidy miners under the Inflation Reduction Act. (That legislation, you may recall, became law by a single vote, cast by Kamala Harris.) And those subsidy miners are eagerly aiming to feed at the trough. However, to collect the maximum amount of federal money under the IRA for “green” hydrogen, they will have to pave dozens, or even hundreds, of square miles of ranchland from San Angelo to Fort Stockton with wind turbines and solar panels.

As I explained here on Substack last month, the subsidies for “green” hydrogen are 1,900 times larger than what’s given to nuclear. In that piece, I quoted the late Charlie Munger, who famously said, “Show me the incentives, and I’ll show you the outcome.” I wrote, “Under rules published earlier this year by the Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service, hydrogen producers can collect $3 per kilogram of hydrogen under the production tax credit if they use electricity from low- or no-carbon sources.” As I noted, the energy content of hydrogen is about 120 megajoules (MJ) per kilogram. When converted into Btu, that works out to a subsidy of roughly $25 per million Btu. As seen above, that means that the subsidy for green hydrogen is 11 times the current market price for natural gas.

In addition, the companies that produce “green” hydrogen may — repeat, may — also be able to collect tax credits for the energy they produce from the sun and the wind. The result, as seen in the slide above, is that for a project costing $800 million, which is the estimated cost of ET Fuels’ Tierra Alta project, the developer could collect more than half of that sum courtesy of federal taxpayers. Note that I’m hedging my statement here because the rules on the tax credits are hazy. That said, it’s clear that the 45V tax credit alone for green hydrogen could provide more than a third of the project’s cost in the first year alone.

That gobsmacking level of subsidy explains why ET Fuels, NextEra Energy, and Apex Clean Energy, are trying to develop massive “green” hydrogen projects on the Edwards Plateau. ET Fuels plans to cover 30,000 acres of ranchland in Schleicher County with 300 megawatts of wind energy capacity, 300 megawatts of solar capacity, and an unspecified amount of battery storage. That capacity will fuel a bank of electrolyzers to produce enough hydrogen for a 100,000-ton-per-year “green” methanol plant. Meanwhile, NextEra and Apex are planning projects that could dwarf what ET Fuels is proposing.

When I asked the Pfeuffers why they and other leaders of The Edwards Plateau Alliance are fighting so hard to stop the hydrogen projects, they replied. “water, water, water.” Ray said, “We wouldn’t have cared if they’d built wind turbines and solar. They could’ve done whatever they wanted.” But after learning about how much water the companies wanted, Sandra said it became clear the projects “just don’t make sense.”

The ET Fuels project alone could require some 485 acre-feet of water per year or roughly 433,000 gallons per day. For perspective, that volume of water would be enough to fill more than four Olympic-size swimming pools every week. “Our aquifer can’t sustain” that much demand Ray explained. When local ranchers irrigate with center-pivot sprinkler systems, they only run their irrigation pumps for a day or two. And even that demand draws down local water wells by 15 or 20 feet until the pumping stops. The hydrogen projects will put continuous demands on the aquifer, which would be ruinous for the region’s ranchers. But that hasn’t stopped the subsidy miners.

Schleicher County, shown in red. Sign on County Road 339.

Apex Clean Energy, a subsidiary of Ares Management Corporation, a publicly traded firm based in Los Angeles that sports a market cap of $45 billion, also has big plans. In 2022, it announced it was pursuing a “green fuels hub” at the Port of Corpus Christi that would get its fuel from a massive complex of wind and solar capacity in the region near Fort Stockton. The project, known as Big Trail reportedly aims to lease 280,000 acres of land and install some 3,200 megawatts of alt-energy capacity. A map a local resident showed me indicates the company is targeting more than 700 square miles of land in Pecos County for solar and wind development. Apex, which often uses for-profit front groups to attack its opponents, has been very aggressive in its efforts to build alt-energy projects across the country. It declined to answer a list of questions that I submitted.

Florida-based NextEra Energy, the world’s biggest alt-energy producer, is planning to lease massive amounts of land in the region. The company, which has a market cap of $165 billion, is pushing a project dubbed Achilles. According to the Pfeuffers, two landmen working for NextEra told them the company aims to lease three million acres(!) of land in west Texas for alt-energy projects. Part of the land would be used for hydrogen production and the rest would be used to produce electricity for the Texas grid. The company did not respond to my emails seeking details about their project.

While these companies are leasing land in the region for hydrogen projects, it’s also clear that they face many hurdles. Local opposition, particularly in Schleicher County, is fierce. (For the record, I would not want to tangle with the nuns or Sandra Pfeuffer.) Local aquifers may be unable to produce the vast amounts of water the projects will need. According to the Pfeuffers, who attended a local water board meeting last Thursday, test wells recently drilled by ET Fuels were not overly productive.

There is plenty of market risk. Last month, Bloomberg ran a piece headlined, “Why almost nobody is buying green hydrogen.” It explained that while some 1,600 projects are on the drawing boards, “the vast majority of those projects don’t have a single customer stepping up to buy the fuel. Among the handful with some kind of fuel purchase agreement, most have vague, nonbinding arrangements that can be quietly discarded if the potential buyers back out. As a result, many of the projects…will likely never get built.” In addition, the projects are a long distance from potential markets. Apex may want to ship its fuel to maritime customers. But Fort Stockton is 456 miles from the beaches at Corpus Christi.

Finally, it’s evident that hydrogen production is, as I explained in May, “a thermodynamic obscenity.” I wrote:

Hydrogen is insanely expensive, in energy terms, to manufacture. It takes about three units of energy, in the form of electricity, to produce two units of hydrogen energy. In other words, the hydrogen economy requires scads of electricity (a high quality form of energy) to make a tiny molecule that’s hard to handle, difficult to store, and expensive to use.

The thermodynamic obscenity of making hydrogen, combined with the need to mix it with carbon dioxide (produced from somewhere else) to manufacture methanol, means that companies will encounter friction throughout the production process. As I explained to about 200 local ranchers and citizens at a free lecture I gave in Eldorado on August 15 at the Schleicher County Civic Center, the final energy output of ET Fuels’ proposed Tierra Alta project (100,000 tons of methanol per year) will be relatively small, only about 985 barrels of oil equivalent per day.

In the big picture, particularly in Texas — which produces more oil and gas than all but two or three countries — that’s a minuscule amount of energy. As seen above, the latest data from the Energy Information Administration shows that new oil wells in the Permian Basin, which is located about 150 northwest of Eldorado, are now producing about 1,300 barrels per day. And remember, that output doesn’t include the energy in the associated gas coming out of that well. And remember, the ET Fuels project will require covering some 47 square miles of ranch land with alt-energy stuff, and all of that alt-energy stuff will require using untold tons of steel, copper, concrete, wire, and untold tons of gravel for untold miles of new roads. And remember, in the Permian, a dozen or more wells are often drilled on a single multi-acre pad. Thus, while the surface footprint of the oil and gas industry is getting drastically smaller, the alt-energy sector is hoping to cover hundreds, or even thousands, of square miles of rural America with wind turbines and solar panels in its never-ending quest for ever-larger government handouts.

The punchline here is obvious: everything about the “green” hydrogen push is ridiculous. But billions in federal tax dollars are at stake. That much cash can purchase a heap of ridiculousness.

Source: Robertbryce.substack.com

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Daily Standup Top Stories

Amazon claims to power all its operations with renewable energy. If only that were true.

Highlights of the Podcast

00:00 – Intro

01:25 – Amazon claims to power all its operations with renewable energy. If only that were true.

03:56 – CapMetro stops shift to all-electric bus fleet

06:54 – Yellen says $3 trillion is needed each year to fund climate transition

10:10 – Taiwan Shuts Second-to-Last Nuclear Plant in Controversial Shift

11:41 – Weak Demand in China Weighs on Middle East Oil Price Outlook

13:27 – Outro

 

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– Get in Contact With The Show –

Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.

Stuart Turley: [00:00:15] Hello, everybody. Welcome. The energy news beat daily stand up. My name Stu Turley. Presidency of the sandstone Group. And it is a wild week out there. Today is July 31st. And hold on. Michael’s got the evening off, so let’s take a look at the stories for tonight. Amazon claims to power all of its operations with renewable energy only. If that were true OPEC oil is indispensable for global electrification. Cap metro stops shift to all electric bus fleet. This is in Texas. You got to love it in Austin. Yellen says $3 trillion is needed each year to fund climate transition. This is an important story for a couple hidden reasons. Hang on and I’ll tell you about it. Taiwan shuts second to last nuclear plant in controversial shift. This is just plain dumb. We demand in China ways on Middle Eastern oil price outlook. What’s going to happen with oil. Let’s find out here in a second. [00:01:24][69.5]

Stuart Turley: [00:01:25] So let’s get started here with Amazon. Amazon claims to power all of its operations with renewable energy. If only that were true. I’ll tell you. Amazon announced that it achieved 100% renewable energy on seven years ahead of schedule. That sounded really good for Virginia. Amazon owns more data centers there than anyone else, and data Center Energy is driving Dominion Energy. Virginia is planned to renege on its climate commitments to keep some of its coal plants online and build expensive new gas plants and transmission lines. So let’s start with the good news. The claim that it had purchased enough renewable energy to match its energy use is likely true. So they bought it from somewhere else, and then they’re still using coal and dirty other forms of energy, but they’re claiming that they’re doing it. And so the consumers that are paying for it in their areas are losing the tax benefits as well as other things. So there’s a lot to this story that’s in here. Amazon keeps its energy demand in Virginia as secret, but it’s pretty sure it’s 110 data centers. Your use more than that. 2019 Greenpeace Peace report estimated that Amazon’s Virginia data center demand at 1700MW in operation or under construction, an amount that would call for 6800MW of solar. Amazon rejected Greenpeace’s estimate. So, hey, I don’t trust people’s numbers anymore. I don’t trust that they’re they’re highlighting out and saying, oh, by the way, we have achieved this. If you say you’re going do something like this, then do it. If Virginia, the bottom line in this article is very important. If Virginia is serious about meeting the climate change, we can’t blindly accept rosy claims from corporations whose central goal is not sustainability, but growth data centers whose energy demand isn’t met on a 24 by seven from zero carbon sources located in the same grid, are not part of the climate solution, they’re part of the problem. Well said. This is from Virginia mercury.com link is in the show notes. So that one just really kind of got me worked up a little bit. Well done. [00:03:55][150.7]

Stuart Turley: [00:03:56] Great article OPEC oil is indispensable for global electrification. Here’s a quote right out of this story. OPEC does not believe that energy sources are locked in a zero sum game, nor can the history of energy be reduced to a succession of energy replacement events, our guys wrote in an article posted on OPEC’s website on Monday. Quote, reality tells us that oil does not operate in isolation. Cut off from other sectors and industries rather than such is the versatility of petroleum and petroleum derived products. They play an indispensable role in a host of other sectors and industries. You couldn’t have a wind farm without thousands and thousands and thousands of gallons of fuel. Of all the other kind of byproducts that come from oil and gas. So this, again, is another fantastic article due, to put it simply, calls to halt new investment in oil and gas projects jeopardizes the production of oil products essential for the smooth functioning and expansion of the electric electricity grid, OPEC secretary general wrote. He is dead on right. It’s a dangerous come to outlook when you say,. [00:05:17][80.7]

Stuart Turley: [00:05:17] Hey, let’s just get rid of oil today and not have a replacement for it. Technology’s not there yet. Tap Metro in Austin, Texas stops to shift all electric bus fleet. And this one. The Austin voters were promised a transit system with exclusively electric vehicles when they authorized a tax increase in 2020 to fund the project connect, the largest transit expansion in the city’s history. They were quieter. Honestly, we thought and hope this is from CEO Dottie Watkins, cap metro CEO. Honestly, we thought and hoped that technology would progress faster than us. The biggest downside of a battery electric bus today is its range. Diesel busses can run from early in the morning until past midnight. A battery bus only runs about 8 to 10 hours before it needs to be recharged, creating tough logistical, logistical hurdles and scheduling routes. You can’t be an industrial kind of system where you’ve got to go park the equipment without having 4 or 5 times the amount of equipment in order to do that. And then when you take a look at the average miles between mechanical failures, Miss Reducer, if you could bring this chart up, it’s pretty impressive. Electric cab mechanical failures. It did show that the electric busses were less likely to break down average miles, but they’re not able to do as many miles. So you have to kind of take a look at that in a little bit of a grain of salt. [00:06:53][96.5]

Stuart Turley: [00:06:54] So Yellen says 3 trillion is needed each year to fund climate transition. Listen to these words very carefully. Yellen says $3 trillion is needed each year to fund climate transition. What we are witnessing today is the elimination of climate crisis. In the energy transition. The energy transition is over. The energy transition is not going to happen thanks to AI. You heard that with AI with a story a little bit ago. AI is such a power hog, it is driving net zero away. And now Secretary Yellen is saying that the U.S. has to come out. Now it is saying that it has to come from investments in the business and in the government, but it affects the consumer. And it is a going to be in effect of impacting inflation and higher rates for everyone. What you’re going to see is gigantic increases in energy. What happens when that is deindustrialization and your life style changes? This article is incredibly important. Neglecting to address climate change and the loss of nature and biodiversity is not just bad environmental policy, it’s bad economic policy, Yellen said. But yet they’re willing to try to put wind farms in the Gulf of Mexico that will kill millions and millions of migratory birds, and then they’re willing to kill whales off of the coast. In the right, whales are going to be endangered. And they licensed more whales to be killed. And than we actually having right whales. So this hypocrisy is actually disgusting. Wealthy economies around the world provided a record setting $116 Billion in Climate finance for developing countries in 2022. This is a little bit of a misnomer, about 40% of it which came from multilateral development banks in D-Bus, Yellen said. The banks, which include the world Bank, which charges higher interest rates for profit, to go to renewable energy that is more expensive for the consumers than the projects actually put into place into the developing nations. So this goes to the ultimate point climate change is a scam. This is now a gigantic money grab. And this is critical. Yellen says 3 trillion is needed each year to fund the climate transition. I have not heard this before. And this frightens me that they’re now just calling it a climate transition. Buckle up. [00:10:10][195.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:10:10] Taiwan shed second to last nuclear plant in. Controversial shift. This one is really stupid and really frightening from this. This. It’s unbelievable. This power plant currently accounts for 5% of Taiwan’s energy use. Taiwan actually is in trouble. The China is sitting there going. We have a weak United States. If you’re going to invade, now’s the time. And you’re sitting there going. Now we’re going to look at our most stable nuclear fleet, and we’re going to cut it down so that you’re down. And, I mean, I just cannot believe that somebody is countering the narrative on nuclear, and it just does not make sense. This is Taiwan’s last reactor reactor. Mission number two is set to close in May of 2025. Both it and the reactor closing this weekend are planned for retirements after 40 years of use. They could get another 20 years out of these things very, very easily. If nuclear energy technologies can address the issues of nuclear safety and nuclear waste and accept it internationally, of course we’ll be very open to discussing the matter. Premier. I apologize if I butcher your name. Premier Chao Zhang Thai told reporters. I’m sorry. This almost is a play in political play into China’s hand. This does not seem very good for the Taiwanese people. [00:11:41][91.2]

Stuart Turley: [00:11:41] Let’s go to a weak demand in China. Ways on Middle Eastern oil price outlook. Here’s something that I want to give everybody shout out. And I will have his Twitter account in this article here. Give him a shout out. He is somebody you have to follow. And he is basically said there’s 2 million barrels per day that OPEC does not have in their numbers. So China’s maritime imports dropped 10 million barrels at the start of the summer. The trend of weaker demand, sluggish physical activity in China impacted Middle East oil pricing. But I still think when countries go to war, they are going to be buying everything they can in order to have their storage. I have to go look at their storage. And so when you take a look at this article, it has some great charts in here. Kuwait export blend officials selling prices in Asia compared to Arab medium doesn’t share the concerns or qualms about Saudi Arabia. After the main reason why the country exports have been slowing down. Not only is the 615,000 barrels per day refinery on all cylinders, they’re saying that Oman, the Kuwait State Oil Company, also has reached full capacity. So there’s OPEC’s got their hands full trying to herd these cats. And I truly believe that they don’t know how much is actually going out because of the dirt fleet. And I had talked to Josh young with bison interest and David Blackmon about pricing matrices and things. So when we take a look also at Iran, Iran is still has got some things rolling around in there as well Tim. [00:13:27][105.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:13:27] So with that please check out the Energy News Beat substack.com. Check out us. Check us out on Energy News beat not go and follow. Like subscribe share. If you are in an oil and gas trading. If you need LNG, if you need jet fuel, if you need any of that, go to energy newsbeat.com/trading desk and I will hook you up with the right folks with the right products that you need. Thanks and have an absolutely wonderful day. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. [00:13:27][0.0][789.6]

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Energy News Beat

Some very big and important things are happening in the world, and it seems that we’re not paying attention at all. We are becoming so fixated on the simple, the sensational, that we’re not noticing the storm clouds.

Now, to be clear, the ballistic winging of a high-level American politician is most deserving of our attention, particularly when the circumstances and outcome are frankly not just nearly apocalyptic but bizarre. The circumstances are so strange and run counter to our expectations that have been baked in from viewing a thousand shows of that very theme (Half the audience watched the shooter wandering around, ratting him out to the cops, who did nothing? Secret Service left the roof unguarded because it’s nearly flat structure was too dangerous for SWAT teams? Huh? And on and on.).

We are no longer in the age of the Zapruder Film, where a singular grainy video captured all we know about the Kennedy assassination. Trump’s shooting was so well documented from every angle that we have acoustic engineers taking to social media with impressively detailed analyses of where shots came from, and equally impressive counter arguments based on some other esoteric analysis of another aspect. Thus, we analyze all.

Sunlight is indeed the best disinfectant, so all these viewpoints are of value and will hinder any miscreants from hiding anything. And yet I can’t help but marvel at the tectonic shifts happening in the world, almost unnoticed in the west, or ignored in the west, that are rearranging the global geopolitical landscape in significant ways, for decades to come, and it’s like we’re not even paying attention. 

The biggest, quietest movement must the the rise of BRICS, the affiliation of nine countries that have formed an alliance to ‘counter western influence’ and work to chart a new direction. The founding countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – were joined by new members at the beginning of the year, including Egypt, Ethiopia, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia (who has been coy about explicitly affirming membership but is considered member last I checked). These countries are not a chain of unpopulated tropical islands; they have a combined population of about 3.5 billion people and annual GDP of over $28 trillion. 

The BRICS group is growing quickly; earlier this year, it was reported that an additional 34 countries have expressed an interest in joining, with many applications from Africa, South America and Asia. It would not be hard to envision Russian satellite countries looking that way as well.

What makes the rise of this group so significant is that the west has charged down an economic/socioeconomic path that is reliant on at least some BRICS members/applicants (Saudi Arabia, various African countries with critical minerals, and above all China who controls the world’s metals processing capability to an alarming degree). The west is envisioning an energy transition in the next few decades that will be, to put it mildly, heavily dependent on this group’s output and capabilities.

There are two big problems arising here. One is exemplified by Europe, which is successfully reducing emissions in large part by de-industrializing and offshoring anything dirty to the developing world (then getting upset about their emissions). 

The other is the fact that the west gets apoplectic at the sight of this group frolicking in the sun without putting the west’s wishes first. For example, the west has heavily (and imo justifiably) sanctioned Russia over the attack on Ukraine, in an attempt to cripple Russia’s economy. Sanctions include a price cap on Russian oil, a tactic that was roundly mocked as having no hope of being effective by seasoned oil market analysts, but nevertheless, a sanction meant to show that the world was serious and united. 

But then a few weeks ago, India’s Prime Minister Modi paid a visit to the demon himself, Vladimir Putin, on Russian soil, and was greeted with a big hug (the hug was reciprocated; the humiliation for Putin otherwise would have been unbearable). “Why is Modi sucking up to Putin? It’s simple and cynical: China and Oil” snorted the UK’s Guardian through socialist and imperialist nostrils. The Guardian article is snide, provincial, and reeks of the arrogance of the once-relevant that won’t recognize the ‘once-‘ : “Modi knows well how to opportunistically turn someone else’s war to his advantage.” (Such pompous piffle isn’t unique; in 2023, the Economist’s editor-in-chief Manny Zinton Beddoes introduced an Economist article that explained “why the Middle East still matters to the world.” Note the complex arrogance embedded in that comment, that it is or has been a reasonable question as to whether the Middle East matters, and that you, as a dimwitted reader, will need some pedigreed ponce to explain to you the ‘why’. Go back to the 19th century.)

But anyway, step back and consider what the west is focused on, versus what the rest of the world is focused on. We follow the minutiae of sheer crap like Taylor Swift’s love life or George Clooney’s open letter about old man Biden like it is worthy of something; BRICS countries are quietly rearranging the furniture and changing the locks on the doors. We demand the world switch to ‘green initiatives’ like EVs, then slam the doors on Chinese EVs that would make them affordable to North Americans and hasten a transition. 

I’m not sweeping under the rug any of Putin’s considerable transgressions, or commenting at all on China’s strategic moves that may not align with Western ideals. They do what they do internally, and we can’t do anything about that. The point is that all of this is going on and we pretend it isn’t, because we don’t like the players or the game. 

Nowhere is this more evident than with respect to energy. Five years ago, we in the hydrocarbon sector had to listen to ignorant grandstanding blowhards explain, without a shred of energy knowledge, that hydrocarbons were so last-century, that there was no need or role for natural gas in an energy transition, that oil demand peaked in 2019 and would never recover. Every one of these dumbass claims lies trampled in the dust, and there has been not an iota of soul-searching or admission of error or recalibration; all we see is a doubling down on the same dumb thinking that went into the first cocktail of wild-eyed projections (go figure; the zealots strong-armed the International Energy Agency into an energy-transition propaganda  powerhouse, forcing them to behave as some sort of macro support dog as their leg of ‘science’. It’s no wonder they have not much to say when the results are so hopelessly far off the mark from what they were wishing for.)

Related to energy is the auto industry, where calamity now reigns supreme. Western automakers were ensured that consumers were going to switch en masse to EVs – not hybrids, but EVs – because governments were going to make them. Many countries including Canada have legislated internal combustion engines out of existence past dates in the mid 2030s. So all you SUV-spewing auto companies, get on with the transition. 

Fine, they all said, and set about building EV manufacturing facilities and battery plants. Five billion here, ten billion there, and they’re off and running, ready for governmental zero-emissions mandates. Then, a scant few years into the forced migration, a few unforeseen developments arose (not really unforeseen, more like ‘wished away’, they should have been obvious…). Consumers became lukewarm on the whole EV idea, and have decided hybrids are what they really want. Now, big players like Ford are scrambling to get more hybrids to market (wise ones like Toyota never bought into the whole idea in the first place, and now have a hybrid version of every vehicle). 

On the EV front, imagine that, China took their battery and metals processing dominance, their growing engineering prowess, and all the tricks they’ve learned from forced JVs with western companies and began a global flood of reasonably priced and well-built EVs. (China, in 2018, net imported $30 billion worth of autos. In 2023, they net exported $80 billion, and climbing rapidly. Some turnaround.) Now the west is panicking because of what those machines could do to home market manufacturers, and they’re caught between a rock and a hard place: consumers are reluctant to switch to EVs in large part because of cost, and while Chinese firms have solved the cost problem, western governments can’t allow them to decimate native industries, and are thus excluding Chinese EVs from their markets via huge tariffs. China is undeterred, and, coming back full circle to the BRICS story, is developing vast markets for their products in developing countries. 

The 3.5 billion BRICS people, plus a few billion more around the edges, are finding their feet, their strength, and their voice, and saying either overtly or via trade deals that “We think we can get along on our own, thanks anyway.”

This reworking of the global order should be front page news, as it is going to be rather cataclysmic for the golden billion. Haha. Get real. Good luck for that story to fight its way in front of the dancing bears. Another example: As mentioned, about ten days ago, Donald Trump came within an inch or two of being murdered live on national media. Kind of a big deal. And yet that story has been pushed from the front pages by what should be the most obvious and anticlimactic story imaginable, that an 81-year old with severely diminishing mental capacity stepped down from the most powerful seat in the world. Gee, who saw that coming. 

And next week will be an damning/hilarious/embarrassing/brilliant (ok scratch brilliant)/ridiculous video clip of Kamala or Donald or some grandstanding political boob, and we’ll watch it 50 million times and argue about it like our lives depend on it, and in the background China will quietly sign billions of dollars of development deals with developing countries; Russia, Iran, India and many others will continue strengthening cooperative channels that the west pretends doesn’t exist (we do see it: “Growing Cooperation Between Russia and China in Arctic, Pentagon Says” reports Reuters, and that the US, Canada, and Norway hope to sign a deal by year end to begin the process of building new icebreakers at some time in the next decade or two, at the regulatory speed these things work), and the frog will find at some point that the water is too hot to leap out of. And the North Korean flat top is going to be next year’s Gangnam Style must see. That we’d watch.

Source: Boereport.com

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Capital Metro is slamming the brakes on an ambitious goal of transitioning to an all-electric bus fleet, citing problems with the range of battery-electric buses.

Austin voters were promised a transit system with exclusively electric vehicles when they authorized a tax increase in 2020 to fund Project Connect, the largest transit expansion in the city’s history. Zero-emissions buses are quieter and don’t blast hot exhaust in the faces of people on the sidewalk.

“Honestly, we thought and hoped that the technology would progress a little faster than it has,” CapMetro CEO Dottie Watkins told KUT. “The biggest downside of a battery-electric bus today is its range.”

Diesel buses can run from early in the morning until past midnight. A battery bus only runs about 8 to 10 hours before it needs to be recharged, creating tough logistical hurdles in scheduling routes.

An analysis by the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) — a state-funded research agency at Texas A&M University — found battery-electric buses could only cover 36% of Capital Metro’s bus schedules.

“If [the route] is too long, it won’t make it,” said John Overman, a research scientist with TTI. “You’re going to have to charge them mid-route or wherever it is.” Austin’s hills drain batteries faster. So does trying to cool buses in the city’s oppressive heat.

But range shortcomings are only part of the problem.

Data obtained by KUT through the Texas Public Information Act revealed CapMetro’s battery-electric buses are far less reliable than their diesel counterparts. E-buses had mechanical failures on average every 1,623 miles over the last year — less than half the typical distance between failures for the fleet as a whole.

Mechanical problems, coupled with challenges in procuring parts and doing repairs, mean battery-electric buses are often unavailable for service. In 2022, almost 52% of e-buses were down, on average. In 2023, the number of vehicles out for repair improved slightly to an average of just under 50%.

“Getting the expertise up and being able to have those vehicles be as reliable as our old workhorse diesel buses have been is a challenge,” Watkins said. “It’s something that we are up to.”

On top of range and reliability issues, both companies Capital Metro hired to build its battery-electric buses faced major financial challenges. Proterra and New Flyer blamed the problems on pandemic-related supply chain issues and inflation that drove up manufacturing costs after major contracts were signed.

One of the two bus builders didn’t survive.

Proterra, a company from the San Francisco Bay area, went bankrupt last year and sold off the firm in pieces to pay back debtors. The new owner of Proterra’s e-bus business — Anaheim, California-based Phoenix Motorcar — still has no battery provider or vehicle software ready to deploy, TTI’s Overman said.

The other supplier — New Flyer — bled almost $300 million after the pandemic but appears to have staunched the wound. The Winnipeg, Canada company reported a smaller loss of $9 million in the first quarter of 2024 thanks to record-breaking order numbers.

CapMetro is operating 23 battery-electric buses among a fleet of 402 buses, not including commuter buses or shuttle buses. Another 87 e-buses already ordered are expected to be delivered by the end of the year. Some will replace aging diesel vehicles.

Once all the e-buses arrive, Watkins says, about a quarter of CapMetro’s fleet will be battery-powered. The agency will then “sit for a minute while we wait for the battery technology to catch up.”

‘Not as easy as it seems’

By most measures, CapMetro is a leader in the shift to an all-electric fleet. With 25% electric buses, the transit agency’s adoption rate would exceed that of countries with far more political and financial support for zero-emissions vehicles like Belgium, Norway and Switzerland.

“China is a leader in electric bus sales, and about a quarter of the bus fleet in China is electric today,” said Elizabeth Connelly, a transportation electrification researcher at the Paris-based International Energy Agency. “So if Austin’s reaching that same level, I think it’s nothing to scoff at. I think it’s pretty impressive.”

Santiago, Chile — considered a world leader in electric bus adoption — has 30% of its fleet running on batteries, Connelly said.

“Reaching the 100% level can be fairly tricky,” she said. “It’s not as easy as it seems.”

New buses ordered by Capital Metro over the next two to three years will be hybrid diesel vehicles, which are electric buses powered by an on-board diesel generator. The transit agency also wants to use federal grants to buy a small number of hydrogen fuel cell buses, an even more cutting-edge and untested technology than battery-electric buses.

The hybrid and hydrogen vehicles would have a similar range to a diesel bus, Watkins said.

A big bet on young technology

Capital Metro announced the shift to an all-electric fleet in 2018 under then-CEO Randy Clarke. The next year, Clarke invited TV cameras to watch a demolition crew smash down an old mattress factory to make way for a bus charging yard in North Austin.

“This is it!” Clarke exclaimed to reporters. “We’re knocking down an old facility … to build the bus fleet facility of the future.”

Later that day, the CapMetro board followed suit, authorizing the agency’s largest electric bus purchase ever at the time: 10 vehicles from Proterra. Each bus cost more than a million dollars, almost twice as much as the diesel buses approved for purchase the same day.

“We’re going to be able to save money, provide a better customer service and deal with climate change issues,” Clarke pledged to the board. In 2022, Clarke left Austin to lead the transit system in the Washington, D.C. area.

Some were hesitant about betting big on emerging technology. Eric Stratton, a Williamson County representative then just four months into his tenure on the CapMetro board, wondered if Proterra would be able to stand by its relatively new product.

“So that five years in, six years in, eight years in, [if] things start happening, we’ve got the support behind it so we can continue to maintain it. Do you all feel comfortable this is the case?” Stratton grilled Watkins, then vice president in charge of bus services.

“Yes, that is indeed the case,” said Watkins, enthusiastic about the future of electric propulsion. “Proterra’s a very strong partner and I have no concerns at all that they won’t be able to support the bus for the full life of the bus.”

The board gave unanimous approval to the $11 million contract. But that was just the beginning.

In 2021, the board shoved its stack of chips on the table. Capital Metro would plop down up to $255 million for 197 electric buses. This time, the deal would be split between two manufacturers: Canada’s New Flyer and Proterra, the politically connected California firm that hosted President Biden for a virtual tour earlier that year.

Long before CapMetro received all its electric buses, Proterra would be in a Delaware bankruptcy court chopping up the company and selling it off in pieces. Transit agencies across North America revealed private concerns in public court fillings, alleging the buses were mechanically unreliable, lost range in adverse weather and in rare cases would burst into flames.

Capital Metro admitted at the time of the bankruptcy proceedings that the shift to an all-electric fleet was hitting speed bumps.

“The reliability of electric buses no matter the manufacturer is less than a diesel bus. I’m not going to tell you they operate as well as diesel bus,” CapMetro chief operating officer Andy Skabowski told KUT last December. “We’re going to see some vehicles that are down a little bit longer than a diesel bus.”

Back to the future

While the shift to an all-electric fleet might be another Project Connect promise later revealed to be unrealistic — like the plans for a downtown subway system with underground shopping and dining — CapMetro has achieved other goals in the voter-approved transit expansion, even if some are running behind schedule.

A new CapMetro Rail station opened at Q2 Stadium, an additional set of rail tracks has been installed between Lakeline and Leander to allow for increased train frequency, more Pickup zones are being added and park and rides are under construction.

A pair of high-frequency bus lines — one from the Travis County Expo Center to downtown and another from southeast Austin to northeast Austin — are on track to begin operations in 2025, two years behind schedule.

Those CapMetro Rapid lines were promised to be run exclusively with electric buses. But end-of-line fast-chargers to top off bus batteries during the day might not be installed at park and rides in time for the routes to be all-electric on launch day.

“We likely are not going to wait until that infrastructure is complete, though, to put any service on those routes,” Watkins said, but was unable to say when the new high-frequency routes would be run exclusively with e-buses.

Capital Metro now argues that having a reliable transit service, even with diesel buses, is better for the city and the environment than less reliable public transit with an all-electric fleet.

“If nobody wants to use the services, then we’re not going to have a good system in which people will continue to use it, which gets other vehicles off the street,” Stratton, the CapMetro board member, told KUT. “If that involves a stopgap measure to still ensure that we have the reliability on our system … we’re going to continue to do that now and into the future.”

Source: Kut.org

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Oil and petroleum-based products are indispensable in the process of increasing electrification and expansion of power grids globally, OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais said on Monday, noting that the energy mix is not a zero-sum game.

The head of OPEC criticized claims that there would be only one winner in the drive to “electrify everything”.

“OPEC does not believe that energy sources are locked in a zero-sum game; nor can the history of energy be reduced to a succession of ‘energy replacement events,’” Al Ghais wrote in an article posted on OPEC’s website on Monday.

“Reality tells us that oil does not operate in isolation, cut off from other sectors and industries. Rather, such is the versatility of petroleum and petroleum-derived products that they play an indispensable role in a host of other sectors and industries,” the secretary general added.

Since oil is an essential part of the production and transportation of materials needed to expand power grids so that they could accommodate growing shares of renewables, the calls for a halt to investment in oil and gas are irresponsible, according to Al Ghais.

“To put it simply: calls to halt new investments in oil projects jeopardizes the production of oil products essential for the smooth functioning and expansion of the electricity grid,” OPEC’s secretary general wrote.

OPEC and its chief have recently criticized forecasts from energy pundits and from the International Energy Agency (IEA) that oil is on track for a peak in demand this decade and that renewables will rapidly replace much of the world’s need for oil.

Last month, Haitham Al Ghais said that peak oil demand is not on the horizon, and blasted the IEA’s prediction that global oil demand would peak before 2030.

“It is a dangerous commentary, especially for consumers, and will only lead to energy volatility on a potentially unprecedented scale,” he said.

Source: Oilprice.com

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When Amazon announced this month that it had achieved 100% renewable energy seven years ahead of schedule, that sounded like really good news for Virginia. Amazon owns more data centers here than anyone else, and data center energy demand is driving Dominion Energy Virginia’s plan to renege on its climate commitments, keep dirty coal plants online and build expensive new gas plants and transmission lines.

Unfortunately, Amazon’s announcement is so full of asterisks it looks like a starry night.

Let’s start with the good news. Amazon’s claim that it has purchased enough renewable energy to “match” its energy use is likely true, though its sustainability report doesn’t reveal essential details like how much energy the company uses. Amazon also says it is the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy in the world, an impressive achievement.

Some of that renewable energy is in Virginia, so it is reasonable to say it serves the company’s data centers here. A map on Amazon’s website shows the company has invested in 19 solar farms in Virginia, with a capacity that totals around 1,386 MW  – about a quarter of all solar installed in Virginia to date. That’s terrific. If every company operating in Virginia did as much, we’d be rolling in solar, figuratively speaking.

So what am I complaining about?

One problem is that the energy appetite of Amazon’s data centers in Virginia far outstrips the output of all of its solar farms here. The other problem is that producing renewable energy in the middle of the day can only very loosely be said to “match” energy used at other times of the day and night. Meeting energy demand on a 24/7 basis is harder, and Amazon isn’t even trying.

Let’s start with the numbers. Because the sun doesn’t shine all the time, a large solar array produces, on average, 22-25% of what it produces on a cloudless day at noon. (That percentage is known as the facility’s capacity factor.) At a 25% capacity factor, Amazon’s 1,386 MW worth of solar panels produce enough electricity to “match” about 347 MW of demand.

Amazon keeps its energy demand in Virginia a secret, but we can be pretty sure its 110 data centers here use way more than that. A 2019 Greenpeace report estimated Amazon’s Virginia data center demand at 1,700 MW in operation or under construction, an amount that would call for 6,800 MW of solar. Amazon rejected Greenpeace’s estimate at the time, but it didn’t supply a better one. More recent estimates suggest Amazon’s energy appetite in Virginia is on its way to 2,700 MW, enough to require the output of around 11,000 MW of solar.

Luckily for us, Virginia is part of PJM, a regional transmission grid that covers all or parts of 13 states plus Washington, D.C. Generation sources located anywhere in the region can serve a Virginia customer, and Amazon’s map shows it has utility solar and wind projects in several PJM states. By my count, these add up to as much as 4,000 MW of additional renewable energy that could be allocated to Virginia data centers, if Amazon had no other operations in those states that it wanted to power. (Which, however, it does.)

Adding together its solar in Virginia and elsewhere in PJM still leaves Amazon short of what it likely needs. So, if the company is correct that it has secured enough renewable energy to match all of its demand, a lot of those facilities must be in other regions or other countries. Yet the climate benefit of Amazon’s solar farms in (for example) Spain, which gets more than 50% of its electricity from renewable energy, is significantly less than the climate benefit of solar in PJM, where the percentage of wind and solar combined still hangs in the single digits.

I will – almost – give Amazon a pass on this point. PJM has been so appallingly slow to approve new generation that Amazon could well have as many projects in the “queue” as online. PJM claims it will catch up in the next year and a half, and when that happens, perhaps Amazon won’t feel the need to obfuscate.

Even if Amazon were “matching” all its energy needs with wind and solar in PJM, though, it’s the second problem that troubles me more. Building solar and wind is cheap; Amazon very likely makes a profit on it. Actually ensuring renewable energy provides all the juice for the company’s operations every hour of every day, on the other hand, would require a heck of a lot of expensive energy storage. And Amazon is not doing that.

Without energy storage, solar delivers electricity only while the sun is shining. The rest of the time, Amazon’s data centers run on whatever resource mix the local utility uses. In both Virginia and PJM’s territory, fossil fuels make up the great majority of the mix. Building more Amazon data centers in Virginia increases the burning of fossil fuels, causing more pollution and raising costs that are borne by the rest of us.

 Amazon’s HQ2 in Arlington, Virginia. (Sarah Vogelsong/Virginia Mercury)

The self-styled climate hero turns out to be a climate parasite, harming people to make itself look good.

Combining renewable energy with storage to achieve true carbon neutrality isn’t prohibitively expensive. Other leading tech companies seem to be making that extra effort, with Google notable for its commitment to meeting its energy demand with renewable energy and storage on a 24/7 basis.

Amazon’s failure to rise to this challenge explains why, in spite of its massive investments in wind and solar, the company’s carbon footprint actually rose by 34% since the launch of its Climate Pledge in 2019, when it set a target of net zero carbon emissions by 2040.

That explains why, a year ago, the Science Based Targets initiative, a U.N.-backed organization that monitors corporate net-zero plans, removed Amazon from a list of companies taking action on climate goals. According to press reports, Amazon failed “to implement its commitment to set a credible target for reducing carbon emissions.”

Among those least impressed with the company’s efforts are its own workers. Last year, Amazon Employees for Climate Justice accused the company of failing in its climate commitments, and the group released its own report this month alleging multiple climate failures, including using “creative accounting” to inflate its achievements.

If Virginia is serious about meeting the climate challenge, we can’t blindly accept rosy claims from corporations whose central goal is not sustainability, but growth. Data centers whose energy demand isn’t met on a 24/7 basis from zero-carbon sources located on the same grid are not part of the climate solution, they are part of the problem. And currently, Amazon’s data centers are making the problem worse.

Source: Virginiamercury.com

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China’s maritime imports dropped to 10 million b/d at the start of the summer.
The trend of weaker demand and sluggish physical activity in China impacted Middle East oil pricing.
By not cutting when regional differentials were collapsing and hiking when conditions were ripe, Aramco managed to bring its European OSPs to the highest level since December 2023.

Things have taken a bad turn for the Middle East. Asia, by far the largest demand hub for Saudi Arabia, Iraq or the United Arab Emirates, seems to be going through the same stage of weakness that Europe and the United States were in the spring. Not buying enough, depleting crude inventories and generally expecting flat prices to drop lower before they come back. Perhaps there is no better example of this than China, a country that was supposed to lead summer demand recovery yet ended up buying the least crude this year as its maritime imports dropped to 10 million b/d. Such a general trend of weaker demand and sluggish physical activity inevitably impacted the Middle Eastern futures market, with the Dubai cash-to-futures spread shedding 60 cents per barrel compared to May and averaging only $0.95 per barrel. Seeing that refinery margins have been struggling to move any higher – to be fair they did not decline either – the market was preparing for a substantial price cut for August-loading cargoes across the Middle East.

Chart 1. Saudi Aramco’s Official Selling Prices for Asian Cargoes (vs Oman/Dubai average).

Source: Saudi Aramco.

Saudi Aramco did exactly what was expected. Having already cut formula prices for July cargoes, it lowered Asian OSPs across the board. The lighter Arab Extra Light and Arab Light were slashed by 60 cents per barrel, whilst the heavier grades Arab Medium and Arab Heavy saw an even bigger downward correction, by 70 cents per barrel. With this, Asian formula prices were basically back to May pricing levels, with Arab Light trading at a $1.80 per barrel premium to Oman/Dubai and Arab Medium set $1.25 per barrel higher than the benchmark. The lower pricing was in great measure brought about by very low nominations from term buyers. Total volumes departing for China in June averaged only 1.15 million b/d, the lowest monthly nomination since the first full-impact COVID-19 month of March 2020, whilst India hit a three-year low with a mere 530,000 b/d of June loadings. Even though both countries lifted more in July, the sentiment remained weak and Saudi Aramco needed to react.

Chart 2. Formula prices of Saudi cargoes bound for Northwest Europe by selected grades (vs ICE Brent).

Source: Saudi Aramco.

Compared to Asia which did not really experience notable weakness in buying up until June this year, Europe was already one phase ahead – it saw an all-round collapse of differentials earlier and was rebounding strongly into the summer. Saudi Aramco lifted its Europe-bound August formula prices by a hefty (and uniform) 90 cents per barrel. By not cutting when regional differentials were collapsing and hiking when conditions were ripe, Aramco managed to bring its European OSPs to the highest level since December 2023. Arab Light is at a $4 per barrel premium to ICE Brent, and even Arab Heavy is trading at a premium to the European futures benchmark. That would seem extraordinary in the spring months, but it has gone down well for the summer. In fact, according to market reports all the European term deal holders nominated full monthly amounts for August, suggesting that even despite high prices demand for medium sour crude remains high.

Chart 3. Kuwait Export Blend official selling prices into Asia, compared with Arab Medium and Iranian Heavy (vs Oman/Dubai average).

Source: KPC.

Kuwait doesn’t necessarily share the concerns and qualms of Saudi Arabia, after all the main reason why the country’s exports have been going down so heavily in the past years stems from its own refining. Not only is the 615,000 b/d Al Zour refinery firing on all cylinders, the 230,000 b/d Duqm refinery in Oman that the Kuwaiti state oil company co-operates has reached full production capacity, too. Depending equally on South Korea, China, and Vietnam as its key contractual partners, KPC nevertheless followed Saudi Aramco’s suit and slashed the Asian formula prices for Kuwait Export crude by 70 cents per barrel, taking it to a $1.25 per barrel premium over the Oman/Dubai average. Even the extra light KSLC grade, relatively minor in terms of volumes as KPC has been loading an average of three tankers per month, was cut by 60 cents per barrel vs the July OSP, fully in line with Arab Extra Light.

In the meantime, Kuwait has registered probably one of the largest oil discoveries of past years, claiming that the offshore al-Nokhatha field contains some 2.1 billion barrels of light oil and 5.1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. As Kuwait has allocated a $300 billion upstream investment budget for its production capacity increases but genuinely lacked any high-impact greenfield project to work on, the field might be a game-changer for the Middle Eastern country’s long-term target of increasing crude production capacity to 4 million b/d.

Chart 4. ADNOC Official Selling Prices for 2017-2024 (set outright, here vs Dubai).

Source: ADNOC.

As has become customary, the national oil company of Abu Dhabi ADNOC is the one to start the price-setting spree in the Middle East and for August (once again), the news weren’t particularly upbeat. They weren’t bad either as the monthly average of Murban traded on the IFAD exchange amounted to $82.52 per barrel, down $1.41 per barrel compared to July’s price. Although Murban is still assessed slightly above Dubai swaps, it is nowhere near as spectacular as it used to be a year or two years ago. The pricing plight of Murban is largely driven by there being significantly more of it in the market as exports of the light sour grades jumped to 1.3-1.4 million b/d since the beginning of this year and have stayed high since. ADNOC’s refinery flexibility project that aimed to send heavier grades into the domestic refining system has finally come to a close, albeit at the expense of Murban’s past premiums. The UAE’s oil champion has also brought Upper Zakum (UZ), the country’s answer to Saudi Arabia’s Arab Light, to parity with Murban after it traded at slight premia to Murban over several months, but seeing weaker demand for UZ in Dubai trades, ADNOC decided to react.

ADNOC is increasingly diversifying its portfolio into gas. In fact, the largest announcement coming out of the Emirates in July was linked to its planned 9.6 mtpa Ruwais LNG export terminal. Western oil majors TotalEnergies, Shell, BP as well as Japan’s Mitsui have all taken 10% equity stakes, with Shell and Mitsui also signing long-term supply agreements. Following ADNOC’s natural gas-focused acquisitions in Mozambique this May and the mulled purchase of Australia’s upstream firm Santos, gas seems to be at the forefront of the UAE’s strategic growth.

Chart 5. Iraqi Official Selling Prices for Asia-bound cargoes (vs Oman/Dubai).

Source: SOMO.

Sticking to its course of mirroring Saudi Aramco’s pricing changes but keeping its grades comparatively cheaper, Iraq has also committed to a cut of 70 cents per barrel for its flagship grade Basrah Medium. For August-loading cargoes, the price will be coming in at a slight discount to Oman/Dubai, just $0.10 per barrel lower than the average of the two benchmarks. In contrast to Saudi Arabia, Iraqi exports weren’t really impacted by lower demand, if anything seaborne flows in May were the highest in five years according to Kpler data, even though since then Iraq has mended its ways and lowered exports to 3.35 million b/d (down about 200,000 b/d month-over-month). As the strength of Dated Brent has preferentially benefited Iraqi formula prices that are linked to the physical benchmark – Saudi Arabia is pricing its barrels based on ICE Brent – the increases carried out by the state oil marketing company SOMO for Europe-bound cargoes were much smaller than Aramco’s. Basrah Medium was hiked by 45 cents per barrel from July to a -$2.40 per barrel discount to Dated, whilst the heavier Basrah Heavy grade saw an uplift of 60 cents per barrel to a -$4.95 per barrel discount.

Chart 6. Iraqi official selling prices in Europe (vs Dated Brent).

Source: SOMO.

Whilst SOMO still sets formula prices for the Kirkuk grade which has historically been sourced from Kurdish-origin production, the deadlock around halted pipeline supplies along the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline remains just as difficult to resolve as it was a year ago. Nevertheless, Kurdish production keeps on increasing with every month, aggravating Baghdad’s woes in meeting its OPEC+ production target. Even though SOMO reports production of 3.83 million b/d in the regions controlled by Baghdad, substantially below the 4 million b/d target, there might be an additional 350,000 b/d produced in Kurdistan. At least half of the Kurdish output is smuggled into the neighboring countries of Turkey and Iran, ultimately making it close to impossible for federal authorities in Iraq to control the rampant trade.

Chart 7. Iranian Official Selling Prices for Asia-bound cargoes (vs Oman/Dubai average).

Source: NIOC.

The election of former health minister Masoud Pezeshkian in the second round of Iran’s presidential elections held on 5 July was hardly a transformative event for the country’s oil industry. There is no discussion of easing sanctions on Tehran – if anything, Donald Trump’s potential re-election would worsen that squeeze – and for as long as Chinese buyers are still buying Iranian crude, Iran will just stick to relying on its key importer. That is not to say Tehran would not seek some form of de-escalation, and the recent release of the Chevron-chartered Advantage Sweet tanker as well as the Iraqi Basrah cargo that was sailing towards Turkey when it was seized by Iran’s navy in January. Iran’s pricing policy remains a largely academic exercise as delivered prices to China are significantly below the formula prices that the country’s state oil firm NIOC publishes, dropping as low as -$7 or -$8 per barrel to Brent futures. Yet in doing so, Iran has remained consistent and followed the line toed by Saudi Aramco. NIOC cut its Asian August formula prices by 50-70 cents per barrel, lowering the nominal value of Iran Light to a $2.10 per barrel premium against the Oman/Dubai average.

Source: Oilprice.com

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Bolivia’s Mayaya Centro gas discovery, with an estimated 1.7 trillion cubic feet of gross unrisked resource, provides hope for arresting declining production and boosting reserves.
Mayaya Centro is part of YPFB’s Upstream Reactivation Plan, which aims to prioritize investments in exploring and exploiting oil and gas reserves.
Development of Mayaya Centro within the targeted two to three years is ambitious due to its location and the need for new infrastructure.

Bolivia’s announcement last week of a sizeable gas discovery has stoked optimism that the landlocked South American nation can arrest declining production and boost reserves, although further exploration work is needed to assess reservoir potential, with a prognosed fast-track development in as little as two years appearing optimistic. State player YPFB last week announced successful completion of its stratigraphic research well, Mayaya Centro-X1 IE, which it said hit a significant hydrocarbon volume equivalent to around 1.7 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of gross unrisked resource. The new discovery, along with YPFB’s 2023 Remanso-X1 find, adds much-needed positive imputes to the upstream sector in the country, which is struggling to sustain production due to the lack of available volumes resulting from subdued exploration and development activity to replace produced volumes. This has led to decreasing exports to neighbors Brazil and Argentina. The back-to-back discoveries will help rejuvenate the country’s exploration outlook, led in particular by YPFB, which launched the Upstream Reactivation Plan (PRU) in July 2021. The plan prioritizes investments in exploring and exploiting the country’s oil and gas reserves, with a focus on the Subandean fold and thrust belt, Bolivia’s most significant petroleum region, along with reactivation of more mature fields.

YPFB started drilling at the Mayaya Centro-X1 IE (MYC-X1 IE) well in November 2021 to better understand the sub-surface and drill through various stratigraphic intervals to derisk the technical and operational risk associated in penetrating each formation. The well was drilled to an estimated depth of about 6,000 meters, penetrating a thick sequence of the Charqui and Quendeque formations, deposited at a depth of around 3,000 meters, before entering the gas-prone Middle Carboniferous Retama and gas-condensate-prone Late Devonian Tomachi formations. The well is estimated to have cost around $44 million, with hydrocarbons envisaged deposited within a fault-bounded structure.

Completion of the stratigraphic well culminating in a hydrocarbon discovery resulted from lengthy efforts at data acquisition and investigation, including regional and local seismic interpretation, acquisition, processing and interpretation of magnetotelluria, to help study the electrical resistivity of the sub-surface, combined with detailed understanding of the subsurface geology by combining available well data. However, as Mayaya Centro is a stratigraphic well, exploration is in its initial stage and will require a few more wells to be drilled to better understand the reservoir potential. Nonetheless, the state operator is optimistic about the result and intends to fast-track development within the next two to three years. If the hydrocarbon potential is proven, the well could yield a considerable recovery rate, holding around 150 million barrels of oil equivalent (boe), making it the largest discovery to be announced in Bolivia since TotalEnergies’ Incahuasi, discovered in 2004. This would give a significant boost to reserves in the country, which has only managed to discover around 780 million boe of new reserves since 2000.

Such announcements of new discoveries give hope for Bolivia to arrest declining production – at least temporarily – while replenishing remaining reserves and providing economic gains via exports. Nonetheless, muted exploration activity and the announcement of just one or two such discoveries mean Bolivia is far from achieving these goals and the country will have to ramp up exploration activity, which may prove relatively costly given reservoir depths and associated complexities.

Domestic gas production, which has been in constant decline, currently stands at around 12 billion cubic meters per annum (Bcma), compared to about 20 Bcm in 2013, and is expected to continue declining to around 9 Bcma by the end of the decade, according to Rystad energy estimates. Production is expected to ramp up slightly thereafter, although the available undeveloped fields are not large enough to sustain this output for long (Figure 3).

Development of Mayaya Centro-X1 IE would help inject new volumes, with YPFB’s announcement saying the field could produce up to 10 million cubic meters per day of gas and between 500 and 1,000 barrels per day of liquids via a three-well development campaign. Nonetheless, development activity within the stipulated timeframe of two to three years is an ambitious target, given the location of the discovery – Mayaya Centro-X1 IE lies in an undeveloped area away from existing fields and would call for the establishment of new infrastructure to export produced volumes.

The relative lack of substantial new resources for development is depleting Bolivia’s proven reserves and, as such, the country’s reserve replace ratio. According to official records from Bolivia, the country’s proven gas reserves as of December 2018 were around 8.95 Tcf and it has since produced around 2.7 Tcf of gas between 2019 and 2023, while only managing to add about 1.1 Tcf of new gas volumes via exploration. The nation has a dual responsibility of replenishing reserves at its mature fields via various enhanced oil recovery (EOR) activities and spearheading exploration to explore its remaining subsurface potential.

Bolivia has long been an exporter of natural gas to Brazil and Argentina, but it has struggled to sustain volumes on the back of a steady decline in production over the past decade, barring a small gain in 2021 because of a recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic. Therefore, new exploration successes could lead to an increase in exploration activity and inject fresh hope in replenishing the country’s gas reserves.

Source: Oilprice.com

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The post New Gas Discovery Brings Optimism for Bolivia’s Energy Future appeared first on Energy News Beat.