CNN (April 25)
“Oil prices fell sharply Monday as lockdowns in China stoked concerns that the country’s zero-Covid strategy will sap energy demand in the world’s second-largest economy.” The concerns over China “could create one positive for consumers: They may ease pressure on prices at the pump.” On Monday, “US oil dropped as much as 6.7% to a two-week low of $95.28 a barrel.”
Tags: China, Concerns, Consumers, Demand, Ease, Energy, Lockdowns, Oil prices, Positive, Prices, Pump, Zero COVID
New York Times (March 9)
“A week after a chorus of Western executives from Exxon Mobil, BP, Shell and other companies… pledged to pull their companies out of Russian ventures, it appears the turbulence for Russia’s energy industry has only begun.” The industry now looks poised to undergo a “wrenching reworking…. because Russian oil and gas have suddenly become toxic to many buyers.”
Tags: BP, Energy, Exxon Mobil, Gas, Oil, Pledged, Reworking, Russia, Shell, Toxic, Turbulence, Ventures, Western, Wrenching
Wall Street Journal (March 7)
“Oil and gas revenue makes up about half of the Kremlin’s budget and is critical to financing Vladimir Putin’s bloody war on Ukraine.” The trouble is “sanctions on Russian energy could also harm the world economy and especially Europe,” which depends on Russia for a quarter of its oil and 40% of its natural gas. “Unless the West is willing to grasp this nettle, the world will continue to finance the Putin war machine.”
Tags: Budget, Critical, Economy, Energy, Europe, Financing, Kremlin, Natural gas, Oil, Putin, Revenue, Sanctions, Ukraine, War
Wall Street Journal (February 10)
European scientists have set a “nuclear-fusion energy world record” and the “findings suggest this approach can be scaled-up for use in power plants.” The experiment successfully “generated 59 megajoules of fusion energy for five seconds,” but “the researchers weren’t able to overcome a major obstacle: generating more energy than they had to put into the experiment.” A scaled-up version looks set to do so as early as 2025. Currently “35 firms globally are racing to be the first to create net-energy machines and to commercialize them by delivering electricity to the power grid.”
Tags: 2025, Commercialize, Electricity, Energy, Europe, Net-energy machines, Nuclear fusion, Obstacle, Power grid, Power plants, Scientists, World record
Wall Street Journal (November 16)
Royal Dutch Shell will abandon its complicated dual British/Dutch structure, moving its headquarters to London. The move is being made to “help facilitate returns to shareholders and make it simpler to change up its portfolio of assets” as it transitions to low-carbon energy. The move should also improve the company’s “flexibility to buy back shares.”
Tags: Assets, Buy back, Dual structure, Energy, Flexibility, Headquarters, London, Low-carbon, Portfolio, Returns, Shareholders, Shell, Transitions
Seeing Alpha (November 10)
“CPI came in red-hot again, up 0.9% month-over-month and 6.2% year-over-year, showing broad-based increases. The biggest contributors to price gains were energy, rent, food, and used cars and trucks.” As a result, “real average hourly earnings for American workers are down 1.2% year-over-year. Not exactly what we’re hoping to see.”
South China Morning Post (October 18)
Coal prices have “more than tripled in a year to near historical highs” and look poised to keep climbing, driven by a coal shortage that could threaten the global economic recovery. “Blackouts could spread from China and India to all the emerging economies still mostly reliant on coal. As supply can’t be ramped up in the near term, the shortages could worsen as energy demand rises with winter’s arrival. That may trigger another emerging-market crisis.”
Tags: Blackouts, China, Coal, Demand, Economic recovery, Emerging-market crisis, Energy, India, Prices, Reliant, Shortage, Supply, Threaten, Tripled, Winter
The Economist (October 9)
“Spending has come roaring back, as governments have stimulated the economy and consumers let rip. The surge in demand is so powerful that supply is struggling to keep up. Lorry drivers are getting signing bonuses, an armada of container ships is anchored off California waiting for ports to clear and energy prices are spiralling upwards. As rising inflation spooks investors, the gluts of the 2010s have given way to a shortage economy.”
Tags: Consumers, Container ships, Demand, Economy, Energy, Gluts, Governments, Inflation, Investors, Ports, Powerful, Roaring, Signing bonuses, Spending, Supply, Surge
Wall Street Journal (October 7)
“Natural gas stocks are alarmingly low around the world, and prices in most places have never been higher after surging to new records…. Demand has jumped as economies have bounced back from pandemic shutdowns, and the squeeze has caught traders, shipowners and energy executives off guard.” Nations that “have wound down coal-fired plants and become more dependent on gas” are particularly vulnerable and, in some cases, restarting mothballed power plants despite higher GHG emissions.
Tags: Coal, Demand, Economies, Energy, GHG emissions, Natural gas, Pandemic, Prices, Records, Shipowners, Shutdowns, Squeeze, Stocks, Surging, Traders, Vulnerable
The Guardian (September 28)
“Queues at the petrol pumps are never a good look for a government. They are especially bad in a pandemic, when so many people already have reason to feel anxious.” Panic buying comes natural after “gas price rises that have led to around 2m households losing their energy supplier” and “empty shelves in supermarkets…. There is a palpable sense that Britain is careering from one crisis to another.”
Tags: Anxious, Careening, Crisis, Empty shelves, Energy, Gas, Government, Households, Pandemic, Petrol, Prices, Queues, Rises, Supermarkets
