By: Forbes - China is increasingly looking like the top beneficiary of President Joe Biden’s decision...
By: Forbes - China is increasingly looking like the top beneficiary of President Joe Biden’s decision to sell down the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to lower domestic fuel prices.
Chinese-owned companies have lapped up oil from America’s emergency stockpile since the Biden administration decided to sell 180 million barrels last year to lower prices ahead of the midterm elections.
The SPR, which has a capacity of around 700 million barrels, currently has about 372 million barrels stored in salt caverns along Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coasts. That’s down from 594 million barrels, or nearly 40 percent, from a year ago.
And while congressional Democrats benefited at the polls from falling prices, the biggest winner may be our nation’s greatest adversary.
By: NPR - Russia has been avoiding sanctions by shipping its oil with a shadow fleet of tankers. Erik...
By: NPR - Russia has been avoiding sanctions by shipping its oil with a shadow fleet of tankers.
Erik Broekhuizen, an analyst at Poten & Partners, a brokerage and consulting firm specializing in energy and maritime transportation, says the shadow fleet consists of 200 to 300 ships.
"A lot of those ships have been acquired in recent months in anticipation of this EU ban," he says. "The sole purpose of these ships is to move Russian crude just in case it would be illegal for sort of regular owners to do so."
Broekhuizen says the use of shadow fleets is common practice and has long been used by Iran and Venezuela to avoid Western oil sanctions.
"So the Russians are just taking a page out of that same book and they're sort of copying what the Iranians and the Venezuelans did," he says. The main difference is Russia is the world's top oil exporter.
Most vessels in the shadow fleets are owned by offshore companies in countries with more lenient shipping rules, such as Panama, Liberia, and Marshall Islands, says Basil Karatzas, CEO of New York-based Karatzas Marine Advisors, a shipping finance advisory firm.
By: OilPrice.com - On December 5, 2022, Russia's ability to sell crude oil got harder when it was blocked...
By: OilPrice.com - On December 5, 2022, Russia's ability to sell crude oil got harder when it was blocked from transporting its black gold by ship to the EU. Moreover, that same day, an EU cap on the price of Russian oil exports of $60 per barrel took effect.
Data suggests the latest measures are having an impact. Russian oil exports have fallen to a two-year low, and the price of Russian crude has slipped to levels not seen since the start of its full-scale attack on Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
But while nearly all of the EU is cutting its deliveries of Russian oil, Bulgaria, also a member of NATO, appears to be bucking the trend. As 2022 ended, Bulgaria had become the third-largest purchaser of Russian oil in the world.
Bulgaria is not defying sanctions. Sofia has secured itself from Brussels an exemption, allowing it to take shipments of Russian oil delivered by sea. The measure had widespread support across the political spectrum in Bulgaria, with Kiril Petkov, the former prime minister of one of Bulgaria's most pro-Western governments ever, lobbying for it.
By: CarScoop - British Petroleum’s EV charging unit, BP Pulse, has put in a large order of charging...
By: CarScoop - British Petroleum’s EV charging unit, BP Pulse, has put in a large order of charging stations from Tritium Charging. The order is the manufacturer’s largest ever and will see chargers installed in the United States, Europe, and Australia under the BP Pulse brand.
The precise size of the order has not been revealed, but Tritium says that it comes as part of a multi-year contract that was announced in April 2022. It will supply BP Pulse with a mix of 50 kW RTM and 150 kW PKM chargers.
Tritium calls the 50 kW RTM charger one of the most advanced DC chargers available today. Its modular design is intended to make it suitable for dealerships, retail locations, hotels, and other public spaces. The 150 kW PKM model, meanwhile, is designed for fleets and heavy commercial use.
By: InsideEV - Elon Musk has announced he thinks that the world will reach peak oil demand within the...
By: InsideEV - Elon Musk has announced he thinks that the world will reach peak oil demand within the next five years, which seems to be in-line with what the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicted in a report it published in late 2022. The IEA said the demand for oil would level off around the middle of this decade and then start to go down towards the year 2050 (and presumably beyond).
According to IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol,
Energy markets and policies have changed as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, not just for the time being, but for decades to come. Even with today’s policy settings, the energy world is shifting dramatically before our eyes. Government responses around the world promise to make this a historic and definitive turning point towards a cleaner, more affordable and more secure energy system.
The IEA also presents several possible scenarios that will affect when peak oil demand is reached.
