Nigeria launched this week a new oil and gas licensing round, inviting bids for as many as 12 onshore and offshore blocks and promising transparency in the bidding process. At the ongoing Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) in Houston, Texas, the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) announced the start of the 2024 Licensing Round. During his speech at OTC to announce the bidding round, the commission’s chief executive Gbenga Komolafe “reiterated Nigeria’s commitment to advancing its oil and gas…

The Chinese authorities have issued draft guidance on new rules for the domestic battery industry, which appear to be targeting to address the current overcapacity in the sector. China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology unveiled on Wednesday a new set of draft rules that lay out minimum energy density standards and stricter battery specifications, as well as advise that companies should refrain from the construction of new plants that “simply expand production capacity,” Bloomberg reports. The proposal and…

Over the past two years, the U.S. and its Western allies have imposed a raft of sanctions on Russian energy commodities, including a $60-a-barrel cap on Russia's seaborne exports of crude oil. Europe has, however, shied away from placing limitations on Russian gas, hardly surprising considering that the share of Russia's pipeline gas in EU imports exceeded 40% before Russia invaded Ukraine.   Since then, the continent has been largely successful in weaning itself off Russian energy, with gas imports from Russia falling dramatically.…

Oil prices slumped by $10 per barrel in a month, from above $90 Brent in early April to the low $80s, as tensions in the Middle East subsided and prompted money managers to shift their focus on the upcoming OPEC+ decisions and the path to lower interest rates. In early April, the Iran-Israel standoff and the rising tensions in the most important region for oil supply led to a spike in prices to over $90 per barrel amid higher risk premium in the market. A month later, fears of escalation and potential disruption to oil supply have faded, and so…

Meeting global climate goals will require an unprecedented buildout of energy infrastructure in terms of both speed and scale. And while the energies themselves may be renewable, their construction, production, and maintenance requires a whole lot of finite resources, from rare Earth minerals and metals to the very land they are built on. This last issue regarding mass-scale land use and acquisition, in particular, is already one of the biggest hurdles facing the global decarbonization transition. As the renewable revolution…

An international team including researchers from the University of Würzburg has succeeded in creating a special state of superconductivity. The discovery could advance the development of quantum computers. The paper discussing the research has been published in Nature Physics titled “Magnetically tunable supercurrent in a dilute magnetic topological insulator based Josephson junctions.” Superconductors are materials that can conduct electricity without electrical resistance – making them the ideal base material for electronic…

Crude oil inventories in the United States rose this week by 509,000 barrels for the week ending May 3, according to The American Petroleum Institute (API). Analysts had expected a 1.430 million barrel draw. For the week prior, the API reported a 4.906 million barrel build in crude inventories. On Tuesday, the Department of Energy (DoE) reported that crude oil inventories in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) rose by 0.9 million barrels as of May 3. Inventories are now at 367.2 million barrels—the highest point since last April,…

Both Ukraine and Moldova are expected to formally open EU accession talks in the final week of June. Several diplomats that RFE/RL spoke to on condition of anonymity are confident that a “ceremonial intergovernmental conference” (IGC) will be held in Brussels with the pair just before Hungary takes over the six-month rotating presidency of the Council of the EU on July 1. They also said they expected the negotiation frameworks with both countries to be adopted by EU member states at the same time. You would be forgiven for thinking…

Via SchiffGold.com, With the eventual introduction of central bank digital currency (CBDCs) now seemingly inevitable, there are a lot of directions central banks could take with their digital currency projects that would have dramatic implications for the price of gold. Touted for their “convenience” and “efficiency,” the endgame of digital currencies is not only achieving greater power over the currency but also a means of surveilling and micromanaging the personal finances of each individual. Owe taxes or a parking ticket?…

U.S. spot power and natural gas prices plummeted into negative territory across Texas, California, and Arizona on Tuesday, signaling a surplus in production amidst subdued demand and ample hydropower reserves. At the Waha hub, next-day gas prices plummeted to a three-week low of negative $2.72 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) on May 6. Next-day power prices at hubs in Arizona and Southern California plunged to one-week lows. The dynamics driving negative prices suggest energy firms are grappling with excess power and gas production. As…

U.S. spot power and natural gas prices plummeted into negative territory across Texas, California, and Arizona on Tuesday, signaling a surplus in production amidst subdued demand and ample hydropower reserves. At the Waha hub, next-day gas prices plummeted to a three-week low of negative $2.72 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) on May 6. Next-day power prices at hubs in Arizona and Southern California plunged to one-week lows. The dynamics driving negative prices suggest energy firms are grappling with excess power and gas production. As…

U.S. spot power and natural gas prices plummeted into negative territory across Texas, California, and Arizona on Tuesday, signaling a surplus in production amidst subdued demand and ample hydropower reserves. At the Waha hub, next-day gas prices plummeted to a three-week low of negative $2.72 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) on May 6. Next-day power prices at hubs in Arizona and Southern California plunged to one-week lows. The dynamics driving negative prices suggest energy firms are grappling with excess power and gas production. As…

Octopus Energy is now worth more than £7bn after two of its largest investors increased their stakes in the company. Generation Investment Management and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board have upped their holdings in the London-headquartered business in moves which have pushed its value up 15 percent to £7.2bn. Generation, which focuses on sustainable investments, upped its stake to 13 percent after getting new backing from pension funds in the US and Australia, including Australian superannuation fund Aware Super. CPP Investments,…

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced a new solicitation to purchase oil to replenish the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), according to a DOE press release. The solicitation, announced by the DOE's Office of Petroleum Reserves, seeks up to 3.3 million barrels of crude oil for delivery to the SPR in October. The decision to initiate this purchase, according to the release, aligns with the DOE's strategy of acquiring oil at $79 per barrel or below. To date, the DOE has procured a total of 32.3 million barrels of oil at an average…

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced a new solicitation to purchase oil to replenish the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), according to a DOE press release. The solicitation, announced by the DOE's Office of Petroleum Reserves, seeks up to 3.3 million barrels of crude oil for delivery to the SPR in October. The decision to initiate this purchase, according to the release, aligns with the DOE's strategy of acquiring oil at $79 per barrel or below. To date, the DOE has procured a total of 32.3 million barrels of oil at an average…

The Utica shale has for years been known as a gas-producing play. But this may be about to change as one company reports promising results from its oil well offensive in the area. EOG has been drilling in the Utica shale for months now, and it just reported that the play can “compete with the best plays in America.” The production figures EOG reported for its wells there support this: over the first 180 days since drilling, a three-well pad dubbed Xavier produced an average of 450,000 barrels of oil equivalent in total. Another…

Azerbaijan will get a welcome earnings boost from BP’s announcement that it has launched production at a new $6-billion facility in Azerbaijan’s giant Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli oil field. The upgrade can boost the field’s output by as much as 25 percent. Dubbed Azeri-Central-East (ACE), the facility consists of a new production platform 130 kilometers offshore in Azerbaijan’s sector of the Caspian Sea. Currently ACE boasts a single well drilled to a depth of 3,150 meters with two more wells to be drilled this year, raising ACE’S…

Almost 75 Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday expressed support for President Joe Biden’s decision to pause approvals for new LNG export projects. “With our allies well-supplied by existing exports, we agree that now is the time to step back and examine the long-term impacts that additional U.S. LNG exports will have on American consumers, industries, and the environment,” the Democratic Senators and Representatives wrote in a letter to President Biden, carried by Reuters. “This is an overdue opportunity to examine whether…

Almost 75 Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday expressed support for President Joe Biden’s decision to pause approvals for new LNG export projects. “With our allies well-supplied by existing exports, we agree that now is the time to step back and examine the long-term impacts that additional U.S. LNG exports will have on American consumers, industries, and the environment,” the Democratic Senators and Representatives wrote in a letter to President Biden, carried by Reuters. “This is an overdue opportunity to examine whether…

Almost 75 Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday expressed support for President Joe Biden’s decision to pause approvals for new LNG export projects. “With our allies well-supplied by existing exports, we agree that now is the time to step back and examine the long-term impacts that additional U.S. LNG exports will have on American consumers, industries, and the environment,” the Democratic Senators and Representatives wrote in a letter to President Biden, carried by Reuters. “This is an overdue opportunity to examine whether…