Energy prices across Europe fell below zero for a record number of hours in 2024. An accelerated buildout of large-scale wind and solar farms has flooded European grids at peak production hours, causing surplus energy to be sold at a loss at increasingly frequent increments, for a grand total of 7,841 hours during the first eight months of this year. At their worst, prices have fallen below -€20 per megawatt hour, according to the consultancy ICIS. While rapidly expanding solar capacity is the main culprit for the price inversions, a decades-long…

Vladimir Putin’s end-of-year Q&A session with reporters and the public is billed as a chance for Russian citizens to ask the president about the issues that matter to them most. But while much of the televised marathon focuses on domestic affairs, Putin always uses it to send signals to the West and the rest of the world, too. This year, Putin’s messaging was colored by expectations that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump will push or an end to Russia’s war against Ukraine, or at least for a cease-fire, when he takes office…

Via Metal Miner   Difficult market conditions have prompted Romanian steel industry leader ArcelorMittal Hunedoara to reduce production until year’s end. According to a notice provided to the Bucharest Stock Exchange, the longs producer’s board of directors decided to reduce production from December 9-31 and pay 75% of salaries to employees impacted by the steps. The December 6 notice also cited the “economic difficulties faced by the company due to the lack of orders and implicitly of the production volume, as well as a…

The future of data centers is about to make a huge draw on the power grid. According to a DOE-backed report from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, U.S. data center energy use could nearly triple by 2028, eating up as much as 12% of the country’s electricity. Why? Blame AI and its insatiable hunger for powerful chips and energy-guzzling cooling systems. Currently, data centers are responsible for a modest 4% of U.S. power demand. But with AI servers becoming the star of the show, the power draw has already doubled since 2017. The GPU chips that…

The total number of active drilling rigs for oil and gas in the United States stayed the same again this week, according to new data that Baker Hughes published on Friday, after seeing no change in the week prior. The total rig count remained flat at 589 total rigs, according to Baker Hughes, down 31 from this same time last year. The number of oil rigs rose by 1 to 483—down by 15 compared to this time last year. The number of gas rigs fell by one rig, landing at 102, a loss of 18 active gas rigs from this time last year. Miscellaneous rigs…

It’s happened again. The Druzhba pipeline—Russia’s aging oil lifeline to Europe—has gone silent, leaving Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic without their usual crude oil fix. According to sources, the culprit is a “technical issue” at a Russian pumping station in the Bryansk region. Transneft, the pipeline’s operator, has yet to speak on the issue, but Belarus has confirmed the disruption, saying its refineries are dipping into reserves to keep running. This pipeline, capable of carrying 2 million…

The European Union is prepared to discuss with U.S. President-elect Trump boosting economic ties, including in the energy sector, an EU spokesperson told Reuters on Friday, hours after Trump threatened to impose “tariffs all the way” on the bloc if it doesn’t buy large volumes of American oil and gas. The EU is ready to discuss common interests in the energy sector with the U.S. as Europe is looking to phase out imports of Russian energy and diversify its sources of supply, the EU spokesperson told Reuters. Earlier on Friday,…

The annual average natural gas demand at U.S. LNG export plants is on track to inch down this year for the first decline since America began exporting LNG in 2016, according to data from LSEG cited by Reuters. Outages at some LNG facilities and delays to the construction of new plants are likely to slightly reduce feedgas to the eight large LNG export plants this year compared to 2023. Feedgas volumes have now eased to an average of 13.0 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) as of December 20, down from an average of 13.1 bcfd last year, per the LSEG…

Turkey has obtained a waiver from the United States to pay for natural gas to Russia via the now-sanctioned Russian Gazprombank, Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar told Reuters on Friday. In November, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Gazprombank in what the Treasury said was “another major step in implementing commitments made by G7 leaders to curtail Russia’s use of the international financial system to further its war against Ukraine.” The latest…

Turkey has obtained a waiver from the United States to pay for natural gas to Russia via the now-sanctioned Russian Gazprombank, Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar told Reuters on Friday. In November, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Gazprombank in what the Treasury said was “another major step in implementing commitments made by G7 leaders to curtail Russia’s use of the international financial system to further its war against Ukraine.” The latest…

Iran’s oil is increasingly finding its way into floating storage offshore Southeast Asia instead of at customers as a recent raft of U.S. sanctions on tankers shipping Iranian oil has made Chinese buyers more careful. The volumes of Iranian oil stored on tankers at sea, predominantly offshore Malaysia’s eastern coasts, have swelled to their highest levels since the end of July, per data from Kpler cited by Bloomberg. As of December 15, a total of 16.82 million barrels of Iranian oil were sitting on tankers at sea without going anywhere.…

Iran’s oil is increasingly finding its way into floating storage offshore Southeast Asia instead of at customers as a recent raft of U.S. sanctions on tankers shipping Iranian oil has made Chinese buyers more careful. The volumes of Iranian oil stored on tankers at sea, predominantly offshore Malaysia’s eastern coasts, have swelled to their highest levels since the end of July, per data from Kpler cited by Bloomberg. As of December 15, a total of 16.82 million barrels of Iranian oil were sitting on tankers at sea without going anywhere.…

Wary of Worsening Export Economics, Chinese Refiners Flushes Out Stocks - Chinese companies maximized their exports of oil products in November, ahead of an increase in government levies after Beijing reduced the country’s VAT rebate for product exports from 13% to 9%.    - The combined exports of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel accounted for 920,000 b/d last month, according to Chinese GAC statistics, a whopping 28% month-on-month increase as oil companies flushed out their stocks. - Slashing the tax rebate would result in…

Light crude oil futures are facing bearish sentiment, largely driven by concerns over global economic growth and oil demand. Weak consumer spending data from China, the world’s largest oil importer, has cast doubt on the resilience of its economic recovery. Despite signs of improvement in industrial production, the broader outlook for Chinese demand remains subdued, as Beijing struggles to implement effective stimulus measures. Energy transition policies in China are also expected to cap long-term petroleum consumption, further dampening…

Politics, Geopolitics & Conflict Venezuela’s PDVSA and India’s Reliance Industries have resumed a cautious oil-for-naphtha swap arrangement paused under U.S. sanctions, signaling a recalibration of geopolitical oil strategies. With a U.S. license in hand since July, the swap delivered 1.9M barrels of Merey crude to India and 500,000 barrels of naphtha to Venezuela, reflecting mutual economic necessity as Venezuela leverages barter deals to sustain its oil sector while India cautiously tests the limits of U.S. tolerance. The market…

Turkey has mediated a deal between Ethiopia and Somalia to grant the former access to the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, ending a year-long dispute that threatened to spark a regional conflict. But the new deal voids an earlier deal with Somalia’s breakaway region of Somaliland, which would have given Ethiopia a naval base in Somaliland in return for recognition of independence.  The Turkish deal, dubbed the “Ankara Declaration” would give Ethiopia alternative access to the Red Sea, without undermining Somalia’s sovereignty…

Iran’s oil is increasingly finding its way into floating storage offshore Southeast Asia instead of at customers as a recent raft of U.S. sanctions on tankers shipping Iranian oil has made Chinese buyers more careful. The volumes of Iranian oil stored on tankers at sea, predominantly offshore Malaysia’s eastern coasts, have swelled to their highest levels since the end of July, per data from Kpler cited by Bloomberg. As of December 15, a total of 16.82 million barrels of Iranian oil were sitting on tankers at sea without going anywhere.…

Sentiment in oil markets is decidedly bearish as the year draws to a close, with the Federal Reserve making it clear that it will not be aggressively cutting interest rates any time soon.Slower and shallower were the two key takeaways for the Federal Reserve's 2025 rate policy outlook, with a suggested prolonged pause in rate-cutting next year adding insult to the oil market’s injury. China remains a bearish factor for oil with almost all 2025 outlooks trying to outcompete one another in terms of bearishness, all this leading to a dip in…

The European Union should buy more oil and gas from the United States or risk tariffs, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said on Friday. “I told the European Union that they must make up their tremendous deficit with the United States by the large scale purchase of our oil and gas,” Trump posted on the social media platform Truth Social. “Otherwise, it is TARIFFS all the way!!!” The U.S., the world’s largest LNG exporter ahead of Qatar and Australia, is a major supplier of LNG to Europe, which is looking to boost alternative…

President-elect Trump’s proposed tariffs and the heightened risk of trade wars would be major challenges to the global energy transition, Mike Henry, the chief executive of mining giant BHP, told the Financial Times. Escalating trade tensions and tariffs on many products could delay decision-making about investment in the supply of the minerals that would be crucial to advance the energy transition, Henry told FT in an interview published on Friday.   Protectionism from the United States is likely to ease “the aggressiveness with…