EU energy-intensive business ($FT) ¹
Russia oil trade and sanctions ($FT)
Iraq’s mismanaged reconstruction
Supercore prices and policymaking
Russia/China border trade ($WSJ)
Germany urges more gas conservation
India plan to extend fuel export controls
¹ The two most important observations in this article are about gas demand reductions by energy-intensive businesses:
“Lower prices are not only saving energy-intensive companies a fortune. They have also put the colour back in the elaborate creations of the Italian glass blowers at New Murano Gallery. Each of the firm’s 11 1,000 degree furnaces produces glass with a different hue and, after the company had to turn half of them off last year, almost all are back on. ‘We have nearly the full palette,’ Francesco Scarpa, one of the gallery’s co-founders.”
“Fernández-Valladares described the mood of the tile making sector that dominates his small town in Castellón province as ‘generally quite pessimistic’. Sales have plunged. Since December, demand from clients — which are mostly wholesale buyers — has dropped 30 per cent. In January, the factory resorted to the radical option of turning off the kiln for an extended period, shutting it down for 22 days to save on gas. Fernández-Valladares said he could not rule out more shutdowns. ‘We normally work through the Easter holidays and I don’t know if we’re going to have to stop.’”
Multiply these examples across the entire European Union, and it helps explain much of the reduction in temperature-adjusted gas consumption during winter 2022/23.
BRENT’s six-month calendar spread has collapsed to a backwardation of just 47 cents per barrel down from $3 per barrel at the start of March as traders anticipate a much higher probability of a hard-landing or recession following enforced takeover of the crisis-stricken Credit Suisse by rival bank UBS:
JKempEnergy.com 