Tag: decarbonisation

Best in Energy – 17 February 2023

Europe’s steel producers and decarbonisation

Steel and potential decarbonisation pathways

U.S. SPR sales and purchasers

Germany’s last nuclear power generators

GAIL wants to buy equity in LNG exporter

EUROPE’s gas futures prices for deliveries in March 2023 have fallen below €50 per megawatt-hour for the first time since December 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Prices have fallen from €177 at the beginning of the winter heating season at the start of October and a record €338 in late August. Energy-intensive industrial closures, conservation measures, the impact of previous high prices, reduced LNG purchasing from China and South Asia, and a mild winter in northwest Europe all combined to avert feared shortages or a price spike during winter 2022/23:

Best in Energy – 5 January 2023

China LNG imports to rebound later in 2023

Russia ships Arctic crude oils to India and China

North America electric reliability in next 10 years

Pakistan’s retail gas storage in plastic balloons ¹

China boosts coal output and inventories (trans.)

U.S. gas prices tumble on mild weather ($WSJ)

Amazon plans 18,000 layoffs ($WSJ)

Steel and decarbonisation pathways

¹ Gas has been transported and stored in bags or balloons by poorer, often rural, customers without connection to grid supplies across Asia for some time. Specialised gas containers are relatively expensive. Photo agency Alamy has a photograph of a cyclist trailing a gas-filled “balloon” in China’s Shandong province in 2014. Don’t try this at home!

EUROZONE MANUFACTURERS reported business activity declined for the sixth month running in December but the deterioration was less widespread than in November and October. The eurozone manufacturing purchasing managers’ index was at 47.8 (21st percentile for all months since 2006). The index remained well below the 50-point threshold dividing expanding activity from a contraction. But declines were less widespread than November when the index was at 47.1 (17th percentile) and October at 46.4 (13th percentile):

U.S. CRUDE PRODUCTION including field condensates rose by +69,000 b/d to 12.381 million b/d in October 2022. The increase came entirely from onshore production in the Lower 48 states, most of which is from shale. Production has been up year-on-year by an average of around +630,000 b/d (+5.7%) in the last 12 months: