U.S. EPA considers delaying Friday biofuel announcement – sources
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is considering delaying its widely anticipated announcement on Friday on 2019 renewable fuel volumes as it re-examines plans to force larger refineries to make up for gallons exempted at smaller plants, according to two sources familiar with the process. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue were set to travel to a farm outside of Kansas City, Missouri, where they were expected to announce a proposal for 2019 renewable fuel requirements on Friday. The announcement would follow weeks of criticism of Pruitt’s handling of the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program from biofuels supporters who accuse him of trying to undermine the program to help the refining industry. The RFS, created in 2005, requires fuel companies to use increasing volumes of renewable fuels like ethanol with their petroleum products each year, but the EPA has used its authority to provide waivers to an unusually large number of small refineries releasing them of their obligation. The EPA and the White House were still hashing out the details of a last-minute plan to appease farmers as part of the annual volumes announcement, the sources said, and the announcement could be postponed if an agreement is not reached. EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox did not respond to request for comment. USDA did not respond immediately to request for comment. The plan under consideration would force large refiners to blend extra volumes to compensate for the hardship waiver exemptions for small refiners. The idea was met with stiff oil industry opposition on Wednesday, sending the price of compliance credits surging. “This backroom deal would flat out betray consumers, labor and refinery workers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Louisiana and dozens of other states that helped elect this president. To say that we would be livid were this deal to move forward would be a gross understatement,” Chet Thompson, head of the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, said. The EPA administers RFS and is permitted under the law to give waivers to refineries under 75,000 barrels-per-day that can prove compliance would cause them financial damage. Under the RFS, refiners are meant to earn or buy blending credits corresponding with their obligation under the annual volumes mandates and turn them in to the agency. The cost of those credits have been volatile and in recent years have created a burden for refiners amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars. The EPA is required to set targets for blending volumes by Nov. 30 for the following year, and tends to announce its proposal months in advance of that deadline to gather feedback. As of Thursday morning, the agency was seen as likely to include a plan on how to reallocate waived volumes into this year’s proposal, according to sources. One of the sources said the White House – which is trying to appease the rival corn and oil industries – was “blindsided” by the idea, triggering the current re-assessment of the plan. Prices of renewable fuel credits traded in a range from 29.5-33 cents as the rumors swirled, said traders. They hit 28 cents on Wednesday, jumping by a nickel from the prior session as expectations of a reallocation mounted. Eric Ebron Womens Jersey
Venezuela says oil output recovery by end of 2018 will be ‘a challenge’
Venezuela has the ability to boost crude output by 1 million barrels per day (bpd) by end of the year in its bid to recover lost production, although the oil minister also said on Friday this goal would be “a challenge” for state oil firm PDVSA. “We hope that by year-end, we will have recovered the lost production, we have the capacity to do so, we’ve said so,” Manuel Quevedo told reporters at a meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in Vienna. President Nicolas Maduro said last month PDVSA would seek to boost oil production by 1 million bpd this year, and would seek help from Russia, China and OPEC if needed. Output has plummeted under U.S. sanctions and due to an economic crisis. “This is a goal for 2018 that is very challenging for PDVSA … but it’s the goal we’ve set ourselves,” Quevedo said. The minister earlier said Venezuela was pumping about 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil. The country had been producing about 2.373 million bpd as recently as 2016, Thomson Reuters data shows. Johnathan Joseph Womens Jersey
ExxonMobil confirms machinery damage at PNG gas pipe project
ExxonMobil PNG confirmed on Friday that some heavy equipment had been damaged at its Angore gas pipeline construction project in Papua New Guinea amid ongoing tension in the Highlands Region of the South Pacific nation. Papua New Guinea’s government declared a state of emergency in the Southern Highlands province a week ago and sent troops into the region after rioters went on a rampage protesting a failed court challenge to a provincial governor’s election. Pictures on PNG’s EMTV Online earlier this week showed burnt out heavy machinery and a fire burning in a shipping container at the site in Angore. “We confirm vandalism has occurred at Angore well pad A,” an ExxonMobil PNG spokeswoman said via email. “ExxonMobil PNG is continuing to monitor tension in Angore in Hela Province,” she said. The impact of the equipment damage on the project’s schedule of work was being assessed, the spokeswoman said. Papua New Guinea’s deputy prime minister, Charles Abel, has called for a meeting with political leaders to discuss the problems at Angore, the country’s Post Courier newspaper reported on Friday. He said the government is working to release royalties from PNG’s liquefied natural gas project (LNG) project to landowners but court disputes were holding up the release of funds. The work at the Angore site is in support of the PNG LNG project, which was shut down for nearly two months after a deadly earthquake at the end of February. The Highlands Region has long been the scene of unrest and protests, especially among landowners who have yet to receive payment from the government out of royalties on the $19 billion PNG LNG project, which shipped its first LNG four years ago. “Violence is not the way to do it, sometimes we cut ourselves in the foot when we attack the very agencies that are trying to provide service to us,” the Post Courier cited Abel as saying. Calls by Reuters to Abel’s office were answered by a message saying all phone lines to the area were busy. Joakim Nordstrom Jersey
Stepping on the gas: China’s home-built fracking boom
On a flattened mountaintop a two-and-half-hour drive south of Chongqing in southwest China, a fleet of towering, red fracking trucks pumps chemicals and sand into a 1,500-metre horizontal well deep under the ground. The equipment was designed and built by China’s state-owned energy major Sinopec, the result of a decades-long government drive to develop low-cost domestic technology to tap the country’s vast shale gas resources buried in the region’s mountainous terrain. It is the latest key technology that China has learned to master. Except for a handful of higher-end tools, Sinopec and a crop of independent companies make everything from trucks and pumps to drilling fluid and proppants – treated sand or man-made ceramics used to “prop” open a fracture to allow gas to escape. “We’re doing 95 percent or more of the service jobs ourselves. The amount of work handled by foreign firms is minimal,” said Shi Yuanhui, a senior Sinopec service engineer. The government-backed push, motivated in part by cost cutting amid the oil price slump of 2014, has seen international firms like oil services group Schlumberger, Halliburton or Baker Hughes scale back operations in China. Meanwhile, Chinese firms are starting to export equipment including pressure pumps, even to the home of the shale boom in the United States. Over the past 8 years, the cost of building a well has nearly halved to an average of under 50 million yuan per well ($7.8 million), and drilling speed has improved by two-thirds to 45-60 days, according to interviews with state oil officials, equipment makers and service providers. “China has over the years developed its unique practice that employs home-manufactured compact drilling equipment to suit the terrains, and improved greatly on drilling efficiency,” said Lynn Lin of energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie. Schlumberger and Baker Hughes declined to comment on their China shale business. Halliburton did not respond to a request for comment. OUTPUT RISING State energy giants Sinopec and PetroChina pumped 9 billion cubic metres (bcm) of shale gas in 2017, up from scratch a decade ago and equivalent to about 6 percent of the country’s total natural gas production. Still, the hilltop scene illustrates some of the problems facing the world’s biggest energy consumer in exploiting its unconventional gas. Unlike the flatter U.S. regions containing shale, Chinese firms operate in tricky environments, including mountainous, arid, remote and also highly populated regions, leading to higher costs. China’s shale is also buried deeper and is more fractured, making it difficult and expensive to extract. China is expected to nearly double output to 17 bcm by 2020, according to Wood Mackenzie. While below Beijing’s 2020 target of 30 bcm, set out four years ago, and just a fraction of 474 bcm produced in the United States last year, domestic gas is a major focus as the country looks to ease its reliance on dirtier coal. China’s leading manufacturer of fracking equipment is Jianghan No.4 Machinery Plant, which accounts for more than half of the country’s production of fracking trucks and pumps. The firm, under the supervision of what was then the Ministry of Petroleum, bought several dozen U.S. fracking trucks in 1988 on condition the manufacturer allowed access to its technology, said a Jianghan marketing executive who declined to be named as he was not authorized to speak to media. The know-how was initially applied to conventional wells before Jianghan No.4, now part of Sinopec, China’s top shale gas firm, built the country’s first shale fracker in 2012. Baoji Machinery, a unit of state-run CNPC, and independent equipment builders Honghua Group and Jereh Group have also expanded into shale, and are competing in new, more efficient electric-powered frackers. Jereh and Honghua are also leading an export push, said company officials, competing with the likes of Halliburton. Jereh exports trucks, pressure pumps and pipes, with total overseas sales making up half of its 3.2 billion yuan ($495 million) in revenue in 2017, a company spokeswoman said, declining to give a breakdown by country. Lucrative export contracts will be needed as China’s shale industry still struggles to make cash at home. Sinopec has acknowledged it would be difficult to break even without government subsidies, currently at roughly 20 percent of well-head prices. Helping increase efficiency, Chinese firms can now drill multiple wells at a single pad, known as “well factory” drilling. They can also carry out extended horizontal fracturing up to 3,000 metres, Sinopec engineers said. BARRIERS The expertise will be needed if China is to make the most of its shale gas, estimated by the U.S. Energy Information Administration as the world’s largest. Western majors like Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Total, ConocoPhillips and Chevron largely abandoned China’s shale scene after disappointing initial results. Geologists at Sinopec said they have struggled to replicate a find like Fuling, the largest commercial field, a gas field similar, but smaller, to the hugely successful U.S. Marcellus formation. There are also complaints that Sinopec’s and PetroChina’s domination is a barrier to future development, as these state behemoths hinder competition. Only in late 2017, as shale drilling quickened on the back of rising oil prices, did the two majors start awarding service contracts to independent firms like SPT Energy, Anton Oilfield and Honghua Group. Brian Dawkins Jersey
Stepping on the gas: China’s home-built fracking boom
On a flattened mountaintop a two-and-half-hour drive south of Chongqing in southwest China, a fleet of towering, red fracking trucks pumps chemicals and sand into a 1,500-metre horizontal well deep under the ground. The equipment was designed and built by China’s state-owned energy major Sinopec, the result of a decades-long government drive to develop low-cost domestic technology to tap the country’s vast shale gas resources buried in the region’s mountainous terrain. It is the latest key technology that China has learned to master. Except for a handful of higher-end tools, Sinopec and a crop of independent companies make everything from trucks and pumps to drilling fluid and proppants – treated sand or man-made ceramics used to “prop” open a fracture to allow gas to escape. “We’re doing 95 percent or more of the service jobs ourselves. The amount of work handled by foreign firms is minimal,” said Shi Yuanhui, a senior Sinopec service engineer. The government-backed push, motivated in part by cost cutting amid the oil price slump of 2014, has seen international firms like oil services group Schlumberger, Halliburton or Baker Hughes scale back operations in China. Meanwhile, Chinese firms are starting to export equipment including pressure pumps, even to the home of the shale boom in the United States. Over the past 8 years, the cost of building a well has nearly halved to an average of under 50 million yuan per well ($7.8 million), and drilling speed has improved by two-thirds to 45-60 days, according to interviews with state oil officials, equipment makers and service providers. “China has over the years developed its unique practice that employs home-manufactured compact drilling equipment to suit the terrains, and improved greatly on drilling efficiency,” said Lynn Lin of energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie. Schlumberger and Baker Hughes declined to comment on their China shale business. Halliburton did not respond to a request for comment. OUTPUT RISING State energy giants Sinopec and PetroChina pumped 9 billion cubic metres (bcm) of shale gas in 2017, up from scratch a decade ago and equivalent to about 6 percent of the country’s total natural gas production. Still, the hilltop scene illustrates some of the problems facing the world’s biggest energy consumer in exploiting its unconventional gas. Unlike the flatter U.S. regions containing shale, Chinese firms operate in tricky environments, including mountainous, arid, remote and also highly populated regions, leading to higher costs. China’s shale is also buried deeper and is more fractured, making it difficult and expensive to extract. China is expected to nearly double output to 17 bcm by 2020, according to Wood Mackenzie. While below Beijing’s 2020 target of 30 bcm, set out four years ago, and just a fraction of 474 bcm produced in the United States last year, domestic gas is a major focus as the country looks to ease its reliance on dirtier coal. China’s leading manufacturer of fracking equipment is Jianghan No.4 Machinery Plant, which accounts for more than half of the country’s production of fracking trucks and pumps. The firm, under the supervision of what was then the Ministry of Petroleum, bought several dozen U.S. fracking trucks in 1988 on condition the manufacturer allowed access to its technology, said a Jianghan marketing executive who declined to be named as he was not authorized to speak to media. The know-how was initially applied to conventional wells before Jianghan No.4, now part of Sinopec, China’s top shale gas firm, built the country’s first shale fracker in 2012. Baoji Machinery, a unit of state-run CNPC, and independent equipment builders Honghua Group and Jereh Group have also expanded into shale, and are competing in new, more efficient electric-powered frackers. Jereh and Honghua are also leading an export push, said company officials, competing with the likes of Halliburton. Jereh exports trucks, pressure pumps and pipes, with total overseas sales making up half of its 3.2 billion yuan ($495 million) in revenue in 2017, a company spokeswoman said, declining to give a breakdown by country. Lucrative export contracts will be needed as China’s shale industry still struggles to make cash at home. Sinopec has acknowledged it would be difficult to break even without government subsidies, currently at roughly 20 percent of well-head prices. Helping increase efficiency, Chinese firms can now drill multiple wells at a single pad, known as “well factory” drilling. They can also carry out extended horizontal fracturing up to 3,000 metres, Sinopec engineers said. BARRIERS The expertise will be needed if China is to make the most of its shale gas, estimated by the U.S. Energy Information Administration as the world’s largest. Western majors like Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Total, ConocoPhillips and Chevron largely abandoned China’s shale scene after disappointing initial results. Geologists at Sinopec said they have struggled to replicate a find like Fuling, the largest commercial field, a gas field similar, but smaller, to the hugely successful U.S. Marcellus formation. There are also complaints that Sinopec’s and PetroChina’s domination is a barrier to future development, as these state behemoths hinder competition. Only in late 2017, as shale drilling quickened on the back of rising oil prices, did the two majors start awarding service contracts to independent firms like SPT Energy, Anton Oilfield and Honghua Group. 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Stepping on the gas: China’s home-built fracking boom
On a flattened mountaintop a two-and-half-hour drive south of Chongqing in southwest China, a fleet of towering, red fracking trucks pumps chemicals and sand into a 1,500-metre horizontal well deep under the ground. The equipment was designed and built by China’s state-owned energy major Sinopec, the result of a decades-long government drive to develop low-cost domestic technology to tap the country’s vast shale gas resources buried in the region’s mountainous terrain. It is the latest key technology that China has learned to master. Except for a handful of higher-end tools, Sinopec and a crop of independent companies make everything from trucks and pumps to drilling fluid and proppants – treated sand or man-made ceramics used to “prop” open a fracture to allow gas to escape. “We’re doing 95 percent or more of the service jobs ourselves. The amount of work handled by foreign firms is minimal,” said Shi Yuanhui, a senior Sinopec service engineer. The government-backed push, motivated in part by cost cutting amid the oil price slump of 2014, has seen international firms like oil services group Schlumberger, Halliburton or Baker Hughes scale back operations in China. Meanwhile, Chinese firms are starting to export equipment including pressure pumps, even to the home of the shale boom in the United States. Over the past 8 years, the cost of building a well has nearly halved to an average of under 50 million yuan per well ($7.8 million), and drilling speed has improved by two-thirds to 45-60 days, according to interviews with state oil officials, equipment makers and service providers. “China has over the years developed its unique practice that employs home-manufactured compact drilling equipment to suit the terrains, and improved greatly on drilling efficiency,” said Lynn Lin of energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie. Schlumberger and Baker Hughes declined to comment on their China shale business. Halliburton did not respond to a request for comment. OUTPUT RISING State energy giants Sinopec and PetroChina pumped 9 billion cubic metres (bcm) of shale gas in 2017, up from scratch a decade ago and equivalent to about 6 percent of the country’s total natural gas production. Still, the hilltop scene illustrates some of the problems facing the world’s biggest energy consumer in exploiting its unconventional gas. Unlike the flatter U.S. regions containing shale, Chinese firms operate in tricky environments, including mountainous, arid, remote and also highly populated regions, leading to higher costs. China’s shale is also buried deeper and is more fractured, making it difficult and expensive to extract. China is expected to nearly double output to 17 bcm by 2020, according to Wood Mackenzie. While below Beijing’s 2020 target of 30 bcm, set out four years ago, and just a fraction of 474 bcm produced in the United States last year, domestic gas is a major focus as the country looks to ease its reliance on dirtier coal. China’s leading manufacturer of fracking equipment is Jianghan No.4 Machinery Plant, which accounts for more than half of the country’s production of fracking trucks and pumps. The firm, under the supervision of what was then the Ministry of Petroleum, bought several dozen U.S. fracking trucks in 1988 on condition the manufacturer allowed access to its technology, said a Jianghan marketing executive who declined to be named as he was not authorized to speak to media. The know-how was initially applied to conventional wells before Jianghan No.4, now part of Sinopec, China’s top shale gas firm, built the country’s first shale fracker in 2012. Baoji Machinery, a unit of state-run CNPC, and independent equipment builders Honghua Group and Jereh Group have also expanded into shale, and are competing in new, more efficient electric-powered frackers. Jereh and Honghua are also leading an export push, said company officials, competing with the likes of Halliburton. Jereh exports trucks, pressure pumps and pipes, with total overseas sales making up half of its 3.2 billion yuan ($495 million) in revenue in 2017, a company spokeswoman said, declining to give a breakdown by country. Lucrative export contracts will be needed as China’s shale industry still struggles to make cash at home. Sinopec has acknowledged it would be difficult to break even without government subsidies, currently at roughly 20 percent of well-head prices. Helping increase efficiency, Chinese firms can now drill multiple wells at a single pad, known as “well factory” drilling. They can also carry out extended horizontal fracturing up to 3,000 metres, Sinopec engineers said. BARRIERS The expertise will be needed if China is to make the most of its shale gas, estimated by the U.S. Energy Information Administration as the world’s largest. Western majors like Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Total, ConocoPhillips and Chevron largely abandoned China’s shale scene after disappointing initial results. Geologists at Sinopec said they have struggled to replicate a find like Fuling, the largest commercial field, a gas field similar, but smaller, to the hugely successful U.S. Marcellus formation. There are also complaints that Sinopec’s and PetroChina’s domination is a barrier to future development, as these state behemoths hinder competition. Only in late 2017, as shale drilling quickened on the back of rising oil prices, did the two majors start awarding service contracts to independent firms like SPT Energy, Anton Oilfield and Honghua Group. Sean Newcomb Jersey
OPEC edges closer to raising oil output, Iran’s agreement is key
OPEC edged closer on Thursday towards raising oil output, with Iran softening its opposition to an increase and Saudi Arabia warning of supply shortages and price rallies if production remained stable. A production rise of about 1 million barrels per day (bpd) or around 1 percent of global supply was emerging as a consensus for the group and its allies, OPEC sources told Reuters, adding that Iran could agree under certain conditions. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries meets on Friday to decide output policy amid calls from top consumers such as the United States, China and India to cool down oil prices and support the world economy by producing more crude. Russia, which is not in OPEC, has proposed producers raise output by 1.5 million bpd. Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said on Thursday the world needed at least an extra 1 million bpd to avoid a shortage in the second half of 2018. OPEC and its allies have since last year been participating in a deal to cut output by 1.8 million bpd. The measure has helped rebalance the market in the past 18 months and lifted oil to around $73 per barrel from as low as $27 in 2016. But unexpected outages in Venezuela, Libya and Angola have effectively brought supply cuts to around 2.8 million bpd in recent months. Iran’s output is also likely to fall in the second half of this year due to new U.S. sanctions. Iran, OPEC’s third-largest producer, has so far been the main barrier to a new deal as it said on Tuesday OPEC was unlikely to reach an agreement and should reject pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to pump more oil. But on Wednesday, Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh said OPEC members that had overdelivered on cuts in recent months should comply with agreed quotas. That would effectively mean a boost from producers such as Saudi Arabia that have voluntarily cut more deeply than planned. “An increase is acceptable if justified from the demand side and if it is agreed by all OPEC members. An increase because of external pressure on OPEC is not acceptable,” said a source familiar with Iranian thinking. Ecuador said OPEC and its allies could agree to a compromise increase in output of around 0.5-0.6 million bpd. “MARKET SQUEEZE” Falih said the world could face a supply deficit of up to 1.8 million bpd in the second half of 2018 and that OPEC’s responsibility was to address consumers’ worries. “We want to prevent the shortage and the squeeze that we saw in 2007-2008,” Falih said, referring to a time when oil rallied close to $150 per barrel. He said the exact mechanics of any increase would be decided among all OPEC members on Friday. Three OPEC sources said ministers would debate on Thursday whether to raise supplies by 1 million bpd as the main proposal for the meetings of OPEC and its allies on Friday and Saturday. If the proposal were approved, all OPEC members and their non-OPEC allies could raise supplies pro-rata, with Saudi Arabia adding about 0.25-0.3 million bpd. Iran had yet to agree to the proposal, the sources said. Iraq and Venezuela have also opposed a relaxation of production cuts, fearing a slump in prices. On Thursday, however, Iraqi Oil Minister Jabar al-Luaibi said: “We are in comprehensive talks with all ministers, especially Saudi Arabia and Iran, and we are trying to narrow that gap between the two and we hope that this afternoon we will reach some sort of good compromise”. Zanganeh was due to attend a ministerial committee on Thursday. Iran is usually not part of the committee, which groups Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Kuwait, Algeria and Venezuela. Before the committee meeting, Zanganeh was also scheduled to meet Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak for separate talks. Zanganeh told CNN on Wednesday that if OPEC returned to regular compliance, the real supply increase from the group would constitute around 460,000 bpd. OPEC sources said the final compromise also depended on whether OPEC agreed to mention U.S. sanctions in the group’s communique, an important point for Iran, which has blamed U.S. measures against Tehran for the recent rise in oil prices. The United States, which rivals Russia and Saudi Arabia for the position of world No.1 oil producer, is not participating in the current supply pact. Cameron Meredith Jersey
OPINION: Oil price will be driven by consumers rather than OPEC
Oil traders’ attention is focused this week on Vienna, where ministers from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies must decide whether to increase their output in the second half of 2018. But the direction of prices over the next year will be more influenced by less visible developments in the major oil-consuming countries, especially the United States, Europe, China and India. With available production capacity fairly fixed in the short-term, oil market rebalancing will depend on consumer reactions to higher prices Stocks of crude oil and refined products are now below their five-year averages and expected to continue falling in the second half of 2018 and through 2019. OPEC’s spare production capacity has shrunk to less than 2 million barrels per day (bpd) and is expected to fall to less than 1 million bpd by the end of 2019. OPEC and its allies are discussing an output increase of 1 million bpd or more to avert future shortages and stock declines. By adding barrels to the market now, OPEC can stabilise or even increase inventories and ease shortages later in 2018/19. But the cushion of spare capacity is already low and will shrink further as OPEC boosts its output, leaving the market without much capacity to absorb further disruptions. U.S. oil production is expected to rise by 1.4 million bpd in 2018 and another 1.1 million bpd in 2019 but may not be able to rise much faster because of pipeline bottlenecks. From the supply side, therefore, the oil market’s production capability now appears fairly fixed for the rest of 2018 and into 2019. Any further rebalancing will have to come from the demand side, where prices will have to rise high enough to moderate consumption growth. REARVIEW MIRROR Global consumption has increased by an average of 1.7 million bpd for the last three years, accelerating from an average of 1.1 million bpd in the three previous years. Slower growth in consumption will almost certainly have to play a significant role in pushing the oil market back towards balance. Benchmark oil prices have already risen by around 70 percent over the last year, which should help restrain consumption growth. The critical question is whether the rise in prices has already been enough to promote a slowdown, or whether prices will have to rise even further. The problem for traders and ministers trying to estimate the price needed to rebalance the market is that consumption responds to price changes with a delay of six to 18 months. And in most important consuming countries, reliable statistics on consumption are available only with a delay of three to four months. A sharp rise in prices almost always leads to a slowdown in consumption growth, especially in the advanced economies, but the slowdown is always more apparent in retrospect than at the time. By the time a slowdown shows up in official statistics, it will already be too late, and prices will probably have risen too high to be sustainable. In 2006-2008 and again in 2011-2014, surging oil prices resulted in a sharp slowdown in consumption growth in the advanced economies, though at the time many analysts dismissed signs of a slowdown. In both cases, the oil market was eventually forced back to balance, but not before prices had overshot on the upside, creating conditions for the subsequent collapse. Tim Williams Womens Jersey
Govt planning to set up bio-CNG plants in rural India soon: Oil minister Pradhan
Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan on Thursday said there are plans to set up bio-Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) plants in India. He made this comment after visiting a bio-CNG plant in Stuttgart, Germany, where he was briefed by officials on how agricultural waste can be converted into energy. Pradhan told ANI, “Materials like straw and dung are considered waste in India. This can be used to produce energy. I had come to see a plant that uses similar materials to produce bio-CNG. Such plants can be made in India. We are understanding the business model and technology. If it’s successful, we can set up bio-CNG plants in all villages of India.” Pradhan added that the Centre is working to ensure the doubling of farmers’ income by 2022. Explaining the working of a bio-CNG plant, Pradhan said, “The farmers first collect the agricultural waste. It is then processed and gives rise to raw gas. Then, it is converted into electricity. After certain mechanical and chemical processes, it gives rise to pure CNG, which can also be used in energy farming.” Asked where the central government was planning to set up such plants on a pilot basis in India, Pradhan said it could be done in some big villages and towns. Indian Oil Corporation (IOCL) Chairman Sanjeev Singh later said that Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) have been signed in the energy sector with business partners. Pradhan is currently on a two-day visit to Germany, after attending the 7th Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) International Seminar at the Imperial Hofburg Palace in Vienna, Austria on Wednesday. In the seminar, Pradhan stressed on the need for responsible pricing of fuel. “It is high time to move to responsible pricing, one that balances the interests of both the producer and consumer. We also need to move to transparent and flexible markets for both oil and gas,” he said. Pradhan further sought for the intervention of OPEC members to ensure sustainable fuel price. “Crude prices are creating stress throughout the global economy. It is giving pain to us in India. The global economic outlook already has threats from trade wars. My fear is that his will lead to energy poverty in many parts of the World,” he added. The Union Minister also pitched for “responsible pricing” which balances the interests of both producer and consumer. Isaiah Oliver Jersey
Australia says no longer faces natural gas shortfall before 2030
Australia no longer faces a looming gas shortage, thanks to government pressure on exporters to divert gas into the domestic market and reduced demand forecast for gas-fired power, according to the latest estimates from the nation’s energy market operator. “No supply gaps are forecast before 2030 under expected market conditions,” the Australian Energy Market Operator said on Friday in its annual outlook for gas. The outlook is starkly different from a year ago, when dire warnings from the market operator about potential shortfalls in eastern Australia from 2018 onward prompted the government to threaten to curb liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports. Wade Boggs Authentic Jersey