E20 petrol will be available in India by December or January: Puri
Union Minister of Road Transport and Highways, Nitin Gadkari recently introduced country’s first flex fuel vehicle i.e. Toyota Corolla Flexi-Fuel Strong Hybrid Electric Vehicle. This version of the Toyota Corolla uses the E20 fuel. The E20 fuel is a twenty percent blend of Ethanol and eighty percent of fossil based fuel. The introduction of E20 fuel has the motive of reducing the reliance on fossil based fuels for building a more sustainable society for the future and to reduce vehicular emissions. India has earlier set the target of introducing E20 fuel by April 2023 but today the Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Hardeep Singh Puri has announced that the E20 fuel will be available in India ahead of schedule by December 2022 or January 2023. Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said, “We are constantly reviewing the ethanol production and I believe, 20 per cent blended fuel would come in the market in December or January ahead of April 2023 (target). We are going to hold a major meeting with automobile manufacturers on ethanol blending”. He cited the example of Brazil where flex-fuel vehicles have been quite successful. In Brazil the customers can take ethanol or petrol as per choice and that will be the ultimate goal of the government in India. However, to reach that stage, certain technical aspects are there and work is going on. India has advanced the target date for achieving 20 per cent ethanol-blending in petrol by five years to 2025. The minister also said that for the targeted 20 per cent blending of ethanol in petrol, the country will need a 1,000 core litre capacity. He added that 4.50 billion litre is being produced and tenders for 4 billion litre have been issued. He added that “We have more than enough ethanol for 20 per cent blending and all petrol sold in the country is targeted to have 20 per cent ethanol by 2025”. Earlier, at the inaugural ceremony of South Asian Geoscience Conference ‘Geo India 2022’, the minister said that the ethanol-blend percentage in petrol has increased from 0.67 per cent in 2013 to 10 per cent in May 2022, five months ahead of schedule.
Despite sanctions, Russian fuel is still selling — here’s who’s buying
While Russia deals with increasing losses on the battlefield, gradually increasing sanctions have created their own pressure since the invasion of Ukraine began on February 24 of this year. Led by the United States and European Union, sanctions on Russia’s massive energy sector have forced the Russian economy to replace losses from the European market with both legal and illicit energy sales. In the US, President Joe Biden issued an executive order prohibiting the import of Russian petroleum products, liquid natural gas (LNG), and coal products as of March 8, 2022. The European Union, a far larger market for Russian energy, will cease importing most Russian crude oil in December, and will stop importing refined Russian petroleum products two months later. Overall, crude oil exports via cargo vessel trended downward in May, June, and July, with China, India, and Italy the top destinations for Russian crude oil, according to data from vessel trade analysis firm KPLER. During the first half of September, seaborne shipments of Russian crude oil continued to fall, by 314,000 barrels per day from the previous month, putting exports via ship at the lowest levels since the start of the war, according to S&P Global Insights. However, petroleum isn’t the only energy source Russia produces, and the US and EU aren’t the only markets for those products. Petroleum shipments are still relatively stable for Russia, as nations like China and India have picked up some slack from EU countries weaning themselves off oil, and Russia still has LNG, coal, and nuclear energy to help the economy float, too. In order to make petroleum products more appealing to customers like India and Indonesia, Russia has offered fairly steep discounts — an average of $30 per barrel — against Brent crude oil, which has also been a benefit for Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Cuba, all emerging economies struggling with inflation, as Business Insider reported. Although according to S&P the discounts on Russian crude oil are decreasing, some analysts believe they’ll persist, making Russian crude oil imports highly palatable for poorer countries. he first two Russian shipments arrived [to Sri Lanka] from Primorsk and Novorossiysk, ports located in the Baltic Sea and Black Sea, respectively,” Thanh-Long Huynh, chief executive of the data analytics firm QuantCube, told the Financial Times. “Since these ports historically served European ports, they indicate the development of new trade routes for Russian energy.” Countries like China, India, and Turkey are proving eager partners for the Russian fuel industry, with Turkey doubling Russian oil imports this year and vying to become a hub for Russian LNG transfers into Europe after damage to the Nord Stream pipelines. Between April and July, China — the world’s top energy consumer and biggest customer for crude oil — had purchased 17 percent more Russian crude oil than it had during the same period in 2021, according to Reuters. And despite major discounts, the price of oil is still much higher than it was in 2020, pre-coronavirus, allowing Russia to bring in more money from oil exports even though production is down, according to research by Frank Umbach for the Liechtenstein-based think tank Geopolitical Intelligence Services. The Russian energy market is bigger than just oil EU countries have struggled to disentangle themselves from Russian fuel overall, not just oil. Russian natural gas, pumped through avenues like the Nord Stream 1 pipeline which was damaged in September, provided about 40 percent of Europe’s natural gas prior to the invasion, according to Reuters. But even as Europe tries to turn away from Russian gas flows, investing in Norwegian fuel instead, Russian LNG is finding its way into European markets via cargo vessel, as Javier Blas wrote in Bloomberg earlier this week. Even with the Nord Stream 1 pipeline out of commission — and setting aside the transfers to China, now Russia’s biggest natural gas buyer — European countries are importing record amounts of Russian LNG at market prices, according to Bloomberg. France has purchased about 6 percent more Russian LNG between January and September of this year than it did all of last year; Spain has already broken its record for Russian LNG imports this year, and Belgium is on track to do the same. The stakes for natural gas imports are somewhat different than they are for Russian petroleum, in a number of different ways; for one, the EU hasn’t imposed sanctions against it as it has against petroleum products, though the bloc does intend to eliminate its reliance on Russian fossil fuels by 2027. Second, Russia has already used Europe‘s reliance on its natural gas as a weapon; Russia cut access to many European countries which refused to pay for LNG in rubles, and cut total output to Europe by 60 percent in June and by 80 percent in July, Reuters reported last month. Asian markets, too, are in on the game; by July of this year, China’s Russian energy imports overall had grown 7 percent over 2019, according to Chinese customs data analyzed by Reuters. Between April and July, China purchased 50 percent more LNG and 6 percent more coal from Russia than it had during the same period in 2021, lured at least in part by lower prices. That mutual benefit appears set to continue; in a deal negotiated in February, China will get a new natural gas pipeline from Russia. India, also, has become a major buyer of Russian energy, particularly oil, though in prior years it rarely imported Russian crude. Low Russian crude oil prices drove Indian purchases to a peak of 950,000 barrels per day in June, but price increases have since pushed that number down to about 477,000 barrels per day in September. India also picked up slack for Russia’s coal exports after an EU ban on Russian coal took effect on August 10. That ban halted all coal shipments to the bloc after a four-month tapering period, and also prevents EU-based insurers and financial firms from working with Russian coal exports, as Bloomberg
Gasoline Prices See Abrupt Decline As U.S. Diesel Prices Continue To Rise
After a relentless four-week climb, U.S. national average gas prices have declined, falling 5.4 cents from a week ago to $3.86 per gallon on Monday. Still, the national average is still 20.6 cents higher from a month ago and a good 56.6 cents per gallon higher than a year ago. But while prices at the pump for gasoline have declined, diesel prices are on the opposite trajectory, rising 18.7 cents in the last week to $5.26 per gallon. “After a sharp rise in the national average over the last few weeks, we’ve seen an abrupt, yet expected decline as refinery issues have eased in the West and Great Lakes, overpowering some increases elsewhere. Though at the same time, diesel prices have soared. We’ll see a continued sharp drop in gas prices on the West Coast, including areas like Las Vegas and Phoenix, which are supplied by refiners in California, as refinery outages have been addressed,” Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, has said. Another reason for falling gas prices: falling crude prices. Oil prices have continued slipping further as the market reassessed the OPEC+ production quota cut, and the IMF warned about the increased risk of a global recession. After rising sharply following the announcement by OPEC+ that it will cut crude production by 2 million barrels per day, oil prices have resumed their downward trajectory as the effects of the meeting began to wear off. Recession fears have remained a steady undercurrent in the oil markets recently for much of the current year, as have the tight supply situation that exists in the energy markets overall. The International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday that the world economy was headed for “stormy waters” as it downgraded its global growth projections for next year and also warned of a harsh worldwide recession if policymakers mishandled the fight against inflation.