A nightmarish month for natural gas (and how Europe averted a natural gas disaster)
Natural gas prices have fallen 25% in January, hinting that Europe has largely averted its gas crisis. The LNG market stepped up big to fill the gaps, but now may be running out of steam
Global shipping outlook: Getting soft
The major factors that led to the global shipping crisis (and super profits for its companies) have shifted. A soft market in many shipping segments now awaits.
The oil market eval: Q4 2022
Oil prices in the final quarter of 2022 weren’t sure where to go, torn between worries about tight supplies and weakening demand.
Coal in 2022: A big year, but where to go from here?
Coal-power generation hit a record-high in 2022. Coal producers and their investors cashed in on the energy crisis that disrupted coal trade flows, sent prices soaring and even forced some countries to increase coal use despite climate goals.
10 lessons from energy markets in 2022
The year 2022 brought an energy crisis (but it could’ve been worse). From the war in Ukraine, price spikes and falls, where Russia’s fossil fuels now go, our (way-too-slow) decarbonization efforts — here are 10 lessons from a turbulent year
No mercy, no dissent: China’s building of a modern dystopia in Xinjiang
The vast province of Xinjiang in China’s far west has become the site of a dystopian surveillance state over the past several years. The Chinese government has created mass detention camps, initiated a comprehensive sterilization program, destroyed mosques and effectively banned various Muslim practices. This ruthless and multi-year effort to bring complete control over the politically restless but strategically important mineral-rich region shows the Chinese government’s willingness to go to extreme lengths to achieve its strategic interests, none of which is more important than maintaining single-party rule of the Chinese Communist Party
Chinese oil giants may buy oil collectively—if they can find a way to cooperate
China’s four state-owned oil giants are reportedly discussing the formation of a group to buy foreign crude oil in unison. The problem with this purchasing group isn’t the logic underpinning it, but the divergent interests of the companies themselves and the sharp-edged history between them
Chesapeake, the giant shale producer, files for bankruptcy, the latest victim of the shale bloodbath
Chesapeake Energy, the natural gas and oil behemoth, filed for bankruptcy protections on June 28, the biggest and most (in)famous victim of the worst crash in oil and gas prices in a generation
Not out of the woods yet: Why this OPEC+ agreement may not be as successful as the last one
The OPEC+ group of oil producers reached another major agreement on June 6th to cut production. But, unlike their historic and relatively successful agreement in May, the incentives to cheat on production quotas is much greater this time around because prices are much stronger than they were; the ability to punish cheaters remains limited; and the illusion of a return to business-as-usual masks extreme uncertainty in the oil market
Big Oil’s Lost Decade: Are the supermajors past their prime?
The past decade has been a disappointing one for the supermajors, a group of six or seven of the world’s largest publicly traded oil companies, as manifest in their meager profit increases compared to other sectors. The supermajors focused on searching for expensive and politically risky oilfields, and as a result, missed the ‘shale’ revolution in the United States, and then paid dearly to get involved, only to see oil prices collapse thereafter
Mexico’s Pemex: An ailing giant, but still a giant
Pemex reported a mind-boggling $23 billion loss for the first quarter of 2020, cementing its position as the world’s most indebted company. While the coronavirus-induced oil price collapse is partly to blame, Pemex has been a troubled company for a long time, but understanding it purely through a profit-driven lens misses much of what the company does in Mexico’s political economy
Saudi Arabia’s brutal six months: a mix of bad timing and big mistakes
It’s been a humbling half-year for Saudi power. Though the coronavirus pandemic has ravaged oil demand and the public listing of Saudi Aramco came at a terrible time, the Kingdom has made several mistakes that have made the situation worse: the oil price war worsened the oil glut, the IPO was less than the Crown Prince wanted, and the prospect of winning the war in Yemen increasingly unlikely.
The mystery of oil at -$37 per barrel, and what to expect for June contracts
Explaining the crazy historical anomaly of May oil contracts trading at -$37. But the reality remains simple and cruel: oil at $20 per barrel is still too low for many companies to survive for a sustained period of time
The oil price war is over and cuts promised, but be careful of the hype
These mega agreements to cut oil production, for all their flaws—and there are many—marks the end of the oil price war, but it doesn’t mark the end of the oil crisis as the production cuts are inflated and demand showing no sign of return soon
The world's biggest collective oil production cut. It’s still not enough
For however historic the size of the production cuts reached the world’s biggest and medium-sized producers at the so-called ‘OPEC+’ and G20 videoconferences, the markets weren’t impressed as oil prices fell to a range they haven’t been in for nearly two decades
An oil price war amid a pandemic
Why two of the world’s largest oil producers unleashed a price war on the oil market amidst an unprecedented collapse in world oil demand?
A World of National Oil Companies
The first half of the 20th century centered on the struggle between countries where the oil was found, the countries where oil was consumed, and those few powerful companies with the technology and knowhow to make that oil economically viable. But once oil-producing countries learned the basic ins-and-outs of the oil business, these oil-producing countries in all but a few cases seized control of their reserves and production, starting in the late 1930s but most radically and comprehensively in the 1970s. For the last fifty years then, a central puzzle of the global oil industry relates to the striking diversity of NOCs; in other words, what makes national oil companies so different between themselves?—whether, as ‘companies’, in their ability to perform the ‘core’ duties of the oil business, or as ‘national’ entities, in the tasks they perform for their home-states.
