13th December 2024

Happy Friday team. Here’s what hit the wires today in all things oil, gas, and energy:

• 💩 “A shit situation”

• ⬅️ OPEC keeps backtracking

• 🏆 Exxon in a league of its own

• 💸 Russia and India’s largest ever deal

• ➕ plus Kosmos and Tullow merger talks; crude stocks fall again; mixed drilling results in Norway; Looney joins ADNOC; Exxon finalizes Nigeria sale; and barrels more.

Have a cracking weekend.

📈 THE NUMBERS

🗞️ WELL-HEADLINES

 🗽 North America

• Exxon’s ramping up - as part of the company’s 5-year plan it will invest $28-$33 billion every year between 2026 and 2030, with a goal of lifting oil and gas output by 18% to 5.4 mmboe/d. CEO Woods said the plan “truly puts us in a league of our own”. Big keeps getting bigger.

• Shell greenlights more wells at Perdido - the two new wells at the Silvertip Frio reservoir in the GoM are expected to increase the Perdido spar’s output by a combined 6 kboe/d.

• NOG in $160m Appalachia JV - Northern Oil & Gas has entered a partnership in Appalachia with unnamed operator and will commit to invest up to $160m.

• Crude inventories decline again - crude stocks in the US fell for the third consecutive week, declining by 1.4 mmbbls to 422 mmbbls. Analysts had expected a small draw. Gasoline stocks, meanwhile, jumped by a chunky 5.1 mmbbls.

• First gas from Plaquemines LNG - Venture’s new LNG export facility will start up this week, the first new LNG output from a U.S. facility in two years.

🏰 Europe

• “An absolutely shit situation” - Norway’s energy minister isn’t happy that Norway’s power prices are soaring because it’s connected to the mainland European energy grid via interconnectors where power prices have reached an eye watering €1,000/MWh in Germany due to cold weather and a lack of wind.

• Var strikes black gold in the Barents - an appraisal well at the Countach discovery near the Goliat field unearthed up to 25 mmboe of resources.

• Not so much luck for AkerBP - an exploration well at the Kaldafjell prospect near the large Peon gas discovery in the northern North Sea hit dust. AkerBP and its partners have plans for 3 more wells in the area.

• Serica bags Parkmead assets - the UK-based indy has acquired some small North Sea development assets and large tax losses from Parkmead.

🕌 The Middle East

• Looney joins ADNOC - the former BP CEO, who left the major abruptly in 2023 after some suspect behavior with colleagues, has joined an investment company owned by ADNOC.

⛩️ Asia & Oceania

• India and Russia’s biggest ever deal - Rosneft has signed a 10-year deal to supply 500 kb/d of crude oil per day to Indian private refiner Reliance. The deal is said to be worth a whopping $13 billion. Over the past two years, India has been buying up lots of cheap Russian crude unwanted by other buyers due to sanctions.

🦁 Africa

• Kosmos eyeing Tullow merger - the two heavily indebted African-focused independents are in talks to join forces, creating a company with ~130 kb/d of production mainly across West Africa. Both company’s share prices have been hammered in recent years and fell further today on the news.

• Exxon finalises $1.3bn Seplat sale - nearly three years after the deal was first announced, Exxon has finally completed the sale of various Nigerian assets with reserves of ~400 mmboe to Seplat. Closing deals in Nigeria ain’t easy!

🗿 Central & South America

• Petrobras dishes out $2.8bn supply vessel contracts - two companies have been awarded the contract to build 12 new platform supply vessels to service Petrobras’s vast array of facilities offshore Brazil.

🌍 GEOPOLITICS & MACRO

• OPEC cuts demand forecast again - the cartel has made its fifth and biggest reduction to its 2024 oil demand forecasts, this time reducing its 2024 growth estimate by ~200 kb/d to 1.61 mmb/d. Back in July it was estimating growth of 2.25 mmb/d but has continually cut its forecast back primarily due to stagnant demand in China where natural gas is quickly replacing diesel in trucking and where EVs are replacing gasoline cars.

• Glut incoming? - that’s what the IEA thinks. The agency sees an oil surplus of 950 kb/d next year, even if OPEC+ maintains its cuts. The IEA has made its anti oil & gas views very clear in recent years and has consistently presented overly bearish views on oil markets, so take this latest prediction with a big handful of salt.

💨 CARBON, CLIMATE, & OTHER ENERGY STUFF

• Total commits to 300MW Omani renewables - in partnership with OQ Alternative Energy, Total will develop a solar project and two wind projects in Oman. While many majors are pulling back from “renewable” investments, Total seems to be pushing ahead. Good luck to them.

• UK forcing through wind farms - the UK government is trying to remove local communities’ rights to approve or reject wind farms and instead give all that power to the central government…Funnily enough many of these communities don’t want them.

• Nuclear coming to the rescue - France’s nuclear power plants are operating at their highest output in nearly 5 years, helping provide power to a desperate Europe that is overly dependent on unreliable wind.

🛢️ BOTTOM OF THE BARREL

👋 BEFORE YOU GO

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Thanks for reading. Have a day out there. 🛢️🛢️

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