24th April 2025

Good morning team - this is Both Barrels. Your daily dose of all things oil, gas, and energy, without the hot air. Here’s what hit the wires today:

• ⛅ Dimming the sun

• 🩴Kazakhstan flip flops

• 🐲 China pumps it up

• 🥊 Energy security jousting

• ➕ plus Trump cuts O&G red tape; Goliat by name; Shell exits Colombia projects; crude stocks increase; Eni cutting capex; 1.5 mmb/d at risk; and barrels more.

Have a top weekend. See you Monday.

📈 THE NUMBERS

🗞️ WELL-HEADLINES

 🗽 North America

• Trump slashes more O&G red tape - the government has issued an order to cut permitting approval times for energy and mining projects on federal lands to 28 days as it seeks to boost US energy output. Sometimes these approvals can take months or years.

• MS Infra Partners exploring $2bn sale - Morgan Stanley wants out of its majority stake in Brazos Midstream II, a pipeline and associated infrastructure business in the Permian.

• Crude stocks creep up - US oil inventories rose by 0.2 mmbbls last week, compared with expectations of a 0.8 mmbbls draw. Gasoline stocks fell by 4.5 mmbbls, and analysts had a expected a smaller 1.4 mmbbls decline.

• Baker Hughes forecasts spending drop - the OFS company expects global upstream spending to fall by high single digits in 2025 over concerns about lower oil prices.

🏰 Europe

• Goliat by name, Goliat by nature - a string of recent discoveries at Vaar’s oilfield in the Norwegian Barents Sea has given hope that the field might contain an additional 200 mmboe of resources. “So far, water has not been encountered in any of the wells so it is possible the whole area is filled with hydrocarbons”, Vaar CEO commented.

• Eni cuts capex and maintains buybacks - the Italian major beat earnings forecasts for Q1 as it said it was optimizing its 2025 spending plans “in response to macro headwinds and uncertainty around trade tariffs.”

• Total workers considering strike - workers at two offshore gas platforms in the UK North Sea have threatened to down tools are rejecting two “unacceptable” pay offers.

🕌 The Middle East

• Iran and Russia sign $4bn development deal - Russian companies will help Iran develop seven oilfields after the countries struck a deal at the Iran Russia Joint Economic Commission.

⛩️ Asia & Oceania

• China pumps it up - the world’s largest importer of crude has hit record output levels of 4.6 mmb/d as the country invests further into its upstream sector. China is now the 5th largest producer in the world. With demand of 16.7 mmb/d, there’s no risk of it becoming self-sufficient any time soon.

🦁 Africa

• Upbeat in Namibia - the country is “very very encouraged” by Rhino Resource’s recent Carpricornus discovery in the Orange basin, while Chevron is drawing up plans for an exploration well in the Walvis Basin, north of the Orange basin.

🗿 Central & South America

• Shell pulls out of offshore Colombia projects - Shell had been working with Ecopetrol on the three gas development projects but has bid adios to its partner, citing “reasons related to its strategy and management of its global portfolio.”

🌍 GEOPOLITICS & MACRO

• Kazakhstan flip flops - yesterday the central Asian country is defied OPEC calls to fall in line with its production quota, saying that its own national interests come first and that it can’t tell the international majors in the country to reduce their production. Kazakhstan says cutting output at its old fields could risk doing serious damage to them. Today it says its open to dialogue. OPEC+ unity in trouble?

• 1.5 mmb/d at risk at $50/bbl - energy consultancy, Wood Mackenzie, has warned that global supply could fall sharply if oil prices head lower, as upstream players quickly cut back spending. Most of the losses would come from the short-cycle US shale sector.

• Jousting at the IEA Energy Security summit - the useful idiots like Ed Miliband and Fatih Birol rattled off the usual nonsense about renewables providing energy security before the US rep stood up and told it how it was: that climate politics is causing energy scarcity and harming human lives.

💨 CARBON, CLIMATE, & OTHER ENERGY STUFF

• Dimming the sun - the UK government is set to approve experiments by scientists to try and dim the impact of the sun in an attempt to combat global warming. The idea is to create clouds that reflect sunlight using £50m of taxpayer money. What could possibly go wrong?

• “We are going all out to achieve clean power by 2030” - these were the terrifying words of the UK PM yesterday. Despite the UK having the highest industrial power prices in the world, it is still intent on its zealous pursuit of net zero, economic and human consequences be dammed. How much more evidence do they need to see before accepting they’ve got this astonishingly wrong? God help us.

🛢️ BOTTOM OF THE BARREL

👋 BEFORE YOU GO

Any feedback, requests, terrible jokes? Please just ping a reply to this email and let rip. We read every word. 

Oh and if you could share us with your pals who might like a drop of us, then we’d be very happy.

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

Was this forwarded to you? Both Barrels is a concise and irreverent oil, gas, and energy briefing, delivered to you daily. It’s free to subscribe.