24th January 2025

For the final time this week, let’s see what hit the wires today in all things oil, gas, and energy:

• 🔊 Pump it up

• 🐦 Twitter diplomacy

• 🚢 LNG rates at all-time-lows

• 🎉 First oil at Future Growth Project

• ➕ plus Venture IPOs; Scots heavily in favour of O&G; Indo holds onto its LNG; Russia ready for dialogue; crude inventories fall again; Eni’s Ivory Coast success; and barrels more.

Have a great weekend everybody.

📈 THE NUMBERS

🗞️ WELL-HEADLINES

 🗽 North America

• Venture IPOs but valuation slashed - the LNG developer had initially hoped the listing would value it at ~$110bn but investors apparently balked at that figure and it eventually sold shares at a valuation of roughly half that amount, raising a total of $1.75bn.

• Crude stocks fall again - US commercial crude stocks fell again last week, declining by 1.0 mmbbls to 412 mmbbls, a near 3-year low.

🏰 Europe

• Scots 70% in favour of oil & gas - the vast majority of Scotland, the base of the UK North Sea, support the offshore oil and gas industry and believe that the UK should develop its own resource rather than import from abroad. When will politicians get the memo?

• A big year ahead for Var - the Norwegian indy is aiming to increase output by 150 kb/d this year as its starts production at three projects offshore Norway and sanctions an additional eight.

🕌 The Middle East

• Qatar scoffs at EU corporate sustainability directive - the LNG producer has said it will send its LNG elsewhere if Europe pushes ahead with planned regulation that threatens fines on companies that are non-compliant with EU sustainability standards. Great, so even more expensive gas in Europe thanks to ideological regulation.

⛩️ Asia & Oceania

• First oil at Chevron’s Future Growth Project - the $45bn expansion of the Tengiz oil field in Kazakhstan aims to increase crude production by 260 kb/d. The Tengiz oil field is the world’s deepest producing supergiant oil field and the largest single-trap producing reservoir in existence.

• Indo holds onto its LNG - the southeast Asian LNG exporter has deferred some cargoes as it tries to meet rising domestic demand for gas. A recent outage at its large Tangguh LNG project didn’t help matters.

• Conoco takes over Malaysian assets - Petronas has transferred its rights to the Kebabangan Cluster of oil and gas fields to Conoco who will also operate the fields.

🦁 Africa

• “Outstanding” Ivory Coast - Eni’s COO has said that flow rates from phase-two development wells at Eni’s groundbreaking multi billion dollar Baleine project offshore the Ivory Coast were “world class”.

🗿 Central & South America

• Brazilian drilling rivals in merger talks - Ventura Offshore is looking to acquire Foresea for ~$800m. The potential deal would create a new company with a portfolio of nine drilling rigs

• Hola Cuba - Melbana Energy has started work developing Block 9, onshore Cuba. The project is targeting up to 46 mmbbls of resources.

🌍 GEOPOLITICS & MACRO

• Pump it up - Trump has asked Saudi Arabia and OPEC to “bring down the cost of oil”, or in other words, to produce more of it. OPEC+, which has ~ 6 mmb/d of spare production capacity, works in its own best interests but will also been keen to get in the good books of the new president. That’ll be a tricky balancing act.

• Russia ready for “respectful dialogue” - after US threats to ramp up sanctions on Russia if it didn’t come to the negotiation table over Ukraine, Moscow has indicated that it is ready to talk. Here’s hoping they get this done. Everyone loses in war.

• “Would be nice” to solve Iran problems without military strikes - Trump is also hoping to reach a deal with Iran that would reduce sanctions in return for Iran curbing its nuclear program.

• The Gulf officially renamed - Trump has made good on his promise to rename the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America. Whether other countries adopt the change remains to be seen, but various government agencies like the Coast Guard are already using the new name.

• LNG tanker glut - LNG freight rates have hit all time lows as the market suffers from an oversupply of vessels and a delay to new export facilities coming online. You could now bag a 174 cubic meter tanker for ~$10k a day, down from ~$80k last summer.

💨 CARBON, CLIMATE, & OTHER ENERGY STUFF

• US needs double energy to power AI ambitions - the US is planning $500bn of AI investments, with much of the work taking place in Texas where new datacentres can be close to the abundant, cheap energy that they need to run. Good news for Permian natural gas producers.

• Saudi looking to nuclear - like many other sensible countries around the world, Saudi Arabia is investing in more nuclear power in its energy mix. Saudi holds large quantities of uranium resources that it could use to power a nuclear fleet.

• Blackstone splashes $1bn on gas power plant - the investment firm is buying the 774MW plant in Virginia in what is a bet on the demand for power plants situated near data centers.

🛢️ BOTTOM OF THE BARREL

👋 BEFORE YOU GO

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

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