Energy & Commodities
The United Arab Emirates said oil prices would be even higher today if it wasn’t for OPEC+, signaling the group will continue resisting U.S. pressure to pump faster.
“Fortunately, we have OPEC+,” UAE Energy Minister Suhail Al-Mazrouei said Monday at the Africa Oil Week conference in Dubai. The 23-nation alliance of major crude exporters has prevented “us from having double or triple the prices and that’s something we need to appreciate.”
Brent crude’s climbed 62 per cent this year to almost US$84 a barrel thanks to the global economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic and OPEC+’s supply cuts, which started early last year.
OPEC+ is easing those restrictions at a rate of 400,000 barrels a day each month. The U.S. and other consumers such as Japan and India have called on the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Russia and other members of the group to accelerate their output increases.
Mazrouei echoed his Saudi counterpart, Abdulaziz bin Salman, by saying the oil market has been far calmer than those for natural gas and coal. Prices for gas have more than doubled in Europe and Asia this year amid severe shortages, causing electricity costs to soar and hitting economies from China to India…read more.
U.S. President Joe Biden is considering a release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) as a possible move to reduce gasoline prices in the United States, after OPEC+ ignored on Thursday calls for putting extra barrels on the market, U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told Bloomberg on Friday.
“The SPR is certainly on the table as an option. The president will have more to say about that,” Secretary Granholm said when asked what America can do now to reduce gasoline prices.
The SPR is the world’s largest supply of emergency crude oil, and it currently holds around 600 million barrels of crude.
“The Biden Administration is very concerned about the price at the pump,” Granholm added.
On Thursday, the OPEC+ group decided to continue easing the collective oil production cuts by just 400,000 barrels per day next month, ignoring calls from the United States and other major oil-consuming nations to open the taps and tame the price rally. The rationale for keeping a cautious approach seems to be assessments from OPEC+ experts that Q4 would see a smaller market deficit than expected earlier and that the balance would tip into surplus next year…read more.
Two countries, two neighbors, two of the most populated countries in the world — China and India talked of their individual approaches to climate change at the COP26 summit in Glasgow, Scotland. The event was delayed by a year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It comes six years after the landmark Paris accord, which 200 countries signed. They pledged to limit rising global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. In addition, they would pursue efforts to cap heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
India aims for net-zero by 2070
As MetalMiner’s Stuart Burns explained last month, India is facing a coal crisis, as stocks have dwindled. Contrary to long-term environmental goals, India remains largely dependent on coal-fired power generation.
Nonetheless, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi committed to achieving net-zero emissions by 2070. That is 20 years beyond the goal set by the COP26 organizers and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP26, is the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference. The conference kicked off on Oct. 31 and will run until Nov. 12.
In his speech, Modi pledged the country would meet 50% of its energy needs through renewable sources by 2030. He also said India will achieve net-zero emissions by 2070. India is the world’s third-largest carbon emitter.
Xi calls for ‘stronger actions’
On the other hand, in a statement released during the summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for countries to take “stronger actions” on climate change.
“I hope all parties will take stronger actions to jointly tackle the climate challenge and protect the planet, the shared home for us all,” he said, according to China’s state media agency Xinhua, which published the statement.
Xi did not attend the summit…read more.
The federal government must work co-operatively with industry as it looks to draft an emissions cap for the oil and gas sector, Alberta business leaders said Monday, or risk far-reaching consequences for the Canadian economy.
In an interview Monday, Grant Fagerheim, chief executive of Calgary-based oil company Whitecap Resources Inc., warned of the dangers posed by a federal government that he believes is setting ambitious climate targets that it doesn’t know how to achieve.
“Setting out virtue-signaling commitments with no real firm targets is dangerous, and it’s reckless because at the end of the day, this is about the things that we can’t live without – food, heat, clothing and transportation.”
At COP26, the UN climate conference in Scotland on Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau formally committed to a cap on greenhouse gas emissions produced by Canada’s oil and gas industry…read more.
Benchmark wheat in Chicago climbed above US$8 a bushel for the first time in almost nine years amid growing inflation pressures that threaten to raise already soaring food prices worldwide.
Futures linked to other grain varieties in the U.S. and Europe also surged, with Paris milling wheat futures nearing an all-time high and Minneapolis spring wheat reaching the priciest level since April 2008.
Top importers are bulking up on grain amid limited global supplies after poor weather struck harvests in major exporting countries this year. That’s spurred wheat’s longest streak of monthly gains since 2007. Some growers also are contending with dry weather at planting time as well as soaring fertilizer costs that risk denting next year’s harvests.
“Speculators keep talking about inflation and are buying commodities for an inflation trade,” Jack Scoville, vice president for Price Futures Group in Chicago, said in a note…read more.
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