Oil and gas will remain crucial to the global energy mix for the foreseeable future despite the growth of renewables. Oil demand is expected to peak within the next decade, but projections indicate that more than half of today’s oil consumption – of around 105 million barrels per day – will persist until 2050. This enduring demand provides stability for NOCs, but they must navigate a market shaped by price volatility, geopolitical shifts and growing pressure to decarbonize.
Trump has called for opening up the UK North Sea to oil and gas and getting rid of windmills in response to the recent announcement by Texas-based Apache that it would cease oil and gas production in the region due to the uneconomical windfall tax.
“By the end of 1859 wells sprouted throughout the oil country,” writes the American Chemical Society (ACS). “In 1860 wells in northwestern Pennsylvania produced several hundred thousand barrels and by 1862 production reached three million barrels. The nation’s oil bonanza had begun, and huge fortunes would soon be made.”
Unsurprisingly, the cessation of Russian gas via Ukraine has pushed prices for natural gas higher across Europe. The Dutch TTF gas hub’s front-month contract reached a ten-month high of €42.57 per megawatt-hour, reflecting market jitters. Traders are also paying a record premium for European gas for the upcoming summer, a reversal of the usual pricing trend where summer gas is cheaper. This suggests there are significant concerns about the challenges in restocking during the summer of 2025.
Two years ago, West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark crude blend, joined the most traded, most liquid contract in the world: Brent. The move was hailed as a watershed moment in oil trading. With the oil market constantly changing, there could come a time when a Middle East blend might come to rival the international benchmark.
Iran’s output, which hit the highest since 2018 last year despite U.S. sanctions, fell by 70,000 bpd, the survey found. It may soon be curbed by tighter sanctions from the administration of incoming U.S. President Donald Trump, Goldman Sachs and other analysts have forecast.
Tesla stock is selling off prior to the cash open on Thursday after the company missed on its Q4 and annual delivery and sales number. Annual vehicle sales actually declined in 2024, marking the first drop in over a decade, despite achieving record deliveries in the fourth quarter.
The stocks of Canadian heavy oil producers have just taken a shellacking over the last six months. Much of the downdraft has coincided fairly well with the results of the American presidential election in early November, sending Donald Trump back to the White House. Trump has promised to levy a 25% tariff on Canadian imports if that country doesn’t improve its border security measures. The smart money recognizes this as being mostly bluster on his part, but it has put the Canadian government into a full-stop panic-as it was intended to do.
For the final week of the year, the EIA estimated a gasoline inventory build of 7.7 million barrels, with production averaging 9 million barrels. This compared with a build of 1.6 million barrels for the previous week, when production averaged 9.9 million barrels daily.
Exports of Russian gas via pipelines running through Ukraine finally came to an end on New Year’s Day, marking the end of an era of Moscow’s dominance over Europe’s energy markets. Russia’s gas firm Gazprom said it had supplying gas at 0500 GMT on Wednesday after Ukraine refused to renew a transit agreement. Ukraine will lose up to $1 billion a year in transit fees from Russia– which it hopes to offset by quadrupling its domestic gas transmission tariffs for consumers–while Gazprom will lose close to $5 billion in gas sales. Ukraine gas amounted to 5% of total EU gas imports.