Hurricane Ida is now officially the most devastating hurricane ever in terms of oil production disruption, and experts expect the outages to last throughout the month of September.
The US Gulf of Mexico is gradually bringing back disrupted production – as of today roughly a quarter of oil output remains offline – however the overall anticipation of further stock draws in the US have weighed upon the market sentiment and helped Brent prices home in on the $75 per barrel mark. Ida-triggered supply disruptions will only exacerbate the market tightness in the upcoming weeks, as the pace of global demand recovery exceeds supply increments, despite OPEC+ pushing out more barrels into the market, OilPrice said.
China’s oil consumption is likely to peak around 2026 at about 16 million barrels per day and that of natural gas by around 2040, according to a top executive of Sinopec Corp. Sinopec’s oil peak forecast echoes a prediction by consultancy Rystad Energy in April that cited rapid adoption of electric vehicles as the main cause for global oil demand to peak over the next five years, Reuters reports.
Oil will shift eventually to become a raw material for chemicals rather than fuel, Ma Yongsheng, Sinopec’s acting chairman told a seminar in Beijing on Thursday that was confirmed by a company representative on Friday. The top Asian oil refiner will “forcefully promote” green growth of its refining and petrochemical business and remove inefficient and energy-intensive capacities.
“We will accelerate the transition from oil to chemicals and boost production of high-end materials…and raise lower-carbon feedstocks to cut down the carbon footprint throughput the manufacturing cycle,” said Ma. The firm aims to have its average single refinery’s crude processing capacity to reach 10 million tonnes per year, or 200,000 bpd, he added, without giving a comparative figure.
China’s natural gas consumption is forecast to peak around 2040, when demand is estimated at 620 billion cubic meters, and it will become China’s top fossil fuel resource around 2050, Ma said. China sees natural gas a key bridge fuel that is going to expand steadily in demand for the next two decades.
Brazil’s national oil company Petrobras is coming under increasing domestic scrutiny as the parliament’s speaker claimed he was left unsatisfied with explanations provided by the oil firm’s executive about recent fuel price increases in the Latin American country. Guyana’s government confirmed that Saudi Aramco’strading arm ATL will receive a one-year contract to market the state’s crude entitlement, with the contract running until August 2022. Mexican national oil company PEMEX canceled a series of contracts with the world’s largest trader Vitol amidst an ongoing graft investigation that has reportedly uncovered a system of kickbacks and bribes to land supply deals with the Mexican firm.
UK-based oil firm Tullow Oilincreased the overall resource estimate of its Turkana project that should now have an output plateau of 120kbpd (up 50% from the previous estimate) with a total of 585 million barrels of oil recoverable. The most recent licensing round of new acreage in the Norwegian Continental Shelf has attracted bids from 31 oil firms including NCS regularsEquinor and Lundin Energy, just as Norway’s election winners, the Labour Party, reiterated their support for further drilling, OilPrice reported.