Qatar’s reasons for exiting OPEC look muddled. The tiny Persian Gulf sheikhdom says it wants to concentrate on building on its position as the world’s biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG) instead of being a minor player in an oil cartel dominated by Saudi Arabia. Aside from saving on membership fees, leaving the group has few benefits and many risks.
The Barrel: the essential perspective on global commodities
 
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December 6, 2018 06:30 UTC 
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“We are ready to bring it down. It won’t drill a barrel of crude,” tweeted Mudoch Agbinibo, the leader of the militant group Niger Delta Avengers, which in 2016 brought Africa’s largest oil producer to its knees with brazen attacks on the Delta’s oil facilities. The tweet referred to the floating production storage and offloading unit of the 200,000 b/d Egina field, which is due to start up later this year, pushing up Nigeria’s oil output by over 10%. |
 
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December 5, 2018 11:29 UTC
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While politics have always played an important role in the energy sector, over the past few years a trend toward a new class of energy-related decision-making seems to have emerged, with non-economic or sub-economic policies increasingly in evidence. |
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December 4, 2018 14:39 UTC
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The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port said Saturday that about 17,670 b/d of LOOP Sour was delivered ex-cavern from the US Gulf Coast crude terminal in November, which was over a 40% increase from the month before. LOOP said 530,000 barrels of the medium sour crude blend were pulled from the Louisiana cavern last month. That was an increase from the 370,000 barrels delivered in October, which marked a more-than-one-year low. Deliveries dipped in October as the market shifted from backwardation to contango, making storing crude more attractive. However, that contango has eased and the market has become slightly backwardated, a trend that would make crude storage less favorable. |
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December 4, 2018 10:43 UTC
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With volatility making a return to the previously calm US natural gas futures market, it’s important to remember that price swings happen in both directions, as individual fundamentals wax and wane in terms of their influence. November saw notable price volatility in the December Henry Hub prompt-month contract. The December contract settled and expired at $4.715/MMBtu, up $1.53/MMBtu from the November NYMEX settle. |
 
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December 3, 2018 16:08 UTC
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The Brazilian steel, metals and mining sectors expect an upturn in investments in the country in second-half 2019 following inauguration of a new government which aims to end a period of institutionalized corruption. Representatives of industry associations and the mining sector talked up the prospects of economic recovery under incoming president Jair Bolsonaro last week in Rio de Janeiro, but bumps in the road may remain, from a tricky trade relationship with China to the high cost of financing. |
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December 3, 2018 11:24 UTC
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US upstream company Occidental Petroleum is committed to carbon capture and injection as a method of boosting oil recovery both in its Permian shale operations and outside the US, CEO Vicki Hollub said last week. She was one of a number of industry leaders who outlined carbon capture projects around the world, many geared to utilizing CO2 from heavy industry in Europe and the US, at the Accelerating CCUS conference in Edinburgh. |
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November 29, 2018 06:30 UTC
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Both the transportation and power industry have been facing significant changes, driven by a combination of policy and technological factors, and S&P Global Platts Analytics sees lithium-ion batteries playing an instrumental role in these transformations. When it comes to batteries, there have been and will continue to be synergies of power storage and transport sector battery technology. In the power sector, large deployments of wind and solar photovoltaics will increase the need for storage to manage their intermittency. Recently, the US has seen several RFPs in which developers have bid projects combining solar PV assets and lithium-ion batteries – a trend discussed recently in S&P Global Platts Analytics’ U.S. Power Storage Outlook. |
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November 27, 2018 15:00 UTC
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Two rare cargoes of US Gulf Coast crude could be making their way to Venezuela, according to S&P Global Platts fixtures reports. Last week, Vitol was heard to have booked two Panamax-sized vessels to move crude from the USGC to Venezuela. Panamax vessels can carry roughly 500,000-800,000 barrels of crude oil. One of those vessels, the SCF Pacifica, was loaded in Houston over the weekend. |
 
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November 26, 2018 11:17 UTC
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The carbon market in Europe made a big comeback in 2018 after years of stagnation, with prices of European Union allowances more than quadrupling to above €20/mt ($23/mt) after lawmakers overhauled the system’s rules for the period after 2020. Higher carbon prices are likely to boost the profitability of companies operating nuclear, wind, solar and hydro-electric power plants, driving further growth in renewable energy capacity in Europe. They also signal a long-term drop in the use of the most emissions-intensive fuels for power generation, hard coal and lignite, and provide a stimulus for innovation in low-carbon industrial goods and processes. |