Category: Nieuws

The torrent of Iranian oil that’s been gushing into China in recent weeks is crowding out imports from other nations and threatening to complicate efforts by the OPEC+ alliance to tighten supply in the global market.

China, the world’s largest crude oil importer, is currently buying close to 1 million barrels a day of sanctioned crude, condensate and fuel oil from the Persian Gulf nation, according to estimates by traders and analysts. That’s displacing favored grades from countries such as Norway, Angola, and Brazil, traders said, and resulting in an unusually quiet spot market.

Most refiners and traders around the world are reluctant to buy Iranian crude because of U.S. sanctions, which can result in repercussions like being cut off from the American banking system. However, the seemingly unstoppable rally in global crude prices is making the sharply discounted Iranian oil increasingly attractive to Chinese buyers including its independent refiners, which account for around a quarter of the country’s crude-processing capacity.

While global benchmark Brent is trading near $70 a barrel due to improving demand and tighter supplies from OPEC+, a continuation or increase in the Iranian flows could stymie the alliance’s efforts to keep driving up prices.

Iran is a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, but is exempted from the supply restrictions. However, China’s preference for its cheap crude is displacing demand from OPEC countries like Angola as well as other producers like Norway and Brazil — although the quality of oil from all of these countries is not identical.

As many as 10 million barrels of Angolan oil due for April export were still without buyers as of earlier this week, according to traders, compared with a typical month when such cargoes would have be sold out by now. Grades from Nigeria and Republic of the Congo have also struggled due a lack of buying interest, the traders said.

Three supertankers carrying oil from Norway’s Johan Sverdrup field have been floating off China for at least two weeks without discharging, shipping data show. Only 16 million barrels of North Sea crude left Europe for Asia in February, the least in four months, with the downward trend likely to continue in the short term, said traders involved in the market.

“With increased flows from places like Iran, and all the other grades’ arbitrage to China closed currently, the spot market is looking really weak,” said Yuntao Liu, an analyst with London-based Energy Aspects Ltd. “Between now and June to July, the teapots’ preferred grades such as West African crudes, Norway’s Johan Sverdrup and Brazilian crudes will be quite hard to sell.”

Chinese independent processors are often described as teapot refiners.

The Iranian oil flowing to China is a mix of barrels that are transported directly from the Persian Gulf, as well as Iranian-origin cargoes that are rebranded as Middle Eastern or Malaysian grades. Chinese imports of crude from the nation will average 856,000 barrels a day this month, the most in almost two years, data intelligence firm Kpler said last week.

Most of it is being purchased by domestic Chinese trading houses, traders said, as private and state-owned refiners try to distance themselves from dealings with the U.S.-sanctioned nation. It’s likely that these supplies will be temporarily held in onshore tanks before getting resold to local refineries on a later date, they added.

These private processors, which are mostly based in Shandong province, have been known to refine Iranian and Venezuelan crude into fuel, and utilize sludgy, low-quality fuel oil as feedstock for their units.

The increased Iranian flows are happening as the administration of President Joe Biden attempts to revive a nuclear deal with Tehran. The Persian Gulf supplier exported around 2.5 million barrels a day of oil before the sanctions were first imposed in 2018. Iran is starting the year as the “biggest wildcard” for oil prices, Ed Morse, head of commodities research at Citigroup Inc., said in a note in January.

Bloomberg, by Bloomberg News, March 19, 2021

Bp plc announced that it is developing plans for the UK’s largest blue hydrogen production facility, targeting 1GW of hydrogen production by 2030.

The project would capture and send for storage up to two million tons of carbon dioxide (CO₂) per year. The proposed development, H2Teesside, would be a significant step in developing ‎bp’s hydrogen business and make a major contribution to the UK Government’s target of developing 5GW of hydrogen production by 2030.

With close proximity to North Sea storage sites, pipe corridors and existing operational hydrogen storage and distribution capabilities, the area is uniquely placed for H2Teesside to help lead a low carbon transformation, supporting jobs, regeneration and the revitalisation of the surrounding area. Industries in Teesside account for over 5% of the UK’s industrial emissions and the region is home to five of the country’s top 25 emitters.

Dev Sanyal, bp’s executive vice president of gas and low carbon energy said: “Clean hydrogen is an essential complement to electrification on the path to net zero. Blue hydrogen, integrated with carbon capture and storage, can provide the scale and reliability needed by industrial processes. It can also play an essential role in decarbonising hard-to-electrify industries and driving down the cost of the energy transition.

“H2Teesside, together with NZT and NEP, has the potential to transform the area into one of the first carbon neutral clusters in the UK, supporting thousands of jobs and enabling the UK’s Ten Point Plan.”

UK Energy Minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan, said: “Driving the growth of low carbon hydrogen is a key part of the Prime Minister’s Ten Point Plan and our Energy White Paper and can play an important part in helping us end our contribution to climate change by 2050.

The project would be located in Teesside in north-east England and, with a final investment decision (FID) in early 2024, could begin production in 2027 or earlier. bp has begun a feasibility study into the project to explore technologies that could capture up to 98% of carbon emissions from the hydrogen production process.

With large-scale, low cost production of clean hydrogen, H2Teesside could support the conversion of surrounding industries to use hydrogen in place of natural gas, playing an important role in decarbonizing a cluster of industries in Teesside.

Blue hydrogen is produced by converting natural gas into hydrogen and CO₂, which is then captured and permanently stored. H2Teesside would be integrated with the region’s already-planned Net Zero Teesside (NZT) and Northern Endurance Partnership (NEP) carbon capture use and storage (CCUS) projects, both of which are led by bp as operator.

The project’s hydrogen output could provide clean energy to industry and residential homes, be used as a fuel for heavy transport and support the creation of sustainable fuels, including bio and e-fuels.

The project would be developed in stages, with an initial 500 MW of blue hydrogen capacity in production by 2027 or earlier and additional capacity to be deployed by 2030 as decarbonization of the industrial cluster and hydrogen demand gathers pace. bp sees potential for further hydrogen demand in Teesside beyond 2030.

Aiming to accelerate the development of the hydrogen cluster, bp has made a number of agreements with possible partners.

bp has agreed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Venator, one of the largest global producers of titanium dioxide pigments and performance additives, to scope the supply of clean hydrogen to its flagship Teesside plant.

bp has also agreed an MoU with Northern Gas Networks (NGN), the gas distributor for the North of England, to work together to initiate decarbonisation of the gas networks in the UK, helping to further decarbonise both industrial customers and residential homes through its gas network.

Separately, bp has also signed an MoU with Tees Valley Combined Authority (TVCA) to explore the potential for green hydrogen in the region, including the development of Teesside as the UK’s first hydrogen transport hub, as announced by the UK’s Department for Transport in September 2020. Green hydrogen is produced by the electrolysis of water, powered by renewable energy.

The development of businesses in emerging technologies such as ‎hydrogen and CCUS is an integral part of bp’s strategy of ‎transforming to an integrated energy company.‎ Hydrogen is expected to play a critical role in decarbonising the ‎power, industrial and transport sectors, especially those that are hard- or ‎expensive-to-electrify.

Last year, bp and Ørsted signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) to work together to develop a ‎project in Germany for industrial-scale production of green hydrogen, made by the electrolysis of water using ‎renewable power.

Chemical Engineering, by Mary Page Bailey, March 19, 2021

The world’s top oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, wasn’t just thinking about the global oil market when it rolled over its extra production cut into April and had the members of the OPEC+ alliance keep their total output basically flat next month, with small increases for Russia and Kazakhstan.  The Saudis, as well as other crude oil producers in the Middle East, were probably thinking of their budgets and current accounts as well, which need high oil prices to recover from the massive deficits and low oil revenues from last year, when the sudden oil demand and oil price collapse impacted their economies more than non-oil exporters during the pandemic. 

While aiming to further tighten the oil market, the OPEC+ group and its leading OPEC members in the Arab Gulf are also plugging some of the shortfalls from 2020, with Brent oil prices nearing the $70 a barrel mark. 

Higher oil prices are lowering the need for massive borrowing of the governments in the oil producers part of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)—Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). 

Last year, bond issues in the Middle East hit a record high of over $100 billion. Governments rushed to raise taxes and cut spending after the March 2020 collapse in oil prices. But these measures were insufficient to contain the damage, so producers incurred more debt to cover government spending, even if that spending was reduced compared to previous years.

If oil prices remain around their current levels over the next three years, GCC oil producers would dramatically cut their need to borrow money on the debt markets, Goldman Sachs economist Farouk Soussa says in a new report, as carried by Bloomberg. 

Oil averaging $65 per barrel over the next three years, all else being equal, would cut the borrowing needs to just $10 billion, compared to $270 billion, according to Goldman’s Soussa.

The current price of oil nearing $70 is good news for Saudi Arabia and basically every oil-producing nation in the world, as it would boost oil revenues that were decimated last year. Saudi Arabia, for example, was expected to see a $27.5-billion decline in oil revenues in 2020, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman himself said in November, admitting that the oil income was not enough to cover the Kingdom’s salaries bill.   

It’s not a total surprise, then, that the Saudis were pushing for—and obtained—an extension of the current OPEC+ cuts into April, or at least until clear signs of oil demand recovery emerge. 

An overtightened market would support higher oil prices, at least for a few months, until high oil prices potentially start to erode what OPEC+ still sees as a fragile global demand recovery, or until U.S. shale, especially privately held operators, become too tempted to pass on the opportunity to boost their oil production and revenues.

Signs have already started to emerge in India—the world’s third-largest oil importer—that high oil prices are slowing down the demand recovery after the crude price rally sent prices at the pump to record highs in recent weeks. 

Moreover, while higher oil prices are a boon to Middle East producers’ government revenues, they could once again become the excuse for many producers in the Gulf to overspend again and not undertake deep structural reforms to really reduce the dependence of their economies on oil revenues. 

Despite the Saudi Vision 2030 and continuous pledges for diversification from other oil producers in the Middle East, economies are still very much reliant on oil and the volatile nature of oil prices. The supply management policies of OPEC+, led by OPEC’s de facto leader Saudi Arabia, have sent oil prices rallying since the start of 2021, with budgets benefiting from the price spike. Yet, complacency with short-term oil revenue gains is setting the stage for more economic pain in the Middle East when oil prices enter the next bust cycle.

Oil Price, by Tsvetana Paraskova, March 19, 2021

NEW YORK — Charles Sussman, managing director and co-head of global oil trading at Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML), has left after nearly 10 years with the firm, two sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

A spokeswoman for BAML declined to comment. Sussman did not respond to a request for comment.

Wall Street often sees staffing changes around this time of the year after bonuses are handed out.

Bonuses for some traders at BAML were largely flat even though the bank’s trading desk had positive returns last year, one of the sources said.

Bank of America cut some of its staff in the global banking and markets division last week, Bloomberg News reported.

It was not immediately clear whether Sussman’s departure was related to the cuts.

Reuters, by Devika Krishna Kumar , March 16, 2021

NEW YORK – Oil prices were mixed on Thursday with U.S. crude edging up to its highest close since 2019 as Texas refineries restarted production after last week’s freeze, while Brent eased on worries that four months of gains will prompt producers to boost output.

Earlier in the day, an assurance that U.S. interest rates will stay low and a sharp drop in U.S. crude output last week due to the winter storm in Texas, helped boost both U.S. crude and Brent to their highest intraday prices since January 2020.

Brent futures for April delivery fell 16 cents, or 0.2%, to settle at $66.88 a barrel. The April Brent contract expires on Friday.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude, meanwhile, ended 31 cents, or 0.5%, higher at $63.53, its highest close since May 2019.

Analysts said WTI increased late in the day as more Texas refineries started to return to service, including Valero Energy Corp’s Port Arthur plant and Citgo Petroleum Corp’s Corpus Christi plant.

The freeze caused U.S. crude production to drop by more than 10%, or a record 1 million barrels per day (bpd) last week, while refining runs tumbled to levels not seen since 2008, the Energy Information Administration said. [EIA/S]

“The more refineries return to service, the more crude oil they will burn through, and the less crude oil will go to storage,” said Bob Yawger, director of energy futures at Mizuho in New York.

Overall, however, analysts noted price gains slowed on Thursday.

“With momentum appearing to slow a week before the next OPEC+ meeting, crude may be positioning for a small correction,” said Craig Erlam, senior analyst at OANDA, noting “There’s still plenty of downside risks in the market and one of them is OPEC+ unity coming under strain in the coming months.”

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies including Russia, a group known as OPEC+, are due to meet on March 4.

Analysts noted recent higher oil prices – both Brent and WTI have gained more than 75% over the past four months – could encourage U.S. producers to return to the wellpad and OPEC+ to loosen its production reductions.

The group will discuss a modest easing of oil supply curbs from April given a recovery in prices, OPEC+ sources said, although some suggest holding steady for now given the risk of new setbacks in the battle against the pandemic.

Extra voluntary cuts by Saudi Arabia in February and March have tightened global supplies and supported prices.

Meanwhile, an assurance from the U.S. Federal Reserve that interest rates would stay low for a while helped support oil prices earlier in the day and should boost investors’ risk appetite and global equity markets.

Reuters, by Scott DiSavino, March 16, 2021

As European and American oil companies face increased pressure and scrutiny on new climate restrictions, the Gulf has so far been avoided the heat.

ExxonMobil appointed a climate-minded activist investor to its board of directors after investment firm Engine No. 1 called on the American oil and gas giant to overhaul its board with expertise on climate change to drive its industrial transformation. The current business model is exposed to “immense risk” in the global realignment toward cleaner energies, Engine No. 1 said. In Europe, British oil and gas firm BP aims to become an “integrated energy company” and pledged to reduce its oil and gas production by over 40% by 2030.

There has been no such comparable trend in the Gulf. Saudi Aramco, the region’s largest state-owned oil company, did not include emissions from many refineries and petrochemical plants in its self-reported carbon footprint, misleading investors’ climate risk assessments. Aramco is “one of the few large, listed oil companies” that does not disclose Scope 3 emissions — produced when customers use its fuels — which typically account for “more than 80%” of oil companies’ total emissions,” Bloomberg reported. The emission rates make Aramco a world leader in carbon emissions.

Saudi Aramco did not respond to a request for comment..

“I have no regrets; it is a minor factor about how I think about Aramco,” said Saleh Al Omar, a Saudi retail investor who bought shares of Saudi Aramco during its initial public offering in 2019.

He told Al-Monitor carbon disclosures are “really not a factor” for Saudis who invest in the local stock market. Moreover, the government sponsoring the IPO had convinced him that shares would be “protected” from any significant downtrend.

Aramco’s disclosures nonetheless exceed the standards for regional and non-Western producers. “There is way more transparency from Aramco than any of the other oil and gas companies in the Gulf,” Jim Krane, energy fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute, told Al-Monitor. Oman’s largest oil producer, Petroleum Development Oman, did not respond to a request for comment.

“Saudi oil is cleaner than oil produced in America.”

Saudi Aramco and other Gulf producers are unlikely to face pressure from the US administration for further disclosures despite US President Joe Biden’s pledge to “lead the world to address the climate emergency.”

Indeed, the Saudi oil giant could reply that its oil is “probably the cleanest source of petroleum on earth,” implying that “Saudi oil is cleaner than oil produced in America,” Krane said.

Despite Saudi Aramco having produced 4.38% of the world’s carbon emissions since 1965, drilling a barrel of Saudi oil generates significantly fewer emissions than other producers — half that in the United States — Aramco’s IPO prospectus shows. 

“It is not something I would expect the Biden administration to highlight,” Krane said. 

A US State Department spokesperson told Al-Monitor the United States is “engaging the rest of the world — bilaterally and multilaterally — to step up climate action” and will therefore also “engage with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” on this issue.

Saudi Aramco was added in November 2020 to a list of 167 companies targeted by Climate Action 100+, one of the world’s leading investor groups. It aims to push companies responsible for much of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions to take action on climate change, including emissions cuts and improved climate-related disclosures.

Yet, unlike BP or energy giant Total, neither Saudi Aramco nor other Gulf oil companies have formulated net-zero targets, rather expressing aim to tighten their grip on global demand for oil and petroleum-based products. The crown prince of Abu Dhabi said in 2015 preparations are on to “ensure that our resources remain sustainable until the last drop of oil.”

Environmentalists argue Western oil companies’ net-zero claims — which mean removing the quantities of emissions produced from the atmosphere — are insufficient to limit global warming and fail to address the need to reduce carbon emissions.

The lack of environmental transparency is not limited to Gulf national oil companies. In November 2020, dozens of oil and gas companies committed to reporting more accurately on methane emissions under the European Union-United Nations-led Oil and Gas Methane Partnership, but Russian producers are not involved, nor any national oil companies apart from the United Arab Emirate’s Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.

Population remains “poorly informed” on oil industry’s impact

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, the oil and gas industry is “the largest industrial source of emissions of volatile organic compounds,” including air toxics, pollutants that are known or suspected to cause cancer or other serious health effects.

The United Nations Environment Programme estimates that air pollution, partly caused by the emissions and activities of oil and gas companies, is the most important environmental health risk of our time, causing one in nine deaths globally.

In the Gulf, although environmental awareness is on the rise, a “significant portion” of the population remains “poorly informed,” read an analysis by BCG, one of the world’s leading management consulting firms. About half of 18- to 24-year-olds said they “had never heard of or were unsure of the meaning of ‘carbon footprint,’” the 2021 BCG study found. 

Lack of understanding of climate issues coupled with restrictions over freedom of expression prevents most citizens from questioning the impacts of oil companies on public health.

In China, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, the government has declared a war on air pollution, yet the green targets of state energy producers lag behind those set by European energy majors despite PetroChina’s target for near-zero emissions by 2050, Reuters reported.

Reason to hope

To highlight the importance of corporate environmental transparency, environmental, social and governance (ESG) investment can play a role. However, “The Middle East is very much behind the curve in terms of ESG investing,” said green finance strategic adviser Jessica Robinson, founder of Moxie Future, a platform that seeks to empower women investors.

An “exceptionally meagre 7% of investors” in the region say they always take ESG factors into consideration in their investments, HSBC reported. Robinson told Al-Monitor that sovereign wealth funds should ultimately be the ones initiating a change in investment philosophy. “They are the one who sits at the top of the investment value chain, so once we get them to engage in the ESG agenda, it has ripple-through effects throughout the system.”

As a sign of goodwill, four of the six founding members of the One Planet Sovereign Wealth Fund Working Group are entities controlled by Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. The international coalition of sovereign wealth funds aims to integrate environmental considerations in the management of large, long-term asset pools. 

“We’ve got a long way to go but I am hopeful,” Robinson said.

AL-Monitor, by Sebastian Castelier, March 11, 2021

Oil prices rose early on Friday, adding to big gains overnight after OPEC and its allies agreed to not increase supply in April as they await a more solid recovery in demand from the coronavirus pandemic.

MELBOURNE: Oil prices rose early on Friday, adding to big gains overnight after OPEC and its allies agreed to not increase supply in April as they await a more solid recovery in demand from the coronavirus pandemic.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures climbed 17 cents, or 0.3per cent, to US$64.00 at 0128 GMT, holding below a 13-month high hit on Thursday.

Brent crude rose 10 cents, or 0.2per cent, to US$66.84 a barrel, but down from a high of US$67.75 hit on Thursday.

Both contracts soared more than 4per cent on Thursday after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies, together called OPEC+, extended oil output curbs into April, with small exemptions to Russia and Kazakhstan.

“It just goes to show how much of a surprise the OPEC+ discipline is,” said Michael McCarthy, chief market strategist at CMC Markets.

“What makes the gain even more impressive is that it comes against a risk-off backdrop and a higher U.S. dollar,” he said.

Oil prices usually fall when the dollar rises as a higher greenback makes oil more expensive for buyers with other currencies.

Investors were surprised that Saudi Arabia had decided to maintain its voluntary cut of 1 million barrels per day through April even after oil prices rallied over the past two months.

“The group’s supply discipline shows that Saudi Arabia’s preference for caution is being adhered to,” Commonwealth Bank commodities analyst Vivek Dhar said in a note.

Analysts are reviewing their price forecasts to reflect the continued supply restraint by OPEC+ as well as U.S. shale producers, who are holding back spending in order to boost returns to investors.

“Oil prices could rip higher now that a tight market is likely up through the summer. WTI crude at US$75 no longer seems outlandish and Brent could easily top US$80 by the summer,” OANDA analyst Edward Moya said in a note.

CNA, by Himani Sarkar, March 11, 2021

Crude oil prices dropped today after the Energy Information Administration reported what can only be described as a colossal crude oil inventory build of 21.6 million barrels for the week to February 26.

This was in stark contrast to the estimated 7.356-million-barrel build reported by the American Petroleum Institute and analyst expectations of an inventory draw of 1.85 million barrels. For the previous week, the EIA had estimated a crude oil inventory build of 1.3 million barrels.

The market yesterday shrugged off the API estimate of a crude inventory build thanks to a massive draw in gasoline stocks, at 9.93 million barrels and a similar-size decline in middle distillate stocks. Both draws resulted from refinery outages caused by the Texas Freeze that hit the state in February, hurting its oil and gas production and refining operations.

The EIA reported a 13.6-million-barrel decline in gasoline stocks for the last week of February, and an average production rate of 8.3 million bpd. This compared with virtually unchanged gasoline stocks—at 257.1 million barrels—for the third week of the month and a production rate of 7.7 million bpd.

For middle distillates, the EIA reported an inventory decline of 9.7 million barrels for the last week of February, versus a drop of 5 million barrels for the previous week. Distillate production averaged 2.9 million bpd last week, compared with 3.6 million bpd a week earlier.

Oil prices have been extra-volatile this week ahead of the OPEC+ meeting tomorrow, as internal divisions persist and deepen, and traders suspect the voices for production increases may gain the upper hand.

India has added fuel to the debate by calling on OPEC+ to drop the “artificial” cuts in production and let prices fall.

“Artificial cuts to keep the price going up is not something we support,” a Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas told media earlier this week.

Yet Middle Eastern oil producers desperately need higher oil prices to reduce deepening deficits and return to growth. Even so, they may have to consent to some form of production increase and turn the fight for prices into a fight for market share

Oil Price, by Irina Slav, March 11, 2021

Europe’s diesel market is crawling toward recovery, mirroring an uncertain and uneven re-emergence of the continent’s largest economies from Covid-19.

The fuel’s premium to crude — how profitable it is for oil refineries — stands at about $6.20 a barrel, according to ICE Futures Europe data. While that’s up from a low of $2 in September, it’s still by far the weakest for the time of year in over a decade. Another gauge, reflecting tightness of supply, briefly pointed to a tighter market around the middle of February as freezing U.S. weather lifted the global market. It has since flipped back to indicating surplus.

Bad But Less Bad

European diesel margins are recovering from a low base , while the market’s pickup from late last year reflected a global freight boom as people diverted spending toward goods and away from services, the next leg of diesel’s recovery hinges on how fast the region’s economies can ease restrictions to combat the spread of Covid-19. To that end, the paths of the continent’s four largest — Germany, the U.K., France and Italy — look mixed.

“As lockdowns ease and confidence returns, we can expect to see stronger diesel demand even within the next few weeks,” said Jonathan Leitch, director of EMEARC consulting at Turner, Mason & Co. “However, mobility is still depressed so any increase is likely to be slow until we see more of Europe open up as we move through to summer.”

Mixed Messages

In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel has backed a relaxation of coronavirus restrictions despite a stubbornly high infection rate, acknowledging that many Germans are weary of curbs on daily life after months of lockdown. The U.K. has now given almost a third of its population at least one vaccine shot and is aiming to reopen schools on Monday as part of a wider restart program. By contrast, France is considering tighter restrictions on 20 regions while Italy is tightening measures in some areas after a surge in cases.

The four countries’ combined diesel consumption of 2.13 million barrels a day last year accounted for 17 percent of all OECD Europe’s oil demand, according to figures from the International Energy Agency, the Paris-based adviser to governments.

The fate of diesel matters beyond the confines of a narrow group of European fuel traders. The petroleum product, often viewed as an indicator of economic health, is central to the profitability of the region’s refiners, which in turn help to fire global demand for crude. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and allied nations will on Thursday meet to discuss whether or not to add oil supply to the global market.

Overall, Europe’s consumption of diesel-type fuels is expected to average about 6.5 million barrels a day during February-June, according to Energy Aspects Ltd., an industry consultant. While that’s an increase from January, it’s still down by about 5% from 2019 levels.

The views of oil company traders and analysts are mixed about what comes next. Of half a dozen spoken to for this story, two saw little sign of any imminent demand recovery, two others talked about it picking up in April, one saw high demand in OECD Europe, and another said he thought German demand was rising.

But even if demand does return, there are other headwinds for diesel. Europe’s oil refineries are currently thought to be curbing the amount of crude they process, something they could quickly change if consumption picks up. Similarly, Covid-19 saw a buildup of stockpiles of the fuel, and those need to be cleared before the market can normalize — even if that’s beginning to happen.

“The incremental month-on-month increase, for us, is going to be relatively low,” said Koen Wessels, an oil products analyst at Energy Aspects. “Even if there is a pick up in, say, ultra low-sulfur diesel demand, this will be somewhat offset by seasonally softer heating oil demand.”

Bloomberg, by Jack Wittels, March 11, 2021

Global oil demand is recovering and could return to around pre-pandemic levels next year, the chief executives of Saudi Aramco and Chevron Corp told an oil and gas conference on Tuesday.

The coronavirus pandemic last year wiped out a fifth of worldwide demand for fuel as billions of people stopped traveling and sheltered at home.

Global demand for oil has recovered to around 94 million barrels per day (bpd) and could reach 99 million barrels per day (bpd)in 2022, said Aramco CEO Amin Nasser at IHS Markit’s online CERAWeek conference.

Economies are improving in China, India and East Asia, with vaccine deployment as “cause for optimism” in the West, Nasser said. “I see demand and the market continuing to improve from here, especially from the second half of this year,” he said.

Diesel demand is at or above pre-pandemic levels due to door-to-door deliveries, though jet fuel lags as people avoid long flights, said Chevron CEO Michael Wirth, who spoke on a panel with Nasser.

Both executives are bullish on natural gas. Saudi Arabia has targeted generating half of its electricity from natural gas and half from renewables by 2030.

Emissions of methane – a potent greenhouse gas that is the main component of natural gas – should be reduced and robustly monitored, Wirth said, adding that he expects greater regulation from the Biden administration.

Reuters, by Jennifer Hiller , March 11, 2021