UK to receive more Russian LNG

Spanish Market: Natural gas
04/02/21

The 14.8mn t/yr Isle of Grain LNG terminal has booked another Russian delivery for next week, bringing the UK's scheduled February Russian receipts to three.

The 172,600m³ Nikolay Zubov is expected at Isle of Grain on 11 February, having cast off from Sabetta yesterday.

The tanker will follow the 172,600m³ Georgiy Ushakov, which unloaded its Yamal cargo at Isle of Grain yesterday. One other Russian delivery — on board the 172,600m³ Vladimir Voronin — is scheduled at the 4mn t/yr Dragon facility for 10 February. Russia already made up most of the UK's receipts last month, accounting for six of the seven in total.

Yamal shipments to Europe climbed on the year in January. But 66pc of the cargoes were transshipped, leaving European receipts at 1.08mn t of LNG, down from 1.24mn t a year earlier.

Yamal's fourth 940,000 t/yr liquefaction train was commissioned last month, which could provide scope for stronger exports.

By Elaine Atwood

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28/01/25

US still eyes 1 February for Canada, Mexico tariffs

Washington, 28 January (Argus) — President Donald Trump is still keen to impose tariffs on all imports from Canada and Mexico as soon as 1 February, the White House said today. Trump in multiple public comments since taking office on 20 January said he was still considering a 25pc tariff on Canada and Mexico, even though his administration has yet to provide any details on the proposal. Trump spent much of his meeting on Monday with Republican lawmakers at their annual retreat in Florida blasting Canada and Mexico over their allegedly unfair trade practices. Tariffs should become a key source of income for the US government, just as they were in the nineteenth and early twentieth century before being supplanted by income taxes, Trump told the lawmakers, who are looking at ways to extend tax cuts enacted during his first term and set to expire at the end of 2025. Trump also said he would impose tariffs on all imported computer chips, semiconductors and pharmaceuticals. Trump's messaging on China tariffs has been more mixed. He said last week he would go on with his initial plans to impose a 10pc tax on all imports from China, but he also said he preferred to avoid a trade war with Beijing. An executive order Trump signed on 20 January lays out a process suggesting timelines of June-July for imposing tariffs on the US' key trading partners, with no reference to the 1 February deadline. But Trump has the legal authority to impose tariffs on imports from any country by a variety of executive actions and with very short notice, as he demonstrated over the weekend during a high-profile confrontation with Colombia over deporting migrants from the US. Trump told the lawmakers on Monday that he expects to wield the threat of tariffs as a negotiating tool often, because even "a very strong country" like Colombia caved in to his demands. Canada and Mexico appear to be preparing for a protracted trade confrontation with the US if Trump follows through on his threat, with retaliatory measures targeting specific US products and companies. The looming faceoff has unnerved the US oil producers and refiners, which are warning of severe impacts to the integrated North American energy markets if taxes are imposed on flows from Canada and Mexico to the US. Industry group American Petroleum Institute is lobbying the Trump administration to exempt crude and other energy products from any tariffs he plans to impose. Trump last week shrugged off the arguments from the US energy industry about potential negative impacts from confronting Canada and Mexico. "We don't need their oil and gas," Trump said. "We have our own, we have more than anybody." Almost all of Mexico's roughly 500,000 b/d of crude shipments to the US through November are waterborne, targeting Gulf coast refiners, and can be diverted to Asia or Europe. Canadian producers have much less flexibility — more than 4mn b/d of Canada's exports are wholly dependent on pipeline routes to and through the US. Only around 900,000 b/d can be directed away from the US via the recently expanded Trans Mountain pipeline system to the Pacific coast, although late-2024 flows were actually closer to 400,000 b/d, split evenly between the US west coast and Asia. Conversely, many refineries in the US midcontinent have no practical alternative to the Canadian crude. US gasoline prices would move higher by 30-70¢/USG if the 25pc tariffs that Trump has threatened were applied to Canada's oil, Canada's TD Bank projects. Trump's commerce secretary nominee Howard Lutnick will face a confirmation hearing at the Senate Commerce committee on Wednesday, with trade wars likely to feature high among the questions lawmakers direct at him. By Haik Gugarats Send comments and request more information at feedback@argusmedia.com Copyright © 2025. Argus Media group . All rights reserved.

Traders expect low uptake of 5-year Latvian gas storage

28/01/25

Traders expect low uptake of 5-year Latvian gas storage

London, 28 January (Argus) — Market participants expect limited demand for a new five-year gas storage product that Latvian operator Conexus will begin offering later this year. Conexus will offer a five-year product for its 25TWh Incukalns storage site for the first time ever on 11 February. This five-year offering will be in addition to the one and two-year products already previously offered by Conexus, along with the storage transfer and interruptible capacity products. All market participants surveyed by Argus expect weak demand for the five-year product, mostly because of unfavourable summer-winter spreads and traders' lack of willingness to commit to bookings that far ahead. Several respondents highlighted that only a limited pool of firms would be interested in planning their activities five years out. Most traders "do not look to the so distant future in the gas storage business", one said. "Not so many market players are ready to tie themselves to local gas markets for five storage cycles in a row," another said. Several respondents criticised the product's rules, with one noting that it could even lead to storage utilisation falling, "considering the fines for inventory transfer between storage seasons". Traders would try to "squeeze out the pipeline/LNG supply potential, rather than over-injecting", they added. Another said they were concerned that the share of the overall storage capacity allocated to the five-year product was "too high" and would make it possible for some market participants to "hijack this very much needed capacity in a similar way" to what happens at the Latvian-Lithuanian border point of Kiemenai. Several traders have expressed frustration that annual capacity at Kiemenai has been fully booked but only a small part is at times used , blocking other shippers from accessing the capacity and resulting in low utilisation rates. Another trader highlighted the product's limitation of only allowing a user to transfer up to 50pc of the total booked capacity from one storage cycle to the next without having to pay additional fees. The previous set of capacity products has been "tested for years and proven to be working", another market participant said, arguing that "imperfect but certain conditions are better than uncertain ones". One trader pointed out that a lack of interest in the five-year product could increase demand for the traditional one and two-year products, increasing the premium at these auctions further. Two other traders pointed out that given prevailing inverted summer-winter spreads, there is little financial incentive to book any capacity products, let alone make a five-year commitment. Ultimately, the "behaviour of local players is and will continue to be influenced by the closest summer-winter spread and the difference between this spread and the one-year storage tariff, not by long-term storage capacity of injection/withdrawal limits," one concluded. By Brendan A'Hearn Send comments and request more information at feedback@argusmedia.com Copyright © 2025. Argus Media group . All rights reserved.

US oil majors jump on AI data centre bandwagon

27/01/25

US oil majors jump on AI data centre bandwagon

New York, 27 January (Argus) — As the race picks up to meet the massive energy needs of data centres behind the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, ExxonMobil and Chevron are looking to grab a slice of the action. The US oil majors are making tentative inroads into the electricity business with early plans to build natural gas-fired power plants twinned with carbon capture technology to trap the emissions produced. Electricity demand in the US is soaring as technology giants scramble to power data centres. While wind and solar have a role to play, small nuclear reactors have been touted as one solution to meet the expected huge ramp-up in demand, but they are at least a decade away. That leaves natural gas to fill the gap and opens the door to companies such as ExxonMobil and Chevron, which have prior experience of developing power projects to run their own operations. "What we know from Big Tech is that they all have carefully crafted sustainability roadmaps," bank Raymond James' investment strategy analyst, Pavel Molchanov, says. "That means they need to balance this insatiable need for electricity with lower emissions. And carbon capture can be a very elegant solution to do exactly that." The majors see themselves as having an inbuilt advantage in being able to get large-scale infrastructure projects off the ground in a timely fashion. Any power plants they end up building could be located next to data centres, without having to rely on an already overburdened grid. "It's project management, it's supply chain development and sort of having a vertically integrated approach," Molchanov says. "These companies absolutely have that skill set." Unlike their European peers, ExxonMobil and Chevron have mostly shied away from renewable power on the grounds that the returns are too low and they have little expertise in this field. Instead, their low-carbon goals have focused on technologies such as carbon capture and storage (CCS), which play to core strengths. Adding such a component to gas-fired plants gives them an opportunity to showcase this preferred strategy. That was a point hammered home by ExxonMobil chief executive Darren Woods at last month's strategy update, when he maintained that the company still has little interest in getting into the power business as such. "We don't bring a lot of value creation to the power generation step, in and of itself," Woods said. "It's the ability to provide decarbonised natural gas to that power system, and the ability to capture the CO2 and then to transport it and sequester it, where we bring the value." Generation X factor Initial engineering and design work is already under way on such a project, ExxonMobil chief financial officer Kathy Mikells said. "The customer feedback has been incredibly encouraging," she added. ExxonMobil plans to trap more than 90pc of the CO2 from the plant's operations, and will tap its vast network of CO2 pipelines and sequestration sites — acquired as part of the $4.9bn acquisition of Denbury in 2023 — to transport and permanently store the emissions underground. Chevron chief executive Mike Wirth said recently that his company has been "deeply engaged" in conversations with the various hyperscalers involved in the buildout of data centres and in developing new AI tools. "America is blessed with an abundance of natural gas, and I think you're going to see a buildout of natural gas fired power generation that will support these data centres," he added. "We're certainly working on ideas like that." Surging demand from AI and data centres will play a part in supporting the investment case for the oil and gas industry for the remainder of the decade, according to the world's leading oil services contractor SLB. "AI is the X factor for our industry," SLB chief executive Oliver Le Peuch says. By Stephen Cunningham Send comments and request more information at feedback@argusmedia.com Copyright © 2025. Argus Media group . All rights reserved.

Trump tries again at faster energy permitting

27/01/25

Trump tries again at faster energy permitting

Washington, 27 January (Argus) — President Donald Trump is moving early in his second term to fast-track federal permitting by tapping into emergency powers he hopes will expedite approval of oil and gas infrastructure projects and electric transmission lines. Trump spent his first term promising a "massive" permitting overhaul that never materialised, after he was unable to achieve comprehensive updates through regulatory changes or a legislative deal in Congress. But in an executive order he signed on his first day in office that declares a "national energy emergency", he directed his administration to use emergency powers usually used to respond to issues such as natural disasters or short-term fuel shortages, to make it easier to build oil and gas pipelines, refineries and power plants. Trump's order argues that swift government action is needed because former president Joe Biden's policies have created an "emergency" under which energy supplies have become "precariously inadequate and intermittent" and the electric grid is "increasingly unreliable". It directs government agencies to use emergency powers to expedite issuance of water permits under the Clean Water Act and fast-track project reviews under the Endangered Species Act. It also asks regulators to "use all lawful emergency" powers to support the supply, refining and transportation of energy in the US west coast, northeast US and Alaska. But the White House will not offer expedited permitting for wind farms, which Trump detests and says should no longer be built. His administration has issued orders to stop leasing federal lands for wind farms, prompting an outcry from offshore wind group Turn Forward, whose executive director Hillary Bright sees a disconnect between declaring an energy emergency while impeding the buildout of wind power capacity, which is on track to grow by 60pc by 2028. Trump also rescinded a 1977 executive order supporting binding government-wide regulations for issuing environmental reviews of projects under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). This provides a chance to overhaul processes under NEPA, a decades-old law that often requires time-consuming reviews of projects that can take years to prepare and are regularly challenged in court. Where's the emergency? But tapping emergency powers to expedite permitting and overhaul NEPA processes could face substantial risks in court. Energy projects approved using novel processes would almost certainly face a barrage of lawsuits from environmentalists, who see no legal justification to jettison standard permitting rules that have been in place for decades. "There is no energy emergency. There is a climate emergency," environmental group NRDC's president, Manish Bapna, says. Republicans in Congress are considering ways to expedite permitting using a filibuster-proof manouevre called ‘budget reconciliation', which they also intend to use to cut taxes, expand fossil fuel leasing and push through other parts of Trump's agenda. Arkansas Republican representative,and chairman of the House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee, Bruce Westerman says "certain parts of permitting" could qualify for that bill, so long as they affect the federal budget. Industry officials are urging lawmakers to create durable energy policy. But Trump's efforts to roll back wind, solar and other clean energy projects — one executive order pauses disbursement of all funds enacted under Biden's signature climate laws — could threaten the bipartisan support required to pass comprehensive permitting changes. Democrats last year were willing to support permitting changes to help pipelines, in exchange for fast-tracking the electric grid buildout needed to deploy vast amounts of renewable energy. Blocking clean energy projects would remove an incentive for compromise. By Chris Knight Send comments and request more information at feedback@argusmedia.com Copyright © 2025. Argus Media group . All rights reserved.

Trump touts off-grid gas, coal for AI data centers

24/01/25

Trump touts off-grid gas, coal for AI data centers

New York, 24 January (Argus) — President Donald Trump said he plans to give developers "very rapid approvals" to build data centers running artificial intelligence (AI) software, as well as off-grid electric generating facilities to power them. "I'm going to give emergency declarations so they can start building them almost immediately," Trump told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in virtual remarks on Thursday. Allowing for a rapid increase in power generation capacity will enable the US to scale up its AI capabilities and be competitive with China, he said. Trump said he has been telling developers that he wants them to build electric generating facilities next to their planned data centers. These would bypass connection to the grid, which he said is "old" and unreliable. The developers will be able to fuel their generators with "anything they want," including natural gas, and could use "good, clean coal" as a back-up in case a gas pipeline were to explode, cutting gas supplies to a data center's off-grid gas power plant, he said. Trump's comments echo those made recently by executives in the oil and gas industry, who are betting that tech giants' desire to quickly build out data centers to develop their own AI software will force them to eschew the long, arduous interconnection process through which new customers connect to the grid, and instead secure their own personal supply of electricity generated by natural gas. ExxonMobil in December said it was in talks to provide AI data centers with "fully islanded" gas-fired power, which could be installed "independent of utility timelines" and at a pace that other baseload generation fuel sources, like nuclear, could not match. Alan Armstrong, chief executive of Williams, the largest US gas pipeline company, told Argus that AI data center operators are going to build in states where they can quickly secure off-grid electricity supplies. By Julian Hast Send comments and request more information at feedback@argusmedia.com Copyright © 2025. Argus Media group . All rights reserved.

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