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Thanks Duc.
Oil price discussion and analysis
- Thread starter wayneL
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Not sure if your understanding what I’m talking about.
Gas to liquid fuels are already underway and being used.
Synthetic fuels are a replacement for oil based fuels but much cleaner. So all your cars, trucks,plains, busses, ships, and so on still go on. On a marketing point of view it’s just a name change. You will still be going to the same service station as you normally go to. It just won’t be called diesel. It will be renamed as something like E-diesel or something.
I can’t help think that this covid lock down has some part to play in all this because they already have announced in Britain that they are thinking of using the down time to switch all the aviation industry to the new fuel platform.
NASA has been trialing synthetic jet fuel for over 7 years now. It’s safe for aviation to use and it’s cleaner and it’s co2 neutral. Zero sulphur.
Even my engine oil is made with co2 neutral
No one makes engine oil out of crude anymore it’s a terrible substance to work with and needs a lot of processing to clean it up.
Synthetics are far cheeper and cleaner
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WTI crude is back above pre-crash levels:
Still another 20% price increase for POO to break through resistance, so recovery is not close.
Nevertheless, as most Oz producers have breakeven prices significantly lower than US LTO producers they won't be burning through their cash.
On the plus side, producers have worked out that they need to review their cost of doing business, and their recent belt tightening should allow them to become profitable at lower crude prices than previously.
Still another 20% price increase for POO to break through resistance, so recovery is not close.
Nevertheless, as most Oz producers have breakeven prices significantly lower than US LTO producers they won't be burning through their cash.
On the plus side, producers have worked out that they need to review their cost of doing business, and their recent belt tightening should allow them to become profitable at lower crude prices than previously.
Garpal Gumnut
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Agree. We are moving in to a global wartime phase so time to move out of gold and pure IT and into oilers, defence and defence/IT stocks.
The rush has begun.
gg
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Co2 neutral? No way, i do not really see how it is cleaner, we will need to use a lot of energy to go from gas to liquid, longuer chains of aromatics etc or even a very basic one will need energy
I never really understood the gas attraction vs co2
Yes less sulfur etc so cleaner for the air, but the energy released by breaking chxxx into co2 and h2o remains the same
And petrol is already liquid wo having to be compressed.
Petrol might be on the way out but gas is just an in between trandition phase
H2 made by solar sure, but not yet there by far
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A bit of gap between posts here, but WTI just broke through resistance.
While US drillers have added the odd handful of rigs per week over recent months, Canadian oil and gas drillers last week added bumper numbers. I have not looked for a reason, so if others know, please add.
While US drillers have added the odd handful of rigs per week over recent months, Canadian oil and gas drillers last week added bumper numbers. I have not looked for a reason, so if others know, please add.
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In physical sense GTL is a thing certainly.
From a financial market perspective though, and this is my point, liquid fuels are what runs pretty much every aircraft, car, motorbike and so on on the planet. No chance that demand's disappearing overnight unless we're talking about lockdowns etc.
If someone could find a way to turn clay into gold then the product of that process would be priced according to the gold price not the clay price.
Much the same with GTL - from a financial perspective it's effectively a source of oil given that its outputs are direct substitutes, used without any modification of equipment, for oil and things derived from it. A barrel of diesel fuel produced from gas would fit much better into the "oil" classification than it fits into the "gas" classification given that it's a liquid at ambient temperature and pressure.
My point's a financial one not a chemistry or engineering one. There's an ongoing demand for oil-like things for quite some time yet be they produced from actual crude oil or some other feedstock.
Garpal Gumnut
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You took the words out of my mouth.In physical sense GTL is a thing certainly.
From a financial market perspective though, and this is my point, liquid fuels are what runs pretty much every aircraft, car, motorbike and so on on the planet. No chance that demand's disappearing overnight unless we're talking about lockdowns etc.
If someone could find a way to turn clay into gold then the product of that process would be priced according to the gold price not the clay price.
Much the same with GTL - from a financial perspective it's effectively a source of oil given that its outputs are direct substitutes, used without any modification of equipment, for oil and things derived from it. A barrel of diesel fuel produced from gas would fit much better into the "oil" classification than it fits into the "gas" classification given that it's a liquid at ambient temperature and pressure.
My point's a financial one not a chemistry or engineering one. There's an ongoing demand for oil-like things for quite some time yet be they produced from actual crude oil or some other feedstock.
The USA is heading in to chaos and the geopolitical situation with China, N Korea and the Islamic Countries is darkening
Oil and gas, available and with the infrastructure in place, will remain the primary fuel for military and civilian use worldwide.
I’m ramping up the oilers in my SMSF.
gg
Dona Ferentes
Abrió la caja, vio al gatito, y sonrió
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reports of its demise are premature (I know it's LNG not oil, but ...)
www.reuters.com
Plus, there were reports that an Australian cargo of LNG from the $US54 billion ($70 billion) Gorgon plant in WA reportedly changed hands over the weekend for an incredible price of about $US37 per million British thermal units, more than 18 times higher than the price about six months ago.
- logistical issues? Not enough thermal coal, perhaps
GLOBAL LNG-Asian spot prices rise to record high
Asian spot prices for liquefied natural gas (LNG) jumped nearly 50% this week to a record high, based on available data going back to 2009, as logistical issues disrupt supply to the world's top consuming region.
www.reuters.com
Plus, there were reports that an Australian cargo of LNG from the $US54 billion ($70 billion) Gorgon plant in WA reportedly changed hands over the weekend for an incredible price of about $US37 per million British thermal units, more than 18 times higher than the price about six months ago.
- logistical issues? Not enough thermal coal, perhaps
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Well that leaves me wondering what's going on?
On an energy equivalent basis that's equivalent to about $215 per barrel of oil.
Whoever wanted that gas must be (1) desperate for supply (2) needs it "as gas" and can't substitute oil or coal.
Dona Ferentes
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and as its Gorgon, it's probably on long term contract. Got an offer they couldn't turn down < Chevron (47.3 percent), ExxonMobil (25 percent), Shell (25 percent), Osaka Gas (1.25 percent), Tokyo Gas (1 percent) and JERA (0.417 percent) > and, likely, another tanker on its way soon.Well that leaves me wondering what's going on?
On an energy equivalent basis that's equivalent to about $215 per barrel of oil.
Whoever wanted that gas must be (1) desperate for supply (2) needs it "as gas" and can't substitute oil or coal.
... so, the lights going out all over Asia? Colder than usual winter and disruption to Malaysian LNG production, according to Reuters
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Actually both Asia and Europe are experimenting colder than usual winters snows everyxhere etc.as it conflicts with the global warming narrative, no news here, but yes oil and gas usage going higher and higher there
over9k
So I didn't tell my wife, but I...
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Ok couple of big posts coming up as I've been moving into a lot more oil & energy trades of late so here's the culmination of several weeks' of research:
In 2019, coal was the principal fuel for chinese electricity generation, providing more than half (60%) of China’s electricity generation. In that same year, over 89% of Australia's coal exports went to china.
Although changing natural gas prices and renewable costs generally produce proportional shifts in the electricity sector’s fuel mix, regionally-specific fuel dynamics and resource availability are also important factors.
Decreases in natural gas prices produce the largest changes in the generation mix. Natural gas is relatively insensitive to changes in renewable costs in China, and the largest driver of natural gas generation remains natural gas fuel prices.
Solar could become the predominant source of electricity generation by 2050 if renewable costs are low and natural gas prices are high or at the reference level, however:
A combination of geographic unsuitability plus significant natural gas reserves (which are yet to be extracted) makes this unlikely.
At the 2019 Paris climate change conference, China also pledged to reach peak carbon output by 2030, however, China has nearly 250 gigawatts (GW) of coal-fired power now under development, more than the entire coal power capacity of the United States. So when Xi says China will peak…what he is preparing us all for is a massive (they never stopped) and continued investment.
Our Chinese friends now have 97.8 GW of coal-fired power under construction, and another 151.8 GW at the planning stage. And so while some poor sap was penning Xi’s carefully crafted speech to the UN, Xi and his underlings were busy. Busy financing and building out what is likely to be the worlds most impressive global energy infrastructure.
Just this year plants accounting for some 17 GW began construction in China. To put this into context this is more than the total amount approved during the previous two years. But they are not only investing in their backyard. Nope… according to a Boston University database they have made more than $244 billion in energy investments abroad since 2000 with the bulk of that in recent years going into oil and gas.
(Yeah not wind, solar or renewable and recyclable Unicorn farts. Good 'ol O&G…)
A healthy $50 billion of has gone toward dirty old coal!
They’ve done all of this, and will continue to do more, while paying lip service to “carbon emission reductions”. That our western leaders are as gullible as they are is a tragedy but simply ensures the west is going to end up being a source of houseboys for their Chinese overlords by the next decade.
As mentioned by the institute for energy research:
These Chinese corporations are building or planning to build more than 700 new coal plants at home and around the world, some in countries that today burn little or no coal, according to tallies compiled by Urgewald, an environmental group based in Berlin. Many of the plants are in China, but by capacity, roughly a fifth of these new coal power stations are in other countries. In total there are 1,600 new coal-fired plants planned or under construction in 62 countries, according to Urgewald’s tally, which uses data from the Global Coal Plant Tracker portal. The new plants would expand the world’s coal-fired power capacity by 43 percent.
https://www.instituteforenergyresea...ement-china-india-continue-build-coal-plants/
So the question becomes, why?
Well, there's more to it than economics. Specifically, it's about the aforementioned resource security:
As you can see, shipping coal from australia is nowhere near the gauntlet that has to be run from the persian gulf all the way to east asia - to get an oil tanker from saudi arabia to china you have to pass no fewer than 11 different countries, all of which hate you, and keep several major shipping choke points/routes open all at once, and do so thousands upon thousands of KM from home.
Oil tankers are a lot of things, but nimble a 500,000 ton tanker is not:
And when they have to pass through multiple choke points that can be closed without even so much as needing a navy, straits just a couple of dozen KM wide where just a handful of beach-launched missile batteries (even 100 year old artillery guns have that kind of range) are enough to cut almost the entirety of your oil supply off literally over night:
You can see why china, and indeed, all of asia, is so desperate to get off oil dependence. The problem is that, as I showed before, renewable energy just doesn't work in asia - the climate simply doesn't give them enough wind/sunlight in order for renewables to be able to do the job, which means that coal is the next best option.
Even if that means coal dependence, coal's a hell of a lot more secure/easier to get from australia than oil is from the persian gulf.
The middle-east is also acutely aware of this fact and it is why Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps troops on monday seized a south-korean oil tanker and forced the vessel to a nearby Iranian port in order to hopefully make the koreans release billions of dollars of Iranian assets frozen in South Korea under US sanctions:
www.dw.com
In Other Non-OECD Asia, the main dynamic driving the region’s generation mix is a three-way competition between coal, natural gas, and renewable technologies. Without a unitary emissions policy in this region, natural gas and renewables are only economically competitive with coal generation when their respective fuel prices and capital costs are low. Decreasing natural gas fuel prices by 50% by 2050 makes natural gas the primary fuel for electricity generation in the region. Conversely, raising natural gas fuel prices, particularly when combined with lowered renewable capital costs, raises the aggregate generation share of solar, wind, and hydro technologies to 61%, more than double the Comparative Reference case levels (29%). Solar resources are generally the most economically competitive and available renewable technology in this region. Unlike China, however, this region can develop economically attractive hydro resources to help balance intermittent generation produced from wind and solar technologies.
So in other words, even now, renewables still aren't economically competitive with oil, but it isn't economics that's driving asia's energy policies, so we can expect endless subsidies for basically everything except oil (and obviously the more secure the energy type the more it will be favoured) until some form of secure energy becomes economically viable in asia, but simple geography (climate) means that that is still a long way off.
It actually looks like it's going to be coal that's the "transition" energy production fuel between oil & renewables as whilst coal isn't great from a supply security perspective, it's still a hell of a lot more secure than oil.
It also explains why collective governments throughout asia (china especially) are throwing everything including the kitchen sink at electric car production as electric cars can indirectly run on the much more supply-secure coal whereas ICE cars cannot.
But even if we take the whole energy-security question out of it completely, they still have a major problem just producing enough energy in the first place even now, which I'll cover in the next post.
In 2019, coal was the principal fuel for chinese electricity generation, providing more than half (60%) of China’s electricity generation. In that same year, over 89% of Australia's coal exports went to china.
Although changing natural gas prices and renewable costs generally produce proportional shifts in the electricity sector’s fuel mix, regionally-specific fuel dynamics and resource availability are also important factors.
Decreases in natural gas prices produce the largest changes in the generation mix. Natural gas is relatively insensitive to changes in renewable costs in China, and the largest driver of natural gas generation remains natural gas fuel prices.
Solar could become the predominant source of electricity generation by 2050 if renewable costs are low and natural gas prices are high or at the reference level, however:
A combination of geographic unsuitability plus significant natural gas reserves (which are yet to be extracted) makes this unlikely.
At the 2019 Paris climate change conference, China also pledged to reach peak carbon output by 2030, however, China has nearly 250 gigawatts (GW) of coal-fired power now under development, more than the entire coal power capacity of the United States. So when Xi says China will peak…what he is preparing us all for is a massive (they never stopped) and continued investment.
Our Chinese friends now have 97.8 GW of coal-fired power under construction, and another 151.8 GW at the planning stage. And so while some poor sap was penning Xi’s carefully crafted speech to the UN, Xi and his underlings were busy. Busy financing and building out what is likely to be the worlds most impressive global energy infrastructure.
Just this year plants accounting for some 17 GW began construction in China. To put this into context this is more than the total amount approved during the previous two years. But they are not only investing in their backyard. Nope… according to a Boston University database they have made more than $244 billion in energy investments abroad since 2000 with the bulk of that in recent years going into oil and gas.
(Yeah not wind, solar or renewable and recyclable Unicorn farts. Good 'ol O&G…)
A healthy $50 billion of has gone toward dirty old coal!
They’ve done all of this, and will continue to do more, while paying lip service to “carbon emission reductions”. That our western leaders are as gullible as they are is a tragedy but simply ensures the west is going to end up being a source of houseboys for their Chinese overlords by the next decade.
As mentioned by the institute for energy research:
These Chinese corporations are building or planning to build more than 700 new coal plants at home and around the world, some in countries that today burn little or no coal, according to tallies compiled by Urgewald, an environmental group based in Berlin. Many of the plants are in China, but by capacity, roughly a fifth of these new coal power stations are in other countries. In total there are 1,600 new coal-fired plants planned or under construction in 62 countries, according to Urgewald’s tally, which uses data from the Global Coal Plant Tracker portal. The new plants would expand the world’s coal-fired power capacity by 43 percent.
https://www.instituteforenergyresea...ement-china-india-continue-build-coal-plants/
So the question becomes, why?
Well, there's more to it than economics. Specifically, it's about the aforementioned resource security:
As you can see, shipping coal from australia is nowhere near the gauntlet that has to be run from the persian gulf all the way to east asia - to get an oil tanker from saudi arabia to china you have to pass no fewer than 11 different countries, all of which hate you, and keep several major shipping choke points/routes open all at once, and do so thousands upon thousands of KM from home.
Oil tankers are a lot of things, but nimble a 500,000 ton tanker is not:
And when they have to pass through multiple choke points that can be closed without even so much as needing a navy, straits just a couple of dozen KM wide where just a handful of beach-launched missile batteries (even 100 year old artillery guns have that kind of range) are enough to cut almost the entirety of your oil supply off literally over night:
You can see why china, and indeed, all of asia, is so desperate to get off oil dependence. The problem is that, as I showed before, renewable energy just doesn't work in asia - the climate simply doesn't give them enough wind/sunlight in order for renewables to be able to do the job, which means that coal is the next best option.
Even if that means coal dependence, coal's a hell of a lot more secure/easier to get from australia than oil is from the persian gulf.
The middle-east is also acutely aware of this fact and it is why Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps troops on monday seized a south-korean oil tanker and forced the vessel to a nearby Iranian port in order to hopefully make the koreans release billions of dollars of Iranian assets frozen in South Korea under US sanctions:
Seoul presses Iran over seized oil tanker as tensions rise – DW – 01/07/2021
Iran's seizure of a South Korean-flagged oil tanker comes after Tehran urged Seoul to release billions of dollars of Iranian assets frozen in South Korea under US sanctions.
www.dw.com
In Other Non-OECD Asia, the main dynamic driving the region’s generation mix is a three-way competition between coal, natural gas, and renewable technologies. Without a unitary emissions policy in this region, natural gas and renewables are only economically competitive with coal generation when their respective fuel prices and capital costs are low. Decreasing natural gas fuel prices by 50% by 2050 makes natural gas the primary fuel for electricity generation in the region. Conversely, raising natural gas fuel prices, particularly when combined with lowered renewable capital costs, raises the aggregate generation share of solar, wind, and hydro technologies to 61%, more than double the Comparative Reference case levels (29%). Solar resources are generally the most economically competitive and available renewable technology in this region. Unlike China, however, this region can develop economically attractive hydro resources to help balance intermittent generation produced from wind and solar technologies.
So in other words, even now, renewables still aren't economically competitive with oil, but it isn't economics that's driving asia's energy policies, so we can expect endless subsidies for basically everything except oil (and obviously the more secure the energy type the more it will be favoured) until some form of secure energy becomes economically viable in asia, but simple geography (climate) means that that is still a long way off.
It actually looks like it's going to be coal that's the "transition" energy production fuel between oil & renewables as whilst coal isn't great from a supply security perspective, it's still a hell of a lot more secure than oil.
It also explains why collective governments throughout asia (china especially) are throwing everything including the kitchen sink at electric car production as electric cars can indirectly run on the much more supply-secure coal whereas ICE cars cannot.
But even if we take the whole energy-security question out of it completely, they still have a major problem just producing enough energy in the first place even now, which I'll cover in the next post.
over9k
So I didn't tell my wife, but I...
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So if things weren't bad enough when your energy supply isn't secure, imagine if you couldn't keep up with energy demand even when it is:
China’s roaring industrial rebound from the pandemic has an unforeseen consequence -- the surge in power demand has left factories, office buildings and street lights in some areas straining under an electricity shortage.
The country’s local governments are cutting power to some industrial and commercial customers in several provinces. State-owned companies are sending an army of workers to inspect power lines, and authorities are urging coal miners to produce more.
But that’s done little to quell the stream of domestic media reports on struggling cities. With the rest of the world growing ever-more dependent on China’s medical equipment and electronics exports as their pandemic-ravaged economies suffer, the focus abroad is also increasingly turning to the Asian manufacturing giant’s power supply.
“As the global economy recovers, it will be imperative for China to stabilize its power supplies,” said Rana Mitter, professor of Chinese politics at the University of Oxford. “There is a move in the West to re-shore supply chains and unreliability of power supply in China could be another motivation to do this.”
The world is relying on China’s factories like never before. As one of the first economies to emerge from a pandemic induced lockdown, and as a leading producer of protective gear and medical equipment, China’s exports have soared to record levels. That’s led to surging demand for power, with November consumption up 9.4% over the previous year, the highest level in more than two years.
On top of that, colder-than-normal weather is now adding to winter demand as people heat their homes, and ice is also wreaking havoc on grid infrastructure. Meanwhile, some parts of the country are curtailing electricity to keep emissions in check. That’s left some regions without enough power during peak hours, with two expected to have lasting shortfalls.
“Weather conditions for the following months will be the key factor to determine the scale of the outage,” said Hanyang Wei, an analyst with BloombergNEF. “Peak load would drop quickly if cold weather lasts for just a few days.”
This is all happening as coal, the fuel of choice for a majority of China’s power generation, remains in short supply. The government had limited imports to support domestic miners, and imposed an unofficial ban on Australian shipments amid a diplomatic spat. But domestic supplies haven’t risen as much as needed following a recent spate of deadly mining accidents.
That’s left the country grappling with surging energy prices. Local coal futures have soared to a record, while the costs for natural gas, another heating and power fuel, have also jumped. State-owned energy giants have gone so far as to warn firms against publicly discussing the supply-demand issue on concern prices will rise further, and the government has urged major mining regions to boost output.
Nearly all major cities are facing colder temperatures this winter, with some as much as 5 degrees Celsius below last year’s levels, Morgan Stanley analysts including Sara Chan said in a Dec. 23 research note. This is the main reason behind the surge in coal prices and is helping drive government intervention in power allocation.
In Hunan and Jiangxi provinces, power supplies have been cut to some industrial and commercial customers after demand rose at least 18% from a year earlier and transportation issues curtailed coal supplies, a National Development and Reform Commission official said Monday. Hunan’s power supply could be short by as much as 12%, according to BNEF.
The power crunch “will probably linger as an issue for a couple more months,” said James Stevenson, senior director for coal, metals and mining at IHS Markit. “When you get this short, really what you need to do is curtail demand, and that is what we are seeing.”
Big industrial users are on the front-lines of being cut off from electricity, followed by commercial buildings, in order to keep supply safe for residential consumers, according to BNEF’s Wei said. “Local industries will take a hit if the outage lasts for long,” Wei said.
Result?
Everyone are buying diesel (yes, diesel) generators to produce their own electricity as the grid simply can't provide enough of it even now:
A frigid winter is leading to power shortages in parts of China, driving up demand for diesel as factories rush to install generators to keep the lights on.
Some provinces have started rationing electricity to industrial and commercial users to make sure there’s enough power to heat homes during a colder-than-typical winter. That’s prompting factories to snap up portable generators and the diesel they run on to ensure their plants stay open to meet orders amid record-high exports from the country.
The Chinese meteorological authority earlier issued an orange alert nationwide - the second-highest level in its four-tier system - as a cold wave sweeps through the nation. With temperatures still expected to dip further, grid operators are prioritizing the supply of energy to homes and the community, leaving other customers to scramble for alternative power sources.
“Power cuts have brought us extra orders,” Huang Yu, a sales manager at Shandong Dianyuan Village Power Technology Co., a company that supplies generators of different sizes. “We have been quite busy since November, receiving non-stop orders from customers in Jiangsu and Zhejiang,” she said via phone.
The company, which has a wide range of generators including some large enough to power a small town, has sold more than 20 a day recently, more than triple the normal level, Huang said. Its social media account posted a video Dec. 17 showing trucks loading dozens of power generators getting ready for shipment to power-cut regions.
Wholesale diesel prices in China rose to the highest level since April, according to data from the country’s National Bureau of Statistics. Inventories of the fuel across the country fell 5.26% in the month to Dec. 25 to 20.76 million tons, according to information provider OilChem.
“If there is a shortfall in electricity, diesel is the most responsive energy to fill the gap,” Sengyick Tee, an analyst with Beijing-based SIA Energy said. “Even 0.5% of China’s electricity switching to power by diesel would make a large impact on diesel demand.”
China’s power demand has surged in the second-half of this year as its economy recovered from the pandemic and global demand for protective gear and medical equipment it produces soared. A colder-than-normal winter caused by a La Nina weather pattern added to that, boosting consumption by 11% in December, more than double the growth of a year ago, according to National Development and Reform Commission.
Coal supplies have also been tight amid safety checks at domestic mines and import restrictions, and natural gas has also been rationed to ensure supplies for heating. Governments cut electricity to some businesses in Hunan and Jiangxi provinces because of shortages, while Zhejiang officials also curtailed industrial power in order to meet emissions and efficiency goals for the five-year plan ending Thursday.
Beyond China, low temperatures are also affecting other nations across Northeast Asia. Japan’s spot power price extended its record-breaking rally as utilities struggle to keep pace with higher demand for heating, while South Korea is prepared to release state reserves of kerosene should supply of the heating fuel remain tight.
In short, climate change and economics might be what's driving the electric car and renewable energy phenomenon over here in the west where renewable energy is actually economically viable and we also actually care about the whole climate change thing, but in asia, it has absolutely nothing to do with either of these things. They simultaneously have a completely vulnerable/insecure energy supply line and still can't produce enough power for themselves even when their supply is secure like it is now, let alone when it isn't.
You can also see how the moment any oil supply that has to transit the persian gulf/strait of malacca/sunda strait/lombok strait/the entire indonesia-timor-PNG-etc archipelago gets cut off anyone who produces oil anywhere else will be able to charge absolutely exorbitant prices as they'll effectively have the only deliverable oil supply left. This includes us in the west because the oil companies will just go hey, if you won't pay 4x the previous price (or whatever) then the asians will.
Until asia gets off its oil dependence, that is.
Bloomberg - Are you a robot?
www.bloomberg.com
China’s roaring industrial rebound from the pandemic has an unforeseen consequence -- the surge in power demand has left factories, office buildings and street lights in some areas straining under an electricity shortage.
The country’s local governments are cutting power to some industrial and commercial customers in several provinces. State-owned companies are sending an army of workers to inspect power lines, and authorities are urging coal miners to produce more.
But that’s done little to quell the stream of domestic media reports on struggling cities. With the rest of the world growing ever-more dependent on China’s medical equipment and electronics exports as their pandemic-ravaged economies suffer, the focus abroad is also increasingly turning to the Asian manufacturing giant’s power supply.
“As the global economy recovers, it will be imperative for China to stabilize its power supplies,” said Rana Mitter, professor of Chinese politics at the University of Oxford. “There is a move in the West to re-shore supply chains and unreliability of power supply in China could be another motivation to do this.”
The world is relying on China’s factories like never before. As one of the first economies to emerge from a pandemic induced lockdown, and as a leading producer of protective gear and medical equipment, China’s exports have soared to record levels. That’s led to surging demand for power, with November consumption up 9.4% over the previous year, the highest level in more than two years.
On top of that, colder-than-normal weather is now adding to winter demand as people heat their homes, and ice is also wreaking havoc on grid infrastructure. Meanwhile, some parts of the country are curtailing electricity to keep emissions in check. That’s left some regions without enough power during peak hours, with two expected to have lasting shortfalls.
“Weather conditions for the following months will be the key factor to determine the scale of the outage,” said Hanyang Wei, an analyst with BloombergNEF. “Peak load would drop quickly if cold weather lasts for just a few days.”
This is all happening as coal, the fuel of choice for a majority of China’s power generation, remains in short supply. The government had limited imports to support domestic miners, and imposed an unofficial ban on Australian shipments amid a diplomatic spat. But domestic supplies haven’t risen as much as needed following a recent spate of deadly mining accidents.
That’s left the country grappling with surging energy prices. Local coal futures have soared to a record, while the costs for natural gas, another heating and power fuel, have also jumped. State-owned energy giants have gone so far as to warn firms against publicly discussing the supply-demand issue on concern prices will rise further, and the government has urged major mining regions to boost output.
Nearly all major cities are facing colder temperatures this winter, with some as much as 5 degrees Celsius below last year’s levels, Morgan Stanley analysts including Sara Chan said in a Dec. 23 research note. This is the main reason behind the surge in coal prices and is helping drive government intervention in power allocation.
In Hunan and Jiangxi provinces, power supplies have been cut to some industrial and commercial customers after demand rose at least 18% from a year earlier and transportation issues curtailed coal supplies, a National Development and Reform Commission official said Monday. Hunan’s power supply could be short by as much as 12%, according to BNEF.
The power crunch “will probably linger as an issue for a couple more months,” said James Stevenson, senior director for coal, metals and mining at IHS Markit. “When you get this short, really what you need to do is curtail demand, and that is what we are seeing.”
Big industrial users are on the front-lines of being cut off from electricity, followed by commercial buildings, in order to keep supply safe for residential consumers, according to BNEF’s Wei said. “Local industries will take a hit if the outage lasts for long,” Wei said.
Result?
Everyone are buying diesel (yes, diesel) generators to produce their own electricity as the grid simply can't provide enough of it even now:
Bloomberg - Are you a robot?
www.bloomberg.com
A frigid winter is leading to power shortages in parts of China, driving up demand for diesel as factories rush to install generators to keep the lights on.
Some provinces have started rationing electricity to industrial and commercial users to make sure there’s enough power to heat homes during a colder-than-typical winter. That’s prompting factories to snap up portable generators and the diesel they run on to ensure their plants stay open to meet orders amid record-high exports from the country.
The Chinese meteorological authority earlier issued an orange alert nationwide - the second-highest level in its four-tier system - as a cold wave sweeps through the nation. With temperatures still expected to dip further, grid operators are prioritizing the supply of energy to homes and the community, leaving other customers to scramble for alternative power sources.
“Power cuts have brought us extra orders,” Huang Yu, a sales manager at Shandong Dianyuan Village Power Technology Co., a company that supplies generators of different sizes. “We have been quite busy since November, receiving non-stop orders from customers in Jiangsu and Zhejiang,” she said via phone.
The company, which has a wide range of generators including some large enough to power a small town, has sold more than 20 a day recently, more than triple the normal level, Huang said. Its social media account posted a video Dec. 17 showing trucks loading dozens of power generators getting ready for shipment to power-cut regions.
Wholesale diesel prices in China rose to the highest level since April, according to data from the country’s National Bureau of Statistics. Inventories of the fuel across the country fell 5.26% in the month to Dec. 25 to 20.76 million tons, according to information provider OilChem.
“If there is a shortfall in electricity, diesel is the most responsive energy to fill the gap,” Sengyick Tee, an analyst with Beijing-based SIA Energy said. “Even 0.5% of China’s electricity switching to power by diesel would make a large impact on diesel demand.”
China’s power demand has surged in the second-half of this year as its economy recovered from the pandemic and global demand for protective gear and medical equipment it produces soared. A colder-than-normal winter caused by a La Nina weather pattern added to that, boosting consumption by 11% in December, more than double the growth of a year ago, according to National Development and Reform Commission.
Coal supplies have also been tight amid safety checks at domestic mines and import restrictions, and natural gas has also been rationed to ensure supplies for heating. Governments cut electricity to some businesses in Hunan and Jiangxi provinces because of shortages, while Zhejiang officials also curtailed industrial power in order to meet emissions and efficiency goals for the five-year plan ending Thursday.
Beyond China, low temperatures are also affecting other nations across Northeast Asia. Japan’s spot power price extended its record-breaking rally as utilities struggle to keep pace with higher demand for heating, while South Korea is prepared to release state reserves of kerosene should supply of the heating fuel remain tight.
In short, climate change and economics might be what's driving the electric car and renewable energy phenomenon over here in the west where renewable energy is actually economically viable and we also actually care about the whole climate change thing, but in asia, it has absolutely nothing to do with either of these things. They simultaneously have a completely vulnerable/insecure energy supply line and still can't produce enough power for themselves even when their supply is secure like it is now, let alone when it isn't.
You can also see how the moment any oil supply that has to transit the persian gulf/strait of malacca/sunda strait/lombok strait/the entire indonesia-timor-PNG-etc archipelago gets cut off anyone who produces oil anywhere else will be able to charge absolutely exorbitant prices as they'll effectively have the only deliverable oil supply left. This includes us in the west because the oil companies will just go hey, if you won't pay 4x the previous price (or whatever) then the asians will.
Until asia gets off its oil dependence, that is.
over9k
So I didn't tell my wife, but I...
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Well that leaves me wondering what's going on?
On an energy equivalent basis that's equivalent to about $215 per barrel of oil.
Whoever wanted that gas must be (1) desperate for supply (2) needs it "as gas" and can't substitute oil or coal.
Pure guesswork here:
Was it perhaps to refine some kind of daughter product that you can only derive from natural gas?
Other than that, the only other thing I could think of is what you already said - it having to be a gas, i.e for gas powered engines or turbines or something.
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Agreed with all you've said. "Like" x 10.
Aiming to add to it with the following, not play it down etc so don't misinterpret.....
This isn't new however.
Some random examples from the past:
France is well known for having so many nuclear plants, indeed they have a higher % of power from nuclear than anyone else. Less well understood is why they were built - in short yes France had electricity before they had nuclear but they'd reached a conclusion that the supply of oil from the Middle East was at risk. With few resources of their own, they dived head first into nuclear as the solution.
Japan much the same as a country with few resources. That Japan turned to Australia to supply coal and effectively initiated the global LNG business, and also aggressively pursued nuclear, was due to the same concerns about the ongoing supply of oil that was at the time generating virtually all of Japan's electricity.
That there is an International Energy Agency is a direct consequence of past concerns about oil supply disruption. Its formation has nothing at all to do with climate change, that concern coming later.
The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve was a direct response to actual supply cut-off from the Middle East. Likewise there's quite a few circa 1980 pop culture references to the "energy crisis" - it gets a passing mention in a few Hollywood movies from that era in a matter of fact sort of way, it had entered the public consciousness by that point enough for a few movie scriptwriters to reference it.
Closer to home, Torrens Island power station in SA was very nearly converted to coal due to concerns about oil and gas supply security and that it was too precious to burn for electricity. Yep, SA very nearly had a coal-fired power station 15km from the Adelaide CBD.
Perth actually did it at Kwinana, an industrial region in the Perth metro area and the site of the state's then largest power station. It was built to fire oil only but due to supply security concerns 4 of 6 boilers were adapted to also use coal and in due course all were set up for gas as well. SECWA, the state utility which owned the plant, received considerable attention internationally for the success of that - mostly in regard to how quickly they did it, that it was triple fuel not just two, and that it was done by superimposing a coal setup over an oil-fired plant at a site that really wasn't at all well suited physically. It was the model on which many such conversions overseas were subsequently based. FWIW there's another member of this forum with far more intimate knowledge of it than me.
Central Australia to Darwin gas pipeline was built due to concerns about fuel oil supply to power stations, noting that the NT was 100% reliant on oil for power prior to the pipeline commencing operation in 1986. Coal was also seriously considered, it was that or gas in practice.
In Victoria there was a pilot plant actually built by Japanese interests to turn brown coal into oil. It went beyond lab scale, it was actually in production to get the process fully sorted, and whilst no longer in use it's still sitting there today.
Tasmania circa 1987 the state government took a pretty serious look at the viability of oil production in the state based on the numerous known shale deposits, one of which saw limited production in the early 20th Century. In short it was technically viable to produce petrol, diesel, LPG, bitumen and so on but the economics didn't stack up. Since then various private companies have done essentially the same thing, some digging a few holes in the ground, and reached the same conclusions. Actually the state has a type of shale named after it - Tasmanite shale is a thing yes, it's real, that's what it's called.
The idea of converting cars in Australia to use LPG came about due to fuel supply security concerns, any benefit to the environment was incidental to that primary reason.
There's some more controversial ones I've left out but I've made the point. There's an awful lot of organisations who've held very real concerns about this for a long time now and just how completely stuffed we are if the oil does stop arriving for whatever reason. Thus far it hasn't happened but then someone could have said that about pandemics barely a year ago. At some point if it does happen well then....
Something I'll add is about governments. I say that because when a crisis arrives, governments tend to get involved. Looking at the past, well one company that I'm aware of having found itself with no fuel was in fact a company producing large volumes of crude oil but which also had other industrial operations. Yep, government directed where it was going and that wasn't to the company's own use. Right or wrong, it is what it is, trade accordingly.
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Whilst the issue here is with LNG, it will (already is) drive a shift in favour of oil as a fuel where that can be substituted with consequent impacts on the oil market.
Not all uses of gas can switch to oil, but between heavy industry and power generation there's a significant ability to substitute heavy fuel oil (#6 fuel oil), light fuel oil (aka diesel), kerosene or LPG in lieu of natural gas.
www.reuters.com
It's a somewhat bizarre situation and the exact opposite of what's normal but it is what it is.
Not all uses of gas can switch to oil, but between heavy industry and power generation there's a significant ability to substitute heavy fuel oil (#6 fuel oil), light fuel oil (aka diesel), kerosene or LPG in lieu of natural gas.
Record LNG prices push South Asia nations to ration gas, seek other fuels
* Industry users seek alternative fuels such as LPG, fuel oil
www.reuters.com
It's a somewhat bizarre situation and the exact opposite of what's normal but it is what it is.
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Another one, this time in Iran (of all places.....).
www.timesofisrael.com
If the smog as shown is really due to emissions from power stations then I do ponder what on earth they're burning to do that. I've seen rather a lot of power stations, including those without any emissions controls, and none pollute on that scale so whatever they're burning must be something pretty shocking. Bitumen? Garbage?
Nonetheless, sticking to the financial aspects well there's a pattern emerging here of yet another place with an energy supply problem. China, France, Japan, Iran all with power problems so it's starting to become a theme.
Of relevance to the oil price is that oil is in most places the last resort option for electricity generation. Oil's what you burn in lieu of normally much cheaper coal or gas when supply runs short. Plus dedicated oil-fired plant is what gets run when there's nothing else left that isn't already maxed out.
It's also a warning that energy infrastructure in general is stretched at the moment and I come back to my previous point about oil production capacity. Whatever the actual limit on production is, it's almost certainly lower now than it was before the pandemic hit. The rig count in the US is still 60% down from pre-pandemic levels so that's not at all sustainable.
Blame Bitcoin? Iran hit by blackouts and smog amid electricity production woes
Power-heavy cryptocurrency mining and a shortage of natural gas have been blamed for outages and pollution amid COVID crisis
www.timesofisrael.com
If the smog as shown is really due to emissions from power stations then I do ponder what on earth they're burning to do that. I've seen rather a lot of power stations, including those without any emissions controls, and none pollute on that scale so whatever they're burning must be something pretty shocking. Bitumen? Garbage?
Nonetheless, sticking to the financial aspects well there's a pattern emerging here of yet another place with an energy supply problem. China, France, Japan, Iran all with power problems so it's starting to become a theme.
Of relevance to the oil price is that oil is in most places the last resort option for electricity generation. Oil's what you burn in lieu of normally much cheaper coal or gas when supply runs short. Plus dedicated oil-fired plant is what gets run when there's nothing else left that isn't already maxed out.
It's also a warning that energy infrastructure in general is stretched at the moment and I come back to my previous point about oil production capacity. Whatever the actual limit on production is, it's almost certainly lower now than it was before the pandemic hit. The rig count in the US is still 60% down from pre-pandemic levels so that's not at all sustainable.
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And that's why I have a love hate relationship with this forum....
Thanks for the update Mr Smurf.
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...and the oil price keeps creeping up... around $47.60 this time last month, touching through $55 last night.
The Green Biden Bogeyman hasn't stomped on it yet.
The Green Biden Bogeyman hasn't stomped on it yet.
