British wholesale gas contracts rose on Tuesday, ahead of a planned shutdown of an important Norwegian supply route this week and potentially higher exports to Europe until mid-June. * Gas for immediate delivery rose by 0.75 pence to 58.00 pence per therm at 0845 GMT, even though the system was oversupplied * Gas for Wednesday rose by 1.90 pence to 58.90 p/therm * June gas was 1.45 pence higher at 57.95 p/therm * Analysts attributed higher gas prices to the planned shutdown of Norway’s Langeled pipeline to Britain from Thursday ...

Singapore authorities have levied new charges against a group of fuel thieves operating at Royal Dutch Shell’s oil refinery in the city-state, raising the value of the stolen fuel to over $40 million from around $10 million in earlier charges, according to court documents reviewed by Reuters on Tuesday. Five former employees of Shell’s Singapore subsidiary received 51 additional charges in court on Friday for suspected theft at the Pulau Bukom refinery, Shell’s biggest, to bring the total allegations against them to 63 each, the documents showed. The charges relate ...

A pipeline across Australia and gas imports from as far away as the United States are on the drawing board as the country races to plug a domestic supply gap that is driving up east coast gas prices and threatening jobs. Although Australia is the world’s No. 2 liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporter, much of its east coast gas is tied up in long-term export contracts while mainstay supplies in the populated southeast are drying up more quickly than expected. Imports will be needed within four years, warn industry executives ...

Spot LNG markers for June-delivery cargoes gained 10% on the month and 40% on the previous year as the market trended upwards during the four weeks from mid-April to mid-May. The global appetite for LNG remained healthy, with Argentina tendering for its winter supplies, Europe looking to use its summer to fill up depleted storage facilities, and east Asian countries starting to look towards summer peak air-conditioning demands as the market moves on from the April/May shoulder period between seasons. Despite talk in recent years that the market could face ...

Russian oil pipeline monopoly Transneft will pay 58 billion roubles ($928.54 million) in dividends for 2017, President Nikolai Tokarev was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying on Monday. The dividend was approximately the same amount as in 2016, the agency reported. Source: Reuters (Reporting by Maria Kiselyova; writing by Tom Balmforth; editing by Jason Neely)

Novatek, the Russian liquefied natural gas producer, sees a global surplus of the super-chilled fuel disappearing faster than expected. “I disagree that there is a global LNG capacity surplus,” chief executive officer Leonid Mikhelson said in an interview in Paris last week. Demand in the Asia-Pacific region is so robust that the industry’s assumptions about supply will have to be overhauled, probably within the next three years, he said. One example of that change is China’s LNG imports, which soared 56% in the first quarter, according to Mikhelson. An LNG ...

With the start-up of its second ethylene cracker in south China this month, the cooperation between China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) and Shell Petrochemical Company entered a new stage. The 1.2-million-tonne project has more than doubled the capacity of the company’s Nanhai petrochemicals complex, thus supporting this 50/50 joint venture between the CNOOC and international oil giant Shell in meeting the growing Chinese market. “The expansion project demonstrates great synergies between CNOOC’s engineering, construction, and management capabilities, and Shell’s advanced technologies in chemicals,” said He Zhongwen, president of CNOOC ...

Top Chinese oil and gas producer PetroChina is stepping up natural gas supplies from both domestic fields and imports to meet customer demand, parent company CNPC said on Monday. PetroChina raised April gas supplies by 14 percent over a year earlier, CNPC said on its website, without giving specific volumes. Reuters reported on Friday the state major has since early May curbing the feed of gas to some users in the northern and western parts of the country to help head off possible shortages next winter. PetroChina lifted production in ...

Think the plummeting costs of solar and wind are transforming the energy landscape? Then you should be betting on ways to warehouse that power. To understand why, consider: Unlike almost all their rivals in the energy-generation space, solar panels and wind turbines are mass-produced goods. That means they’re subject to the rules of continual improvement and falling costs that we see with semiconductors, household products and clothing as production volumes rise and factories undercut each other. Traditional power plants are essentially large-scale construction projects, which rarely achieve the same sorts ...

British wholesale gas prices fell on Monday morning as warm weather reduced demand. * Gas for immediate delivery fell by 0.50 pence to 56.50 pence per therm at 0745 GMT * June gas was 0.20 pence lower at 55.40 p/therm * The coming week is expected to be around 3 degrees Celsius warmer than the seasonal average, Thomson Reuters Eikon data shows * Therefore, heating demand is forecast 18 mcm lower compared to Friday. Consumption is also expected to be substantially below seasonal normal levels for the rest of this ...

Bangladesh and Swiss trader Trafigura have abandoned the preliminary deal for the supply of 200,000 Mcf/day of regasified LNG following delays in agreeing the terms of the SPA, including the LNG specification and the location for any potential dispute settlement, a senior Bangladesh official said late last week. Bangladesh was seeking to settle any potential dispute at the Bangladesh International Arbitration Center but Trafigura preferred Singapore, state-owned Rupantarita Prakrtitik Gas Company Ltd.’s Managing Director Mohammed Quamruzzaman said last Thursday. Both parties reached a preliminary agreement December 20 for LNG supply ...

The Platts JKM for July, the new front-month, ended the week stronger, assessed at $8.80/MMBtu on Friday amid higher oil prices and significant summer demand from China and South Korea. Chinese majors CNOOC and PetroChina were reported to be active in the market, seeking July cargoes during the week, while other end-users expressed interest in procuring cargoes. A deal was concluded at $8.70-8.80/MMBtu DES east China by an independent end-user towards the end of the week, market sources said. Industrial users, especially in North China, whose gas supply was diverted ...

China’s state-run refiner Sinopec is moving forward with its plan to turn its coastal refineries into export-oriented plants with the expansion of infrastructure facilities that will allow its Shanghai Petrochemical refinery to boost monthly gasoil exports to 210,000 mt from 120,000 mt currently. The expansion comes as middle distillate margins are rising in Asia, putting Sinopec in a good position to take advantage of the trend. The 260,000 b/d Shanghai refinery typically exported just three to four 30,000 mt cargoes of gasoil a month due to limited storage capacity at ...

Asian spot liquefied natural gas (LNG) prices spiked this week amid a flurry of buying interest from buyers in China, Pakistan, South Korea and India, and as new supply from Australia is delayed by several months. Spot prices for July LNG-AS delivery in Asia were at $8.70 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) this week, jumping 80 cents from the previous week, according to several LNG traders. Price assessments last week were still looking at cargoes loading in June. The LNG market is in the midst of the northern hemisphere’s ...

EIA expects construction of new natural gas pipeline capacity in the United States to continue in 2018, in particular in the northeastern United States. By the end of 2018, if all projects come online by their scheduled service dates, more than 23 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of takeaway capacity will be online out of the Northeast, up from an estimated 16.7 Bcf/d at the end of 2017 and more than three times the takeaway capacity at the end of 2014. Currently, the growth of natural gas production in ...