OIL
Crude oil prices rise on improving economic data but virus case jump caps gains
ET Markets, June 29, 2020
NEW YORK: Oil prices edged higher on Monday, after bullish data from Asia and Europe, but sharp spikes in new coronavirus infections around the world tempered gains.
Oil prices inch higher as the industry weighs pandemic-related demand uncertainty
Myra P. Saefong and Mark DeCambre, MarketWatch, June 29, 2020
Oil futures moved cautiously higher Monday, buoyed by some recovery in energy demand, even as cases of COVID-19 top 10 million world-wide, raising the possibility of renewed shutdowns in parts of the world to contain the spread. “As global demand recovers, oil’s natural inclination is to go higher, since current prices are below the economic threshold for most producers,” Manish Raj, chief financial officer at Velandera Energy, told MarketWatch. The market saw upbeat economic data over the weekend from China, the world’s biggest importer of crude. Industrial profits in China for May were up 6% from a year earlier, representing the first increase in 2020, official statistics released over the weekend showed. There are also signs of further slowdowns in oil production. “To sum up the American producers’ standpoint, domestic rig count is down 73% from last year,” so oil has resumed its trend upward, said Raj.
GAS
U.S. LNG Industry Needs Prices To Double
Irina Slav, OILPRICE.COM, June 28, 2020
Last week, Tellurian said it would make the final investment decision on the Driftwood LNG project next year. On the one hand, the news is good: Tellurian had stopped making updates on the project after its long-term supply deal with India’s Petronet fell through. On the other hand, the announcement makes it the latest in a string of LNG companies pushing their FIDs back by a year, and this does not bode well for the industry. It is enough to look at the reason why Tellurian postponed its final investment decision, as explained by the chief executive: the company needs gas prices–specifically, Asian spot market prices–to be over $5 per million British thermal units (mmBtu). Right now, LNG trades at about $2 per mmBtu. Can it climb more than 100 percent within a year?
MINING
The federal review process for Pebble is working
Tom Collier, Anchorage Daily News, June 28, 2020
The Chairman of Bristol Bay Native Corporation, or BBNC, recently penned an op-ed about Pebble. The general tenor was that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, or USACE, the lead federal agency in charge of reviewing our plan, was ignoring scathing comments from other cooperating agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, aka EPA, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, or FWS, as it crafts the final Environmental Impact Statement, or EIS, for Pebble. The implication was that the Corps of Engineers is rushing a decision about Pebble over the strong objections of those agencies. In order to make his point, he selected the most negative statements from lengthy comment letters from the agencies. These are complex, nuanced letters. It is disingenuous to suggest an honest debate about Pebble by relying on only a few sentences that do not reflect the tenor of the letters in their entirety. Just to prove that point, let me highlight select, positive quotes from the same letters quoted by BBNC’s chairman.
POLITICS – From the Washington Examiner, Daily on Energy:
TOP HOUSE REPUBLICANS BACK AMERICAN CLIMATE CONTRACT: GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, along with several other top House Republicans, lent their support Monday for the American Conservation Coalition’s climate framework.
The conservative youth climate group unveiled their American Climate Contract in April with grassroots support. The framework calls for the United States to advance policies that “move toward a goal of global net-zero carbon emissions by 2050,” and focuses on four policy areas: investing in energy innovation, modernizing infrastructure, supporting conservation measures that store carbon, and engaging globally to reduce emissions. “Prior to this, the conversation continued to be so defined by the Green New Deal being the benchmark, and I think this is the next step,” said Quill Robinson, the ACC’s government affairs director.