https://arab.news/4324t
RIYADH: Oil prices extended gains to scale multiyear peaks on Monday, fueled by the rebound in global demand that has also contributed to power and gas shortages in key economies like China.
Brent crude was up $1.49, or 1.8 percent, at $83.88 a barrel by 01:18 p.m. EDT (1718 GMT), after hitting its highest since October 2018 at $84.60 earlier in the session.
US West Texas Intermediate crude rose $1.69, or 2.1 percent, to $81.03, after touching its highest since late 2014 at $82.18.
Aramco’s Asian customers
Saudi Aramco has agreed to supply additional crude to at least three Asian buyers in November, while meeting full contractual volume for four others, sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
Acquisition
Eneos Holdings, the biggest refinery in Japan, said on Monday it would buy Japan Renewable Energy for about $1.8 billion to expand its low-carbon business, joining a list of major global companies moving away from climate-changing fossil fuels.
China’s rust belt
Analysts and traders forecast a 12 percent drop in industrial power consumption in the fourth quarter this year because coal supply is expected to fall short this winter in China’s northeast rust belt.
Liaoning province issued its second-highest alert level, which indicates a power shortage equivalent to 10-20 percent of total demand for power, warning that the shortfall could reach nearly 5 GW.
LNG
China’s ENN Natural Gas Co. Ltd. signed a long-term deal to buy liquefied natural gas from Cheniere Energy, the company said on Monday. The deal starts in July 2022, is for 900,000 tons of LNG a year, and was purchased on a free-on-board basis, it added.
Emissions
Australian Energy Minister Angus Taylor on Monday rejected a call from a lobby group for the country’s biggest companies to set stricter emissions limits on polluters but gave no indication what targets the government may announce ahead of UN climate talks this month.
“A substantial tightening of the Safeguard Mechanism is a backdoor carbon tax consumers will ultimately have to pay for, and that's not acceptable,” Taylor said at a conference organized by the Australian Financial Review.
Canada, Nigeria, Japan, and Pakistan are among 31 parties to join a global pledge, led by the US and EU, to slash planet-warming methane emissions by 30 percent by the end of the decade, US climate envoy John Kerry announced on Monday.
Shale oil and gas producer APA Corp. on Monday said it has ended routine gas flaring in the US, after demands from environmentalists and investors to reduce carbon emissions, to counter global warming.