ENERGY AND PIPELINES
- Oil demand today would be approximately 103 million barrels/day if COVID-19 had not occurred.
- April 2020 the oil demand dropped to a low of 80 million barrels/day
- Currently oil demand is 96 million barrels/day
- A month from now, demand is expected to be 90 million barrels/day
- President Biden revoked the permit for Keystone XL Pipeline after a 12-year regulatory and permitting battle. Canoe Energy says it would have been nice to have but is not a must-have. Why?
- It took almost a decade for Canada to increase production from 3 million barrels/day to 4 million barrels/day and this was during significant spending on new oil sands projects
- Today there is no production growth in oil sands and producers are focused on consolidation and cost reduction.
- TransMountain Pipeline and Enbridge Line 3 together will add almost 1 million barrels/day of capacity over the next 2 years. Western Canada will have significant excess pipeline capacity.
- Most US refinery capacity was originally build for Canada’s heavy crude
- US crude oil production increased from 3.97 million barrels/day in 2008 to 12.88 million barrels/day in 2019 (source: tradingeconomics.com)
- President Biden is expected to suspend the sale of oil and gas leases on federal land, which accounts for 10% of US supplies. He is also expected to suspend coal leasing on federal land.
- Swedish state-owned utility ‘Vattenfall AB’ plans to turn a closed coal power plant in northern Germany into a hub for turning wind and solar power into hydrogen.
- Abu Dhabi is teaming up with two of its sovereign wealth funds to turn the country into an exporter of ‘blue’ and ‘green’ hydrogen production. ‘Blue’ hydrogen comes from carbon-capture while ‘green’ hydrogen comes from renewable energy.
- United Arab Emirates will use carbon-capture technologies to create ‘blue’ hydrogen to slash their emissions by nearly 25%.
- UK’s natural gas network operators have set out a strategy for delivering the country’s first hydrogen-heated town by 2030.
WHAT WILL PRESIDENT TRUMP DO NEXT?
- Most President’s don’t have a specific plan for when they leave office.
- President Trump will want to do something ‘grandiose’ in scale.
- All one term Presidents feel mistreated and think they should have been re-elected.
- President Trump understands the control a person can have in social media; this is where the power is today. President Trump had 88.5 million followers and President Obama has 127.6 million.
- President Trump will want to keep the door open to a potential run in 2024.
- Makes him newsworthy
- Makes him more difficult to prosecute
- Makes it easier to raise money for power…to date, over $250 million has been raised which can be used for his legal defense, his next campaign, or to provide financial support to others for their allegiance.
TIDBITS
- Elon Musk said he will donate $100 million toward a prize for the best carbon capture technology.
- Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies has launched more than 1,000 satellites for its Starlink internet service and is looking to add in-flight internet, maritime services, demand in China and India, plus rural demand around the globe.
- GM and Microsoft are leading a $2 billion investment in self-driving start-up ‘Cruise LLC’.
- China has developed a 4 km ‘smart road’ for self-driving vehicles, making stops, swerving past obstacles, accelerating and decelerating, based on information constantly received from cameras and radars embedded in the road.
- German electric air-taxi start-up ‘Volocopter GMbH’ is seeking approval to operate its vertical takeoff craft in the US.