Latest news with #energyMarket
Bloomberg
30-06-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Australia Launches $1.5 Billion Plan to Boost Home Batteries
Australia started a A$2.3 billion ($1.5 billion) program to encourage households to buy batteries in an effort to absorb excess renewable energy and curb price swings in one of the world's most volatile power markets. The program cuts the upfront cost of installing a household battery by about 30%, provided that the system is connected to solar panels. The discount rate will be reviewed at least annually and gradually decrease until 2030.
Bloomberg
17-06-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Qatar Asks LNG Ships to Wait Outside Hormuz Strait Until Loading
Qatar has asked liquefied natural gas vessels to wait outside the Strait of Hormuz until they're ready to load amid escalating tensions in the region, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. The precautionary order, which advises vessels to avoid the area until a day before loading, probably won't delay shipments, the person said, asking not to be identified as the information was not made public. European natural gas extended gains.
Bloomberg
13-06-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Key Oil Market Trades Are Lighting Up After Israel's Attack
Israel's extensive strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities, a dramatic new turn in the conflict in the Middle East, are rippling across the energy market. Beyond the major move in benchmark futures, here are some of the main channels traders are using to wager on the Middle East conflict:
Forbes
13-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
In The Race To Power Data Centers, Which Fuel Will Win Is The Wrong Question
Greg Robinson is the cofounder and CEO of Aston , a company building a clean, firm power network to serve the world's largest energy users. getty Having spent my career in clean energy, I have had the opportunity to talk to a range of energy experts. From leaders at utilities and independent power producers to regulatory decision makers, we nerd out on topics ranging from whether the future of power is on-grid or off-grid to how we'll meet surging energy demand and what the optimal fuel mix is to do this. Lately, the thing I'm asked about most is which fuel I think will win the race to power the data centers that power AI. It's a fair question, but in a shifting energy landscape, it's one with a complicated answer. The U.S. power market is a very complex business model, and the grid itself is a convoluted web of old tech like coal plants and new tech like solar and wind, making and transferring power to keep the proverbial lights on for individuals and businesses alike. In my view, the idea that one fuel will 'win' is the wrong way of looking at it. The current landscape consists of a shrinking coal footprint; growing natural gas and renewables like wind, solar and batteries; and blossoming nuclear. Below, I share the context that gets us closer to understanding what the future holds. The Flaws And Faults Of Our Options At the risk of stating the obvious, the energy industry can only consider the technologies that are available today. For this reason, there's often a 'use what you have' mentality. For example, there's a lot of talk about the potential of nuclear power to solve the surging energy demand, and small modular reactors (SMRs) will play a large role, but experts say that technology is still years away. As a result, utilities and data center builders have been looking to gas, but a bottleneck in the production of turbines is slowing procurement until at least 2029. That, combined with the rising cost of building new plants, upgrading the pipeline network to provide enough gas is making gas less available and affordable. Where in 2022, it costs roughly $800/kWh to build a gas plant, projections are now that it will cost $2,400/kWh. But even if building more gas plants were a timely and affordable solution, it is still a dangerous premise. Assets like gas and coal plants are 30-plus-year assets. So building new gas plants now means that once viable nuclear power arrives and the cost of solar and batteries continues to drop, we run the risk of doing to gas plants what we have been doing to coal plants: turning them off because we overbuilt the network and there are better options available. The Rush To Zero Marginal Costs Businesses across various industries try to innovate their way toward zero marginal cost. They would rather pay larger capital costs upfront one time and then use that asset for a long time. AWS is a good example. During the rise of cloud computing, AWS had the innovative idea that rather than build and sell servers to companies, it would develop servers in the cloud and then rent that space to those who need it. Netflix is similar. Pay for the content once and then rent it out to millions of users. Fossil fuel-based energy will never reach zero marginal cost because you need to process resources to use them. Nuclear also has a fuel but seldom needs to be refueled. Solar and wind backed by batteries are pushing the closest to zero marginal cost. The price of solar and batteries has come down nearly 100% and will keep getting less expensive. This brings me to the real factor that will determine which fuel will win: It's the fuel with the most contracts. Which Fuel Will Win? The energy market is contract-driven. Specifically, contracts that are known as 'take or pay.' This means when suppliers (like a natural gas producer) make a deal with buyers (like a utility or power plant), the contracts are long-term (usually 15 years at minimum), and the buyer agrees to take a predetermined amount of energy at a fixed price. If they don't take the energy, the buyer pays anyway. So it's really 'pay or pay' contacts. This structure leaves little incentive for buyers locked into contracts to make any moves until the contract ends. If we build more gas plants, that will effectively make those operational long after less expensive modes of energy become available. How we structure contracts needs to change. Long-term contracts made sense during the decades of relatively steady power demand, but they don't work in this era of surging power demand. Leaders in the energy industry and the large customers who depend on their power need to reconsider a new approach to energy contracts, or we'll find ourselves trapped in the past, which will ultimately impact our future. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
Yahoo
09-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Ukraine plots fracking revolution
Ukraine is working to unleash natural gas fracking with the goal of becoming a major exporter and revolutionising Europe's energy market. In plans critical to Volodymyr Zelensky's hopes of a post-war economic recovery, ministers in Kyiv are scrambling to lure private investment and gain access to new drilling technology to access the country's vast untapped shale gas resources. According to sources close to Kyiv, officials are racing to attract 'foreign technology and highly experienced subsoil users', with a focus on unconventional shale resources in western Ukraine. The hunt for cash - as revealed by the independent news platform Energy Flux - is being conducted in parallel to the rare earth minerals deal struck between Donald Trump and President Zelensky in April, which will allow the US to exploit Ukraine's natural resources, including aluminium, graphite, oil and natural gas. The priority is to rapidly revitalise Ukraine's ailing gas sector after a gruelling winter saw roughly 40pc of production capacity taken out by a fierce Russian campaign of drone and missile strikes. The attacks forced Ukraine to draw heavily on its gas stocks, which ended winter almost entirely depleted. But Ukraine's Ministry of Energy believes it is possible to refill the country's cavernous underground storage facilities and even produce a surplus for export 'within 18 months', according to a senior government source. Ukraine already has some experience with advanced drilling technology for old wells and has since carried out experimental trials that 'confirm its potential' for fracking, they said. However, to unlock Ukraine's shale reserves, the country needs to attract more investment and newer kit, primarily from America. 'Development and production can be quickly developed using available gas infrastructure with connections to the EU gas market that make it very attractive,' the source added. 'Ukraine has enough deposits of traditional gas to cover its own consumption and to become a net exporter, and shale gas production has quite a profound effect on its development.' Such a turnaround would help transform the fortunes of Europe's energy markets, which remain on edge following the loss of Russian pipeline gas exports via Ukraine at the start of 2025. Refilling Ukraine's depleted gas storage – the largest in Europe, at 32bn cubic metres – is one of the main factors tightening energy markets in Central and Eastern Europe ahead of next winter. Ukraine's gas stocks are today just 7pc full compared to the EU average of 50pc. Efforts to pipe natural gas from Southern and Eastern Europe into Ukraine have also been thwarted by red tape and a lack of market cohesion. However, if Ukraine could unleash its own shale revolution and create a surplus for export, the need to keep pumping European gas into Ukraine would effectively disappear overnight. It would also help reduce Europe's reliance on costly liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies from overseas. Gas-starved Europe leaned heavily on LNG after Gazprom, the Kremlin-backed energy giant, halted exports to the EU following Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Ukrainian shale gas exports, if scaled up quickly, would erase a large chunk of European energy demand currently being met by LNG, potentially sparking a sharp drop in energy prices around the world. However, Kyiv's proposed fracking revolution hinges largely on the country's ability to secure overseas investment. Officials from Ukraine's Ministry of Energy are tapping Western diplomatic ties to find private capital funds with a high tolerance for risk to bankroll drilling and bring in technology partners. A senior government team attended the Baku Energy Forum in Azerbaijan last week in part to promote Ukraine's potential as a shale hub. Speaking at the event, one high-ranking statesman said the Lviv-Lublin geological area that straddles the Ukraine-Poland border is 'superior on the Ukrainian side' thanks to higher porosity and lower clay content, making it 'better for fracking'. The most promising prospect is the Oleska (Olesskaya) shale block, which contains an estimated 0.8 to 1.5 trillion cubic metres of shale gas resources – enough to meet Ukraine's domestic needs for decades. How much of this resource is economically recoverable is an open question. Chevron walked away from a 50pc interest in the Oleska project in 2014 before drilling could begin. Chevron's stated reason for leaving was not because of political instability or lack of resources, but rather Kyiv's failure to enact specific tax reforms necessary to enable shale gas foreign investment. Now, the Zelensky administration is moving to streamline operations and reduce bureaucratic hurdles that previously deterred foreign investors. Ownership of the Olesskaya production sharing agreement (PSA) was transferred in April 2025 from government holding company Nadra Ukraine to Ukraine's largest oil and gas producer, Ukrnafta. The move signalled a strategic shift in the country's approach to fracking, particularly in the Oleska block. Ukrnafta is a state-owned enterprise following the nationalisation of strategic industries and declaration of martial law in 2022, which remains in force to this day. Attracting significant private capital into Ukrainian shale exploration would normally be impossible under these circumstances. However, the source said there are laws in place to ensure they can be overwritten. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. 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