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Energy Flux yearbook: 2021

Deep-dives written as Covid bust turned to commodities boom

Seb Kennedy

Jan 1, 2022

A collection of deep-dives written in 2021, the year that the post-Covid economic recovery drove a spectacular resurgence in demand for oil, gas, coal and other commodities — and the year that Energy Flux relaunched as a premium newsletter.

Energy Flux

Big Oil’s painful offshore wind pivot

European oil majors are jostling to become offshore wind heavyweights. Building capital-intensive projects at scale in familiar offshore environments, underpinned by guaranteed returns, has proved alluring. But cost inflation and aggressive bidding at cut-throat ‘subsidy-free’ auctions have eviscerated margins…

2 years ago · 2 likes · Seb Kennedy

Energy Flux

America’s LNG growing pains

Cheap, abundant natural gas has become the bedrock of the American economy – but the drillers that produce it are sitting on their hands, even as prices rise. Manufacturers are getting twitchy, calling for liquefied natural gas exports to be capped. This is unlikely for many reasons, meaning US consumers might have to get used to higher bills. This coul…

2 years ago · 3 likes · Seb Kennedy

Energy Flux

Woodside’s high-stakes BHP merger

Australia’s Woodside Energy is shouldering billions of dollars of oil and gas decommissioning liabilities to clear the way for its flagship Scarborough LNG project. But the proposed merger with BHP is far from a done deal. If it goes through, the combined company would face complex commercial and strategic challenges which could leave it poorly aligned …

2 years ago · 3 likes · Seb Kennedy

Energy Flux

Brazil’s onshore oil renaissance

The oil market is entering a period of structural volatility amid upstream underinvestment and extreme uncertainty over long-term demand. Against this backdrop, short turnaround investments that can get barrels to market quickly are highly sought-after. The chastised US shale space is sitting on its hands, opening a small-scale but high-margin investmen…

2 years ago · 2 likes · Seb Kennedy

Energy Flux

Breaking bad habits

Changing people’s behaviour is a big task. It means uprooting an entrenched economic model that has created untold prosperity while pushing us to the brink of ecological collapse. Technology won’t save us, but it might buy some time for Big Oil companies that find themselves on the back foot in the climate debate. In the second instalment of this two-pa…

2 years ago · 2 likes · Seb Kennedy

Energy Flux

Net zero effort: We need to talk about the urgent need for behavioural change

Energy investors are often told that solving the climate crisis must be balanced with the equally pressing need to lift people out of poverty. They are also banking on clean technologies to fix wasteful consumption habits. In the first of a two-part series…

3 years ago · 3 likes · Seb Kennedy

Energy Flux

Brave new world: Bitcoin opens digital frontier in global clean energy transition

Love it or loathe it, bitcoin is here to stay. The power-hungry digital currency is going from strength to strength, soaring to a series of all-time highs since the New Year and winning a string of high-profile corporate backers along the way. All this has cemented its position as the world’s leading cryptocurrency by market capitalisation…

3 years ago · 7 likes · 3 comments · Seb Kennedy