Transportation

An internal document obtained by revealed that the Venezuelan state-run PDVSA would cut its office hours. This was in response to an order from the government, which was issued amid an intensifying power crisis, to conserve energy. On Sunday, the administration of Nicolas Maduro declared that all government offices will reduce their working hours by half due to longer power outages in certain regions caused by reduced hydroelectric generation and lack of fuel for thermoelectric plants. PDVSA, as part of the plan by the government, told its employees on Friday that they should work in administrative offices only three days...

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power said that an above-ground line of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power near the Pacific Palisades had been energized at the time the Palisades Fire started early this year. However, there was no evidence to suggest that the line caused the fire, according to the municipal utility. More than two months after the fire began, the transmission line near the hills has been under scrutiny. The blaze is expected to go down as one of the worst natural disasters ever in U.S. History. In a new complaint filed against the...

A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers official said that the Army Corps of Engineers would complete its revised list of projects for energy under President Donald Trump’s declaration of an energy emergency as soon as next Monday. The Army Corps is a federal engineering agency with the authority to approve projects that involve wetlands and waterways. In February, the Army Corps posted a list of over 600 projects in need of faster environmental approvals. However, the list was quickly removed from the website so the agency could have more time to review the projects. Original list included several high-profile projects,...

One of the topics on the agenda is a possible relief in the sanctions against Russia, which includes its vast energy sector. The oil and gas sector is a major source of revenue for Moscow. It has been under Western sanctions since 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine. These sanctions were tightened considerably after Russia invaded Ukraine 2022. Washington announced its most severe round of sanctions in January 2010. Here are some implications of a possible reversal. RUSSIA TRADE with US and EU Before the war, Russia was the biggest supplier of fuel oil in the United States. It...

According to a Monday lawsuit, several residents of Los Angeles affected by the Palisades Wildfire have sued the city authorities for claiming that the fire was ignited by municipal utility power lines. The lawsuit cited an article in the Washington Post dated January 12 where the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power informed the newspaper that its power lines close to the source of the fire were disconnected from the electrical system for five year, which was wrong according to the resident's lawyers. Last week, the Los Angeles city counsel acknowledged that the statement made to Washington Post had...

Gulf South Pipeline Company announced on Monday that it had stopped supplying natural gas to Freeport LNG in Texas following a lightning strike. Gulf South said that the lightning strike led to a declaration of force majeure for the line, effective immediately. It added that it was working to restore service to its customers as soon as possible. According to LSEG, the incident has reduced gas consumption at Freeport LNG, which can process 2.4 billion cubic foot of gas each day, to 450 millions cubic feet per daily (mcfd), from an earlier expectation of nearly 1.8 bcfd. Freeport requires 700...

The Kremlin announced on Monday that the Russian moratorium on attacking energy infrastructure in Ukraine was still in effect despite reports of Ukrainian attacks against Russian energy infrastructure targets. Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Kremlin, told reporters that Russia is monitoring the situation. The United States can do the same thing and reach its own conclusions. In a phone call on Tuesday, last week, the Russian president Vladimir Putin and his U.S. counter-part Donald Trump agreed to observe a 30 day ceasefire on Ukrainian targets for energy. Peskov replied that "there haven't been any other orders given by the president"...

Hayan Abdel Ghani, Iraq's Oil Minister, has claimed that Iranian oil tanks seized by U.S. troops in the Gulf used forged Iraqi documentation. The Trump administration has re-instituted "maximum" pressure on Iran. This is a new policy that seeks a way to isolate Iran from the global economic system and to eliminate its oil revenue to slow down Tehran's nuclear weapons development. Abdel-Ghani, was asked whether he received any messages from the United States regarding the possibility of sanctions being imposed on the state oil marketing company SOMO for violating Iranian sanctions. The oil minister told state television that he...

U.S. officials will meet with negotiators in Saudi Arabia from Ukraine and Russia to discuss details of the proposed 30-day ceasefire for strikes on energy infrastructure as well as an overall peace agreement. Negotiators from Russia and Ukraine will not be present in the same meeting room. On Sunday night, officials from Kyiv will meet with the U.S. delegation in Riyadh. Then, on Monday, the Russian and U.S. negotiators will meet. Last week, U.S. president Donald Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin as well as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in order to promote his efforts to end the three...

After meeting with provincial and territorial leaders, Prime Minister Mark Carney said that Canada could offset any U.S. Tariffs by removing its internal trade barriers. He also stated his goal of achieving free trade in Canada by July 1. Carney told reporters, "We will introduce legislation before the 1st July to allow goods to move freely across the nation... without federal barriers." "We can offset any U.S. Tariffs more than enough by eliminating the internal trade barriers." Carney's website quotes research that shows removing internal trade barriers could reduce costs up to 15%, and expand the economy from 4% to...

Kazakhstan's oil production has reached a new record this month, thanks to the expansion of oilfields. This is a further increase over OPEC+ production quotas. Saudi Arabia and Russia, the two leaders of OPEC+, have pressed for a reduction in output after repeatedly exceeding their quotas. It is difficult for the government to convince U.S. major oil companies such as Exxon Mobil and Chevron to reduce production from Kazakhstan's largest fields, after these companies invested tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in expanding their projects. After a series of difficult discussions about OPEC+ compliance, the Energy Minister of the...

BP and Apollo Global Management announced on Friday that they had agreed to sell a $1 billion stake in a company invested in the TANAP pipeline connecting Azerbaijan with Turkey. Murray Auchincloss, BP's CEO, is leading a $20 billion waste disposal programme that will run through 2027. BP wants to reduce its spending on renewables and increase expenditure on oil and natural gas. BP aims at reducing net debt from the current level of around $23 billion to between $14 and $18 billion. The TANAP pipe is part of a system that transports gas from the Shah Deniz field in...

The company reported on Thursday that the largest Ukrainian railway, Ukrzaliznytsia (state-owned), has partially restored its online services following a massive cyber attack which affected passenger and freight transportation systems. The first outage reported was on Sunday, when the rail company informed passengers of a problem with its IT system. They were told to purchase tickets at the station or on trains. Later, the company said that its online systems were subjected a targeted large-scale cyberattack. Ukrzaliznytsia announced on Telegram that the online sales system has been restored as a backup for the purchase of train tickets or their refund....

Russia's Foreign Ministry said Thursday that Ukraine has already violated the proposed ceasefire in energy sites during the three-year war by attacking an oil depot. According to Russia's TASS News Agency, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on state television Channel One, that it was up the United States to confront Ukraine for its actions, as they had proposed the ceasefire. The Kremlin announced this week that Russian president Vladimir Putin agreed to a 30-day truce on energy targets during a phone call with Donald Trump, his U.S. counterpart. The agreement fell short of the wider agreement sought by the...

Anton Siluanov, Minister of Finance in Russia, said that the country intends to revive major privatisation plans in 2025. It also expects to raise over $1.2 billion through selling assets confiscated by courts. Moscow, shunned since the start of the conflict in Ukraine by Western capital, has sought ways to encourage more private investment at home, improve economic efficiency, and ultimately boost budget revenues, as Russia is spending heavily on the war. Siluanov told Rosimushchestvo (Russia's federal agency for property management) that "we had big privatisation proposals". "In our opinion, this is the right time to bring the issue back...

Robert Fico, the Prime Minister of Slovakia, said that the European Commission was in discussions about restarting transit through Ukraine and the possibility of shipping Azerbaijani natural gas. Fico, who had threatened to block any final statement if it didn't include the issue of Ukraine stopping gas transit, got the mention of the issue in the Thursday conclusions of the European Union summit. The Slovakian government stopped receiving Russian gas via Ukraine by the end of 2012 after Kyiv refused to renew a contract with Moscow in an attempt to deny Russia revenue for its invasion. Fico and Slovakia were...

LSEG data revealed that Russia sent a diesel cargo on a tanker to Syria under U.S. sanction, marking the first direct supply of this kind to the Middle Eastern nation in over a decade. It is not clear where the cargo will end up. The final destination of the cargo is unclear. The control of Russia over these bases is in danger after the abrupt fall of Bashar Al-Assad last December. Moscow said that it wanted to maintain its control over the bases. According to LSEG, on February 8, the Barbados flagged vessel Prosperity (formerly known as the Gabon flagged...

Calculations showed that the Russian energy giant Gazprom's natural gas exports via the undersea TurkStream pipe to Europe reached a new record of over 55 million cubic meters (mcms) per day in this month. The 1,100 kilometres (684 miles), long trunk lying on the Black Sea bed remains Russia's only pipeline gas exporting routes to Europe. Gas transit via Ukraine has been closed on January 1, following the expiration of an agreement to transport Russian natural gas via its neighbour. The twin TurkStream pipeline has a capacity of 15,75 billion cubic meters (bcms) per annum. Entsog is a European gas...

LSEG data and traders' reports show that February Urals crude oil loadings to Turkey from Russia's western port ports fell to their lowest level since December 20,22, after Turkey's biggest oil refiner Tupras ceased buying Russian oil. Tupras announced last week that it had stopped purchasing Russian crude oil due to U.S. Sanctions announced on January 10, against Russian energy companies, and tankers transporting Russian oil. LSEG's data and calculations show that the average amount of oil delivered to Turkey by Russia, consisting solely of Urals crude, was around 110,000 barrels a day in February. This is down from about...

Two sources familiar with the plan said that after Monday's drone attack, the Black Sea CPC blend oil loading plan will not change for February. The drone attack hit a pumping facility on an oil pipeline that runs through Russia. This reduced the flow of oil from Kazakhstan into world markets, which is pumped by western firms such as Exxon Mobil and Chevron. Two sources familiar with the situation said that the plan to ship crude oil via CPC remained the same on Monday, at 1.4-1.5 million barrels a day or 5.1 million tons. The Caspian Pipeline Consortium, which controls...

Two people familiar with this matter reported that oil exports from Russia’s Black Sea port, Novorossiisk, were revised upwards by 0.24 million metric tonnes for February. This amounts to approximately 590,000. barrels per day. Calculations showed that the daily oil loadings at the Black Sea port will increase by 12% compared to the previous plan. Sources said that the revision was made after the addition of two additional cargoes, each of 100,000 and 144,000 tons, for loading on February 14-15, 25-26 and respectively. Novorossiisk is the port from which three oil grades are loaded: Russian Urals, Siberian Light, and Kazakhstan's...

Russia may supply as much as 55 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas annually to Iran, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday, as Moscow diversifies its gas flows after a significant fall in exports to Europe. Since its full-scale intrusion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia has lost its dominance of the European gas market, when a crucial source of earnings for Kremlin-controlled Gazprom. Putin, speaking at a joint press conference with his Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian, stated Russia's gas materials to Iran might ultimately reach 55 bcm per year, but it would need to start with small volumes of...

The Kremlin stated on Wednesday that Russia's concentrate on the new U.S. sanctions on the oil sector was to minimise their effect however that nothing was ruled out in relation to a possible action from Moscow. We are carefully evaluating the circumstance, Kremlin representative Dmitry Peskov stated. The point is to take those measures that would minimise the repercussions of these unlawful procedures which would best serve the interests of our nation, to start with, and our companies. When asked particularly about a possible Russian reaction to the U.S. sanctions, Peskov stated: Nothing can be ruled out. Whatever is best...

Recognizing suspect ships and limiting their activities is the most effective method to protect important undersea facilities, European Commission Vice President Henna Virkkunen informed Reuters on Monday. Baltic Sea nations are on high alert after a string of power cable, telecom link and gas pipeline blackouts in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The NATO military alliance, of which Finland is now a. member, has stated it will improve its presence in the region. Virkkunen, who will participate in a Baltic Sea NATO members. conference in Helsinki on Tuesday, is the EU Commission's brand-new. executive vice-president...