Category: News & Announcement

French supermajor Total proved more resilient than some peers in the first quarter, remaining profitable despite a 35-percent decline in net income to $1.8 billion. The company said it would continue to distribute dividends, unchanged from last year’s first quarter. Total also declared a goal of becoming net neutral in terms of carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 despite the challenging oil price environment. Noting that this was in line with European Union emissions goals, the French supermajor said it is already working to reduce its carbon footprint by expanding its…

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The executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), Fatih Birol, said that the turmoil in the oil sector caused by the covid-19 pandemic gives governments the perfect opportunity to embrace green energy as a source of jobs that also serves climate goals. In an interview with Reuters, Birol said that not only well-established technologies, such as those behind solar and wind generation should receive a boost, but also lithium-ion batteries and the use of electrolysis to produce hydrogen from water should be candidates for subsidies and policy support. Besides being the backbone…

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Bank of China has told its clients that it would pick up the tab for part of the $1.4-billion total loss that its retail customers amassed from investing in a crude oil futures-linked product, several Chinese retail investors told Bloomberg on Tuesday. Bank of China, one of the largest lenders in the country, has a paper investment structured product for retail investors linked to international futures contracts, including WTI Crude and Brent Crude. The structured product linked to oil benchmarks burnt many Chinese investors in last month’s market carnage when…

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Oil prices surged early on Tuesday, heading for a fifth consecutive day of gains, amid signs that demand is crawling back up with eased lockdowns in some U.S. states and major European economies, which would help ease the global oil glut. As of 10:45 a.m. EDT on Tuesday, WTI Crude was rallying 12.47 percent to $25.72 per barrel, and Brent Crude was surging by 10.59 percent to above $30 a barrel—$30.18, as many countries in Europe, as well as several U.S. states, moved to cautiously ease lockdowns at the beginning…

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Ryan Sitton, the Texas Railroad Commissioner who first floated the idea of state-mandated oil production cuts, has thrown in the towel after failing to convince his two co-commissioners of the need for mandatory cuts. Sitton first suggested that Texas could join OPEC and other producers in curbing oil production purposefully in March. However, the industry had a mixed reaction to the proposal. While some backed it, such as Parsley Energy and Pioneer Natural Resources, others were firmly against it, notably the supermajors Exxon and Chevron, which have more abundant cash resources to hold out…

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