OIL MARKET: @IEA has published today its annual "medium-term" oil report, covering the 2025-2030 period.

Link here:

As last year, it forecasts that global oil demand will peak in 2030 at 105.5 million b/d. A few observations in the thread.

🧵1/4 #OOTTiea.org/reports/oil-20… Look at the bowels of the report, and two major changes in the outlook for oil demand in 2030 between the 2024 and the 2025 editions:

The first is that IEA sees now higher gasoline demand (despite rising EVs popularity), largely offset by lower diesel consumption.

🧵2/4 #OOTT

CRITICAL MINERALS: @IEA sees risk of future “painful disruption,” but admits today critical minerals “appear well supplied." In a new report, it adds: “Projected supply-demand balances through to 2035 are improving compared with a few years ago.”



1/4iea.org/reports/global… The tone of its 2025 report is far less alarmist than in the past, noting: "Despite this rapid demand growth, major supply increases – led by China, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo – exerted downward pressure on prices, especially for battery metals."

2/4

🍨🍦 ICE CREAM INFLATION 💸📈

Oil, copper, gas, corn and many others have occupied plenty of time during my career covering natural resources.

But today I’m talking about another commodity rarely discussed: coconuts. And why they mean more expensive ice creams.

@Opinion🧵1/15 Coconut oil is an important ingredient of industrial-made gelatos. It's even more critical for a corner of industry: dairy-free (or vegan) ice cream wouldn’t exist without it.

The problem? Prices have hit a record high, roughly 200% higher than the 2000-2020 average.

🧵2/15

Everyone, please relax!!!

The DoE has NOT given the keys of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to an unknown real estate dude in Colorado. It has not. Nope!

This is vanilla gov contracting; the SPR has long been outsourced. The contract winner is not an unknown company.

1/9 First, a bit of history. As far as I know, DoE has outsourced the SPR management to the private sector since the early 1990s.

First it was done by DM Petroleum (ultimately, a subsidiary of Jacobs Engineering Group Inc) and later (until 2024) by a subsidiary of Fluor Corp.

2/9

COLUMN: What Ukraine has is scorched earth; what it doesn’t have is rare earths.

Surprisingly, many people — not least, US President Trump — seem convinced the country has a rich mineral endowment. It’s a folly.

[FREE TO READ]
@Opinion #Ukraine 🧵1/12

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl… It's not the first time that the US has gotten its geology wrong in a war zone. Back in 2010, the US announced it had discovered $1 trillion of untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, including some crucial for electric-car batteries, like lithium. It was utter fantasy 🧵2/12

COLUMN: Consign coal to history? Forget it.

China pushed global coal demand to a record high in 2024, @IEA said in its coal flagship report.

The IEA has now ditched its "peak coal" theory and sees higher demand in 2025, 2026 and 2027.

@Opinion🧵1/10 bloomberg.com/opinion/articl… The IEA estimates that global coal demand surged to an all-time high of 8,771 million metric tons this year, up 1% from 20232, as electricity demand rose faster than expected.

The IEA revised, too, its historical data, so the rise comes from a higher baseline.

@Opinion 🧵2/10

🍫🍫🍫THE CHOCOLATE CRISIS — an UPDATED thread🆕🆕🆕:

Retail chocolate prices are rising (and will increase much further, while shrinkflation will reduce sizes) after wholesale cocoa prices surged to an unthinkable all-time high of ***$10,000 a ton*** on Tuesday.

1/15 @Opinion First, the magnitude of the rally:

In nominal terms, cocoa prices have surged to >$10,000 – up from ~$2,500 a year ago, and ~$650 a decade ago.

To put things into perspective: the previous record, which only fell in February after 46 years unbroken, was ~$5,500.

2/15 @Opinion

🍫🍫THE CHOCOLATE CRISIS — a thread:

Chocolate prices are about to rise — and bars and boxes will shrink too — after wholesale cocoa prices jumped beyond their 46-year old peak, setting a record high.

FREE-TO-READ (next 7 days):

1/ 10 @Opinion bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
To understand the crisis, one has to travel to West Africa, home to ~75% of the worlds production. The king of cocoa is Ivory Coast, which accounts for 2 million tons of bean output, compared to global consumption of about 5 million tons.

2/10 @Opinion

The OPEC+ delay -- a few notes:

1) At the heart, OPEC is fighting about who pumps how much. Nigeria and Angola, which have struggled to meet their quota, refuse an official lower level for 2024. Leaving OPEC is real, but remote, possibility for Angola; but no for Nigeria | 1/7 2) The dispute, while important inside OPEC, may mean little for global supply-and-demand early next year. Saudi Arabia and Russia appear certain to keep their unilateral cuts in place to avoid a price drop in 1Q. Still, there's a non-zero chance the OPEC+ deal implodes | 2/7

TECK-GLENCORE M&A BATTLE:

Teck’s shareholders are voting until Apr 26 on the company’s split in the middle of Glencore's $23bn hostile approach. By the weekend, Teck would have a good idea of where the vote is going. It needs 2/3 support of the voting B-shares.

@opinion🧵1/12 Teck has tabled a plan to split the company in two (one mining base metals and another mining coal) – but keeping a financial link between them for years to come. You can read my take on the split – and why it amounts to greenwashing – below | 2/12 bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

BREAKING: Canadian mining group Teck rejects unsolicited take-over proposal from Glencore (for about $23 billion, plus debt).

In February, I wrote this @Opinion about the M&A case for Glencore, and noted it already tried to buy Teck two years ago.

Link: bloomberg.com/opinion/articl… The full letter from Teck rejecting the unsolicited approach by Glencore is here: teck.com/media/Letter-A…

I have written only one story about fusion energy. For my university's newspaper 25 years ago. Thankfully, it isn't online.

Since then, I'm skeptical of surprisingly well-timed announcements by budget-starved laboratories about breakthroughs for technologies decades away |🧵1/10 But first, the FT story (confirmed now by others, including Bloomberg) about the US Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory near San Francisco set to announce that a fusion experiment released more energy than the lasers used in the experiment emitted 2/10 ft.com/content/4b6f0f…

For oil, what's more important in the Saudi-Chinese read-outs of President Xi's visit to the kingdom is what is **not** in them.

What's missing? The long rumored pricing of oil in yuan.

China read-out: english.news.cn/20221209/fad4b…
Saudi read-out: spa.gov.sa/viewfullstory.…
#OOTT 🧵 1/7 Saudi Arabia has priced its oil in US dollars since 1974 and channeled the surpluses into the US Treasury market (aka, the petro-dollar recycling).

For a history of oil and the petro-dollar, read this good paper from the Journal of Energy History: energyhistory.eu/en/special-iss… 2/7

OPEC+ appears ready to become a "spectator" of the market (as one delegate put it to me) as the G7 oil price cap talks continue. As things stand, it's likely to keep its output unchanged when it meets virtually Dec 4, although a small cut isn't completely ruled out | #OOTT 1/4 OPEC+ remains concerned about the impact of a slowing global economy and China's covid-zero policy on global oil demand growth. So the cartel retains a decidedly output "cut" bias, and the group can call for an emergency meeting if needed at any point | #OOTT 2/4

OIL MARKET: Washington eases its oil sanctions on Venezuela, allowing Chevron (for the next 6 months) to pump crude in the Latin American nation and export it into the United States. A major shift in the White House policy | #OOTT #Venezuela $CVX 🇻🇪 ⛽️ 🇺🇸 The easing of the oil sanctions come as the Venezuelan government and the democratic opposition re-started talks, brokered by Norway and Mexico. The talks between the two sides are the first direct contact in a year | #OOTT

FULL DOCUMENT: The #COP27 political-policy text (aka, “cover”) is full of diplomatic language gymnastics. Note, for example, the reference to “low-emission” energy to mean gas and nuclear (and probably carbon-captured oil). Full comuniqué is here: unfccc.int/sites/default/… 1/4🧵 A couple of additional points: no advance from COP26 on coal: the COP27 document simply reiterates the Glasgow wording: coal remains a phase down, not a phase-out (and, in reality, coal demand is going up, on track for a record high both in 2022-23, surpassing the 2013 peak) 2/4

When @jfarchy and I wrote in 'The World for Sale' the story of how Marc Rich inserted himself in the 1980s into a gov-to-gov oil deal between Iran and Burundi, we thought we were telling a commodity deal from a long gone buccaneering era (see below a fragment from the book) | 1/5 To trade oil with Iran and Burundi, Rich created a mysterious outfit called the Compagnie Burundaise de Commerce, (or Cobuco for short), directed by an enterprising employee who went by the pseudonym Monsieur Ndolo | 2/5

The annual @IEA's World Energy Outlook is out.

It present 3 *scenarios* for energy supply and demand to 2050. In all, it sees fossil fuel consumption will hit a peak in a few years, but the trajectory after that is very different in each scenario | 1/4
iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/7e42db9… The report says that "the proximate cause of the crisis was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine". But it adds that "pressure on markets was visible before February 2022". Per the IEA: "The key underlying imbalance, which had been some years in the making, relates to
investment" 2/4

A few thoughts about the White House's claim that several OPEC nations communicated to Washington "privately that they also disagreed with the Saudi decision [to cut oil production], but felt coerced to support Saudi’s direction" #OOTT 1/6 Over the last three years, we have witnessed at least two instances when OPEC+ nations disagreed with Saudi Arabia, and were willing to have a very public fight about it (Mexico in April 2020, and UAE in July 2021). We saw nothing of that sort this time | #OOTT 2/6

OPEC+ agreed to a tiny oil output hike of 100,000 b/d for Sept, sending Brent back above $100 a barrel.

The increase (the 2nd smallest hike in the cartel's history, only behind one in 1986) comes despite President Biden's trip to Saudi Arabia | #OOTT 1/4 bloomberg.com/news/articles/… The OPEC+ 100,000 b/d output hike compares to an expectation in Washington only a few days ago that Saudi Arabia would lead the cartel to boost production by 400,000-500,000 b/d. For weeks, US officials have said they expected positive steps at the Aug 3 OPEC+ meeting | #OOTT 2/4

EU energy ministers are meeting today in Brussels to try to find an agreement to reduce natural gas demand ahead of winter. The European Commission proposed a voluntary 15% cut across all members - but many countries have rejected the plan | 1/5 #EnergyCrisis he Czech Republic, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency, has proposed 3 changes to the original proposal to win support from the likes of Spain, Italy and Poland. The tweaks water down (a lot) the original proposal, but probably are acceptable to everyone | 2/5 #EnergyCrisis