GAS TURBINE SHORTAGE RISKS NEW ENERGY CRUNCH 🚨⚡

Orders for turbines for natural gas power plants are vastly outpacing supply, threatening the world’s ability to keep pace with rising electricity demand

🧵 Thread on how we got here and what it means for power-hungry nations The crux of the issue is that the gas turbine market is dominated by three companies -- Siemens Energy, GE Vernova, Mitsubishi Heavy

Theyve been caught flat footed by an acceleration in orders over the last few years. And they aren’t able (or willing) to quickly boost output

Has Iran ever closed the Strait of Hormuz?

Not so far

A full closure remains unlikely. It would wreck havoc on Iran's economy, while surging oil/gas prices could upset customers (China, US)

But here are some ways Iran could disrupt the oil trade🧵👇
bloomberg.com/news/articles/… 👉 Iran could harass vessels passing nearby, like ordering them into their waters or even holding tankers (they've done this in the past)

This could force ships to travel in convoys under protection of western navies

(Story from 2019)

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

SOUTH KOREA'S NUCLEAR POWER RISE
🇰🇷☢

In Changwon, Korea, an 8-story tall forging press runs nonstop, shaping red-hot steel into critical industrial parts

Lately, it’s making one thing: nuclear reactors

🧵 on Korea’s huge effort to export nuclear tech
bloomberg.com/news/features/… The US, France (once cornerstones of the nuclear industry) are struggling with delays and cost overruns

Russia and China dominate, but face security concerns in the west

That leaves an opportunity for South Korea, which has diligently been building its atomic industry

END OF AN ERA: Russia's oldest gas export route to Europe halted

For over five decades, Europe benefited from a steady flow of Russian gas via pipelines in Ukraine. That deal has now expired

While that won't trigger shortages in Europe, it does mark a historic shift

Thread🧵 In the midst of the Cold War, the first large-scale pipeline to export Russian gas via Ukraine was completed in 1967

The USSR wanted to trade/profit with the capitalist West, while also exerting soft power. Meanwhile, the West needed fuel to feed their growing industries

How Japan ignored climate critics and built a global natural gas empire
🇯🇵❤️🚢

Every six hours, somewhere in the world, an LNG shipment controlled by a Japanese company leaves a port. However, these tankers are only the tip of the iceberg

A thread 🧵
bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-…
Japan began importing LNG in 1969 (see attached thread about that)

Over the last 50+ years, the Japanese government and its companies have worked together to unlock new supplies from Brunei and Malaysia to Indonesia and Russia

https://x.com/SStapczynski/status/1191158532902539269

Malaysia founded the oil & gas giant Petronas 50 years ago today, adding to a wave of countries nationalizing lucrative fuel supplies 🇲🇾 🛢️

Here is a short thread of about the creation of Petronas, one of the most important and influential Asian fossil fuel producers🧵 Shell discovered Malaysia’s first oil well in 1910

(Shell first commenced operations in Malaysia in 1891)

“The Grand Old Lady” produced for decades, and put Sarawak on the map

An LNG tanker docked at a sanctioned Russian facility has no insurer, is managed by a little known Indian company and is pretending to be somewhere else
🇷🇺🚢

This is how Russia is trying to circumvent US measures against its new Arctic LNG project 🧵
bloomberg.com/news/articles/… Russian gas/LNG had largely avoided sanctions since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine

That changed in Nov 2023, when the US imposed sanctions against the new Arctic LNG 2 project

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

The dark horse of US LNG 🇺🇸🐴

A decade ago, an ex-banker & lawyer were driving across Texas in a rental car trying to raise money for an LNG export project

Today, they're the billionaire owners of Venture Global ensnared by politics and angry customers
bloomberg.com/news/features/… For nearly half a century, the LNG industry was dominated by petrostates and Big Oil

The shale boom upended that, shifting the advantage to the US and opening the door to entrepreneurs, like Venture Global

These outsiders propelled the US to become the world's top LNG exporter

How US sanctions are strangling Putin’s ambitions to grow LNG exports
🇺🇸 🥊🇷🇺

Arctic LNG 2 has been ready to start exports for months

And yet it sits virtually idle, the first piece of Russia’s energy complex to be halted by US restrictions

A thread 🧵

bloomberg.com/news/articles/… Some background:

🚢 Russia has long sought to increase its share of the global LNG market, but the war and the subsequent sharp drop in pipeline gas Europe have reinforced the importance of these ambitions

Moscow wants to expand LNG output three-fold by 2030

HOW LNG IS MAKING QATAR RICH 🇶🇦🚢

The Gulf nation of Qatar is setting itself up to control about a quarter of all liquefied natural gas production by the end of the decade -- and with it, a growing share of the world's wealth and influence

A thread 🧵

bloomberg.com/news/features/…
Qatar unveiled last week plans to boost LNG export capacity another 13% on top of previously announced projects, together lifting production from 77 million tons/year to 142 million tons by 2030

This will make the rich nation (with a population of just 2.7 million) much richer

THE US LNG MIRACLE 🇺🇸🚢

This is the story of how the US became the world's biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas in less than a decade, drastically rewriting global energy trade

Thread below 🧵👇 The world's first overseas LNG shipment was exported from Louisiana to the UK on the Methane Pioneer over 60 years ago

The US pioneered the large-scale process to chill natural gas to -256F, transforming it into a liquid. Liquefying gas makes the fuel occupy 600-times less space

A HISTORIC WAVE OF LNG PROJECTS BEGINS THIS YEAR
🚢🚢🚢

It took half a century for the energy industry to develop the first several hundred million tons of LNG export capacity

Now, the industry has the potential to do it again in six years

bloomberg.com/news/features/…
This enormous buildout of LNG export capacity from Qatar to the US will cement the role of natural gas in energy transition

Much of this new LNG supply will go to China, but even the EU has agreed to buy shipments past 2050, despite ambitious green goals

HOW ENERGY TRADERS LEFT A COUNTRY IN THE COLD

Pakistan, one of the world’s poorest nations, thought it had secured natural gas to fuel its economy

Commodities firms had other ideas

Full story with @FaseehMangi 👇

bloomberg.com/features/2023-…
LNG traders began diverting shipments meant for Pakistan into the more lucrative spot market when price began to significantly rise

Canceled LNG shipments from 2021 helped prompt an energy crisis in Pakistan

I asked ChatGPT to make a picture of an LNG tanker

For every 10 likes, I’ll ask it to make the LNG even more super chilled “Make it even more super chilled”

The world is running out of time for carbon capture & storage to make a meaningful impact ⏰

💰 CCS is seen as a crucial green solution, but it needs $4.5 trillion of investment THIS DECADE to gain traction
🧵 A thread about the controversial technology

bloomberg.com/features/2023-… I recently went to one of the world’s largest CCS facilities ✈️ 🇦🇺

Chevron is capturing and storing CO2 at its Gorgon liquefied natural gas export project on a remote island in Australia

It was the size of a city block, very loud and eye opening

Japan is set to release over 1 million tons of water from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant 🇯🇵☢️

Why are they doing this? Is it safe? This is what you need to know 👇🧵

bloomberg.com/news/articles/… 💦 Since the 2011 earthquake & tsunami, hundreds of cubic meters of groundwater enter the Fukushima plant on a daily basis, mix with the melted fuel and become contaminated

The tainted water is pumped out and run through a process to remove almost all of the radioactive elements

These niche commodities show how China's economy is stuttering 🇨🇳🧵

📌 GLASS
➡️ Futures plunged ~20% in the past month due to China's teetering property market and weaker vehicle output
➡️ China makes up half of the world’s plate glass production

bloomberg.com/news/articles/… 📌 STYRENE
➡️The price of styrene monomer, a material used for the plastics and rubber that go into appliances like fridges, is dropping
➡️ Dalian futures fell last week to their lowest since February 2021, after a near-5% drop in home appliance sales in the first quarter

A growing gas glut means that US LNG buyers may soon cancel shipments 🇺🇸⚠️🚢

🙅 If gas prices in Europe/Asia plunge more, it may not make economic sense to export LNG from the US
👀 That's a big reversal to last year, when Europe was facing gas shortages

bloomberg.com/news/articles/… US LNG contracts are very flexible and usually allow for buyers to cancel deliveries 🇺🇸

📝 The purchasers must provide two months’ advance notice to LNG producers
📅 This means that any decisions around September loadings would be made in the month of July

I visited one of Japan’s oldest coal mines 🇯🇵 ⛏ 🪨

Today it is shut and Japan is currently very dependent on imported fossil fuels

But it wasn’t always like that. A century ago, Japan had a booming coal industry

A nerdy thread 🧵🤓 Even up until the 1960s, Japan had a formidable coal industry 💪

More than half of the energy the nation consumed in 1965 was produced within Japan

Now it is roughly 10%, which is why Japan currently has a reputation for being very dependent on overseas fuel

The world is rallying behind nuclear power after last year’s energy crisis

Here is a thread of recent public opinion polls in support of nuclear ☢️ 🧵 🇬🇧 A UK poll found a 25% increase in net support for new nuclear power since June 2021

https://t.co/x8mEEHgx1jworld-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Polls…

China massively accelerated its coal power plans in 2022 🇨🇳❤️🪨

📝 Local governments permitted 106GW of new plants, the most since 2015, says CREA
🚧 Construction has started on 50GW, 6-times more than in the rest of the world combined

Via @danmurtaugh

bloomberg.com/news/articles/… “China continues to be the glaring exception to the ongoing global decline in coal plant development"