European Oil Majors Most Transition Ready – Bloomberg

According to a new BloombergNEF report:

European oil and gas majors, such as Shell, continue to lead the transformation in the energy space toward cleaner alternatives that will not only help curb global warming, but likely will allow those companies and their investors to survive the coming decades.

U.S. and broader North American concerns, on the other hand, including Chevron CVX, +1.34%, greatly lag their global counterparts in this pursuit, according to a new report out Monday.

In the top 10: 8 European, 1 Japanese and 1 Thai, no US oil companies.

1. Shell
2. Total
3. Repsol

[marketwatch.com] – Chevron, Suncor and other North American energy giants sharply lag European rivals in ‘green transition’ scorecard

Exit Royal Dutch Shell

Rather unexpectedly, Royal Dutch Shell has announced it wants to leave the Netherlands and move to Britain and change its name from “Royal Dutch Shell” to plainly “Shell”. 114 years of Dutch oil exploration and exploitation, that began in the Dutch East Indies, come to an abrupt end. This means quite a bloodletting for the Dutch Treasury, think hundreds of millions. But most of the 8500 jobs will remain in the Netherlands, only the managers will move to London, “less than 10 people”. The shareholders have yet to approve.

Motivations? The refusal of the Dutch government to cancel the dividend tax may have played a role. Shell says that it wants to streamline its business and that dual nationality makes operations more complex. I personally think that Shell is not so much leaving the Netherlands, but rather the EU and its fossil-fuel-free-in-1-generation policy. For the same reason, it is not so much moving to Brexit-Britain, but rather to the more fossil-fuel-friendly Anglo-Saxon world. Attempts by Dutch clubs like “Follow This”, to turn Shell in a renewable energy company, have failed dramatically. Perhaps that for Shell, the business climate in the UK is friendlier, where there will be no Dutch judges, forcing the company to reduce emissions or no Dutch pension funds, implicitly declaring Shell a pariah, by withdrawing entirely from the fossil fuel business.

How to judge this development? Well, if you say “A”, you need to say “B” too. We want to get rid of fossil fuel and, by implication, in the end we want to get rid of the business of Shell. Shell kept the honor to itself and dumped the Netherlands before the Netherlands dumped Shell, so be it. Geopolitically, the Netherlands just became less Anglo and more continental European, a development that began in earnest after WW2, when the Dutch played a significant role in initiating the European project. This is a good development, because Europe is the future, where the Anglos are about to step down from planetary pole position.

What is going to replace Shell?

How about Royal Dutch Gasunie? Or rather, skipping the English, the language of the 20th century and opt for: Koninklijke Nederlandse Gasunie. Gasunie served the Netherlands well with its natural gas exploration and distribution, now it intends to become a big player in the hydrogen business. The Netherlands has an extremely strong entrepreneurial tradition. If we could create a global player like Royal Dutch Shell, we can do that again with Gasunie.

Shell is dead, long live Gasunie!

[source] Gasunie HQ Groningen.

[vk.nl] – Na Unilever vertrekt ook Shell. Hoe erg is dat voor Nederland?
[ed.nl] – Shell wil niet langer ‘Royal Dutch’ zijn en wordt Brits
[dailymail.co.uk] – Minister hails ‘vote of confidence’ for Brexit Britain as Shell moves its HQ to London from the Netherlands and plans to scrap ‘Royal Dutch’ from its name
[trouw.nl] – Ook in Engeland wacht Shell klimaatbeleid en een energietransitie
[wikipedia.org] – Royal Dutch Shell
[follow-this.org] – Green shareholders change the world
[gasunie.nl] – Grootste groene waterstofproject van Europa start in Groningen

The Return of EROI – Fossil Fuel Industry Cannibalizing Itself

With ever more declining EROI of fossil fuel, ever more fossil fuel is wasted on harvesting more fossil fuel, enespenrgy that could have been used to build new renewable energy and storage infrastructure.

A team of French government energy scientists are warning that the collapse of the global oil system is coming so rapidly it could derail the transition to a renewable energy system if it doesn’t happen fast enough. In just 13 years, global oil production could enter into a terminal and exponential decline, accompanied by the overall collapse of the global oil and gas industries over the next three decades.

[bylinetimes.com] – OIL SYSTEM COLLAPSING SO FAST It – May Derail Renewables – Warn French Government Scientists
[hal.archives-ouvertes.fr] – Assessing Global Long-Term EROI of Gas: A Net-Energy Perspective on the Energy Transition – Louis Delannoy, Pierre-Yves Longaretti, David Murphy, Emmanuel Prados

Core message: we are going to desperately need all remaining fossil fuel reserves to carry out the renewable energy transition. We should do so as quickly as possible.

Conclusions:

– Peak oil supply around 2034. After that, rapid decline and catastrophic collapse.
– Keep all nuclear power stations open as long as possible. We need all energy sources available to enable the transition.
– Get serious about energy saving, encourage people to abandon the car (and replace it with autonomous driving) and mass tourism flying. Should be no problem with fossil fuel prices going through the roof. Autonomous driving is no longer a technological gimmick, but an essential means to save fuel. As an aside, Covid was a great help in reconditioning people regarding travelling and working from home (“never waste a good crisis”).
– Get tough with those who think we can afford to gamble the farm by annoying Putin-Russia and sabotage Nord Stream 2 further. The insufferable intellectual light-weight Annalena Baerbock comes to mind, the long arm of the US deep state and #1 war monger in Germany. For that reason, a ‘traffic light coalition’ in Germany is undesirable. The FDP should cancel such a coalition in the last moment (like they did before) and instead opt for a ‘Deutschland’-coalition SPD-CDU/CSU-FDP under chancellor Olaf Scholz and “super-European” and “Putin Versteher” Armin Laschet as foreign minister.
– Forget about America, it is a spent force. Not in the least because they are too late with the transition. They will be removed from entire East-Asia soon by China, supported by Korean unification on North-Korean terms. Japan will not allow the US to use its soil for attacks against Chinese forces. Fighting could happen in the Philippines, with China prevailing due to proximity. Europe should remain neutral in the conflict, not to run the risk of getting cut off from essential Russian fossil fuel supplies, necessary to carry out the renewable energy transition FAST. Every unit of fossil fuel, Russia can sell to Europe, they potentially can sell to China, if push comes to shove, provided they can get it there. A new Russian-Chinese pipeline is in the works. Don’t push Russia too far. We have zero interests in further acting as America’s useful idiot and their “One World integration schemes”, of which Germany became the first victim. Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan have shown that it is game over for the US. They know it is over, it is just that the NWO corps hasn’t been buried yet. Leave it to the Chinese to get that job done. Expect America to fall apart after the upcoming defeat in the South China Sea, just like that other globalist zombie, the USSR, did in 1991. For Europe, Russia is the future, essential to contain China and prevent a Chinese-owned planet and set up a multipolar world order instead. New York should be abandoned as the diplomatic capital of the world and replaced by something half-way Europe and China. Half-European, half-Asian Astana in Kazakhstan, equidistant from Europe, China, Japan, India and Muslim world, could be the right location.
– The EU should contemplate banning European companies to further work on Brexit-British offshore wind farms and give priority to building our own.

Norwegian Oil & Gas Production Forecast

[source] With a Norwegian population of 5.4 million, for every inhabitant, wealth increases with almost a single barrel of oil per day or $75. As a result, Norway sits on the largest public fund in the world, value 1 trillion $. Norway is a large investor in North Sea renewable energy infrastructure.

OSLO, June 11 (Reuters) – Norway is betting on hydrogen and offshore wind for its energy transition but will continue to extract oil and gas until 2050 and beyond, the outgoing centre-right government said as it presented its long-term energy strategy on Friday.

Europe’s second largest oil and gas producer will continue to hold regular licensing rounds, offering exploration acreage to energy firms, the government said.

[reuters.com] – Norway not ready to let go of oil, gas in push for greener energy

Fire in the Gulf of Mexico

Iconic pictures from the Gulf of Mexico and bad publicity for fossil fuel. Nice additional argument to leave fossil fuel before it leaves us.

Keystone XL Pipeline Project Cancelled

[source]

After a decade-long battle, environmentalists, as well as the Biden-presidency, finally prevailed and the Canadian developer of the pipeline TC Energy Corp withdrew from the $9B project.

This landmark decision will put the US on the path of the renewable energy transition.

[source] The yellow pipeline will not be built.

[reuters.com] – Developer officially cancels Keystone XL pipeline project blocked by Biden

Energy is the Key to Geopolitical Success

The US empire would not have come into being without major oil finds on its own soil in the 19th century. That oil is running out.

Now it is continental Europe’s turn, that almost completely controls the offshore wind market world-wide, to provide the world with a new energy source:

[deepresource] – Largest Jack-Up Vessel Voltaire Operational in 2023

[shipandoffshore.net] – A new generation of jack-up vessels

WTIVs With the dawn of the new 12-MW offshore wind turbines, installation capacities of the current, third generation wind turbine installation vessels (WTIVs) will be pushed to the limits and beyond. A new generation of jack-up vessels is necessary to serve the future offshore wind industry. The Dutch company Ulstein Design & Solutions BV has its own perspective when it comes to developing an efficient jack-up with a healthy economic lifetime in this rapidly evolving sector.

[rivieramm.com] – New class of installation vessels to handle ‘super-sized’ wind turbines

By 2022, three purpose-built offshore installation vessels will join the global fleet to support the development of offshore windfarms with larger, more powerful wind turbines… With sky-scraping heights of more than 270 m and blades 120 m in length, a new generation of powerful wind turbines will be the backbone of future offshore windfarm development. Offering improved efficiencies and lowering costs, these 12-MW behemoths are challenging the operational limits of the current fleet of offshore installation vessels… The first of these, Voltaire, has been contracted to install a total of 2,400 MW of GE`s 12-MW Haliade-X wind turbines on the Doggerbank Wind farm in the UK, with installation scheduled in 2023 and 2024.

[deepresource] – 450GW Offshore Wind by 2050 in Europe Realistic
[deepresource] – The Enormous Energy Potential of the North Sea
[deepresource] – The Giants of a New Energy Age
[deepresource] – Breakdown Costs Offshore Windfarm
[deepresource] – North Sea Offshore Wind Hubs
[deepresource] – European Wind Energy Potential
[deepresource] – Offshore Wind in NW-Europe
[deepresource] – Upbeat Assessment European Offshore Wind
[deepresource] – Dutch Company Comes to the Rescue of US Offshore Wind
[deepresource] – The Seven Brothers – Europe Taking Lead in US Offshore
[deepresource] – Offshore Wind: Can the US Catch up with Europe?

[nyk.com] – NYK and Van Oord Partnering to Own and Operate Offshore Wind Installation Vessel in Japan

NYK and Van Oord have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to jointly own and operate offshore wind installation vessels under the Japanese flag. The partners aim to start operating a jack up vessel in Japan by 2022 at the earliest. The vessel will have a crane capacity of more than 1,000 mt and will be suitable to install the latest generation of wind turbines. The collaboration will make use of Van Oord’s technical and operational expertise in offshore wind and the NYK Group’s knowledge of the Japanese market… As a market leader, Van Oord has been involved in over 40 offshore wind projects as an Engineering Procurement Construction and Installation (EPCI) contractor in Europe, where the offshore wind industry is already well developed. With over 15 years of experience within the offshore wind market, the knowledge of its people and its specialised offshore wind equipment, Van Oord is able to contribute to the Japanese offshore wind market.

There is only one (luxury) “problem”: demand for offshore jack-up vessels world-wide is “too high” to service demand; typically a case of “I’d like to have your problems”:

[spglobal.com] – Global shortage of installation vessels could trouble waters for offshore wind

What’s In a Barrel of Crude Oil?

[breakthroughfuel.com] – What’s In A Crude Oil Barrel? A Breakdown of Crude Oil Refined Products

[wikipedia.org] – Petroleum refining processes

Message in a Bottle

It looks like a bottle of liquor, in reality it is an oil sample of the Bataafse Petroleum Maatschappij, a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell. The sample dates from somewhere between 1907 and 1925 and represents oil from Balik Papan, Borneo in the former Dutch East Indies, as displayed in the Boerhaave Museum in Leiden, the Netherlands.

The bottle originates from the beginnings of the oil age and is watched by museum visitors, most of them having accepted that the oil age has to go. Or rather, we should abandon oil before it abandons us, at least in its conventional form. Sure, oil can alternatively be obtained through fracking, but that won’t last for ever either. Alternatives like methane ice of underground coal gasification (UCG) are environmentally even more problematic.

Fossil fuel has served us well for more than two centuries, resulting in historic unprecedented levels of wealth. But now it has become a burden to the global environment and the highest forms, conventional oil & gas, are running out. We should keep the honor to ourselves and dump fossil fuel before fossil fuel dumps us.

Message in a bottle: “oil belongs in a museum”.

[wikipedia.org] – Bataafse Petroleum Maatschappij
[wikipedia.org] – Museum Boerhaave
[rijksmuseumboerhaave.nl] – Site Boerhaave Museum, Leiden, The Netherlands
[wikipedia.org] – Dutch East Indies

Russian FM Lavrov Confirms Nord Stream-2 Will be Built

Nord Stream-2 pipes in the harbor of Sassnitz-Germany, waiting to “get laid”. Symbolically, in the background an offshore installation vessel is moored. That vessel represents the future, the pipes the outgoing fossil fuel era.

…obstacles that have slowed the project’s completion, including Germany’s energy regulator declining to grant a waiver of European Union gas directives to the operators of the pipeline this month, would only result in higher gas prices for Europe, the TASS news agency reported.

Position of two Russian pipe-laying vessels, both currently moored near Sassnitz-Ruegen:

[marinetraffic.com] – Akademik Charskiy
[marinetraffic.com] – Fortune

[reuters.com]