In this week's highlights: Land-based mobility is recovering in Europe; the oil industry holds two conferences this week; Norway begins its maintenance schedule for 2021 across a number of producing gas fields; and the International Energy Agency publishes its "Net Zero in 2050" roadmap report.
- Mobility recovery and African opportunities
- Norway set to begin heavy planned maintenance
- IEA's net-zero roadmap due
In this week's highlights: Norway begins its maintenance schedule for 2021 across a number of producing gas fields, and the International Energy Agency publishes its "Net Zero in 2050" roadmap report.
But first, in oil news, mobility is recovering in Europe, with land-based mobility running at six-month highs in the big European economies, while aviation still languishes at around 30% of pre-pandemic levels.
Two oil conferences commence this week, aiming to shed light on the oil markets, starting with the Sub-Saharan Africa International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference, SAIPEC, which is hosted by Nigeria and gets underway Wednesday.
It will look at opportunities both for established producers and those jostling to expand, with speakers from Angola, Gabon, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Uganda and Nigeria itself, as well as representatives from Shell, Total, Chevron and Equinor.
Also, Platts hosts its European Bunker Fuel Virtual Conference on Thursday, looking at market volatility and European regulation. On the line-up are representatives from a range of big shipping companies, industry associations BIMCO and the IBIA, the IEA, Swedish bank SEB, and Platts itself.
In European gas, Norway is set to enter the heaviest period of maintenance planned for 2021 across several producing gas fields on the Norwegian Continental Shelf and European entry terminals.
Some 85 million cu m/d of gas will be unavailable through the rest of May, according to Norwegian grid operator Gassco - this volume is around a quarter of Norway's gas export capacity.
The planned work comes as prompt European gas prices continue to edge up due to colder-than-normal temperatures and concerns over Europe's ability to replenish its gas stocks.
EU storage sites have struggled to exceed the 30% full mark, which is well down on stock levels at the same time in 2020, when storage sites were already more than 66% full.
With Norwegian supplies set to be constrained in the coming weeks, Europe will hope it can attract LNG cargoes to help refill stocks.
In power, the IEA is set to publish its much-anticipated "Net Zero in 2050" roadmap report in Paris on Tuesday.
The report will set out what is needed from European governments to decarbonize the energy sector, in line with Paris Climate Agreement targets of keeping the rise in global temperatures at 1.5 degrees Celsius. Mentioned by US Senator John Kerry and several energy ministers during US President Joe Biden's recent climate summit, the report could be hugely influential as coal-heavy Asian countries, as shown in the chart, revisit their commitments ahead of the next UN climate talks in Glasgow this November.
And finally, our social media question for the week: Is the European energy sector ready to meet decarbonization goals set out by the Paris Agreement?
Tweet us your thoughts using the hashtag #PlattsMM.
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Thanks for kicking off your Monday with us and have a great week ahead!