In this week's Market Movers Europe with Felix Fernandez:
- Tighter expectations for oil
- Shell strategy update
- German energy sector gathers in Berlin
- Hammerfest LNG set to restart
This week, in oil, the world is seen heading into a tighter summer market.
Falling Rhine water levels represent a specific bottleneck for Europe, impacting availability of fuels.
The ‘precautionary’ OPEC+ cut is still weighing on minds, and will be examined in monthly oil market reports from OPEC and the International Energy Agency, published on Tuesday and Wednesday respectively.
Also on Wednesday, Shell will hold its Capital Markets Day and is expected to provide an update on its strategy and outlook for the energy transition.
Speaking of the energy transition, in Germany, energy sector leaders will gather at the annual congress organized by the BDEW sector association in Berlin on Wednesday and Thursday.
Addressing the congress will be federal energy minister Robert Habeck, a key player in Germany’s swift, effective response to Russian gas curtailments last year.
After fast-tracking LNG import infrastructure, the minister is now looking longer term at how to accelerate renewables, ensure the grid is fit for purpose and, crucially, how sectors like steel and cement can be incentivized to decarbonize.
And finally, shifting our focus to LNG, Norway’s Hammerfest export plant is due to resume operations on Wednesday after more technical issues prevented it from restarting last week.
The plant was offline for much of May, and a gas leak forced it to close again at the end of the month.
Almost all of the cargoes shipped from Hammerfest so far this year have landed in Europe, so the prolonged outages at the facility are a blow to the European gas market.
I’m Felix Fernandez, thank you for kicking off your Monday with S&P Global Commodity Insights.