QatarEnergy Monday announced an oil discovery in the 4-BRSA-1386D-RJS well in Brazil’s world class Sepia oil field, which is located in the prolific Santos Basin in water depths of about 2,000 meters off the coast of Rio de Janeiro.

QatarEnergy acquired a working interest in the Sépia Co-Participated Area in December 2021 during the 2nd Transfer-of-Rights Surplus Bidding Round, which was organized and managed by Brazil’s National Agency for Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels (ANP). The Area is operated by Petrobras (with a participating interest of about 52 percent) in partnership with TotalEnergies (19.2 percent), QatarEnergy (14.4 percent) and Petronas Petrleo Brasil Ltda (14.4 percent), with Pre Sal Petroleo S.A. (PPSA) as manager. The Sepia shared reservoir is currently producing about 170,000 barrels of oil per day.

Commenting on this occasion, HE the Minister of State for Energy Affairs, the President and CEO of QatarEnergy, Saad bin Sherida Al Kaabi, said: “We are encouraged by this discovery, which comes as a result of strategic cooperation with reputable partners in our effort to unlock more global energy resources as part of our comprehensive growth strategy. On this occasion, I would like to congratulate our partners, and l look forward to more future achievements.”

The discovery is significant in that the well penetrated a net oil column, which is one of the thickest ever encountered in Brazil. Partners will continue operations to characterize the conditions of the discovered reservoirs and verify the extent of the discovery by conducting well tests. (QNA)

aramco,athens,athensenergydialogues,baroudi,carbon,climate,climate change,climateaction,climatechange,Closure Of Nuclear,Power,Plants,CO2,cyprus,decarbonising,decarbonization,democracy,doha,eastmed,egypt,embargo,emissions,ENERGY,Energy Market,energy,peace,energyindustry,europe,European Fuels,Russian Gas,Oil And Gas,Natural Gas,GAS,gazprom,greece,greenenergy,international,Maritime,disputes,LEBANON,Liquefied Natural Gas,maritime boundaries,east,mediterranean,Maritime disputes,offshore,OIL,opec,pollution,poverty,alleviation,Putin,QATAR,Renewable Energy,Rosneft,roudi,russia,Russia In The European Energy Sector,Russian Sanctions,saudi,solar,solar power,Straddling,hydrocarbons,reserves,sustainability,total,trump,turkey,ukrain,UNCLOS,usa

Under-investment spurs imbalance in global gas supply-demand
The supply-demand imbalance in the global gas market has been caused mainly by under-investment in the industry since 2015 on the back of very low gas prices and misguided calls to stop investing in natural gas projects.
This has only been exacerbated by geopolitical tensions and as Europe became the preferred destination for LNG cargoes to compensate for reduced pipeline flows.
Industry experts say market tightness is expected to continue in the medium-term, as the majority of new projects will come on stream only after 2025.
At a recent media event in Doha, HE the Minister of Energy Affairs Saad bin Sherida al-Kaabi told Gulf Times: ‘“Higher gas prices are caused by many factors. One of these is the Ukraine issue, which has made it a much bigger problem.
“If you go back a little bit, it was due to everybody pushing for green and demonising oil and gas companies and there were not enough investments (in the sector). And that caused higher price, which started before the Ukraine issue. The Ukraine issue has just made it a much bigger problem.
“You cannot take a short-term view of what’s happening today. Gas prices, which you see in Europe today are due to circumstances there.”
Due to the impact of geopolitical challenges, global energy supplies have been disrupted, energy prices impacted, and created concerns over energy security as well as accessibility.
Inflationary pressures are impacting the oil and gas industry through rising production costs, delays in investment decisions, and increased policy uncertainty, al-Kaabi had earlier said at the Asia Green Growth Partnership Ministerial Meeting.
Such developments caused a setback in the kind of serious energy transition the world needs in order to address the immediate challenges of climate change.
“This has caused a serious erosion in public support for reducing carbon emissions in many countries, which had earlier campaigned for greener energy and a carbon-free future – thus negating years of environmental achievements,” al-Kaabi said.
As the cleanest hydrocarbon fuel, natural gas is seen as the perfect solution that strikes the right balance, and will continue to play a key role in the future energy mix.
According to the ‘Global gas outlook’ by the Gas Exporting Countries Forum, natural gas share in the energy mix will increase from 23% today to 26% in 2050, underpinned by population growth, doubling of world GDP, improved standards of living, and policies and technology aimed at improving air quality and mitigating climate change.
Natural gas will continue to play a pivotal role in sustainable development and in a just and inclusive energy transition. It constitutes a key lever to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and the Paris Agreement’s long-term objectives.
But the security of demand and supply, as well as open, transparent, unhindered, and non-discriminatory gas markets can be achieved only through continuous producer-consumer dialogues.
Clearly, huge investments are required to satisfy the growing world energy demand. Therefore, the importance of timely investments for market stability, and the crucial need for unhindered flow of financial resources and access to technology in a non-discriminatory manner cannot be overlooked.

Big Oil’s record profits are a huge hit on Wall Street but increasingly provocative in the corridors of power from Washington to London as politicians lash out against executives for funnelling windfall profits to investors.
The controversy this week was not so much about the gargantuan dollar amounts earned but what the world’s largest energy companies chose to do with them. Exxon Mobil Corp, Chevron Corp, Shell Plc and TotalEnergies SE are handing almost $100bn to shareholders annually in the form of buybacks and dividends while reinvesting just $80bn in their core businesses this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
“Can’t believe I have to say this, but giving profits to shareholders is not the same as bringing prices down for American families,” President Joe Biden tweeted on Friday in response to Exxon’s dividend increase.
Biden assailed Exxon again Friday evening at a Democratic fundraiser in Philadelphia, saying the company’s earnings were “the most it’s made in its 152-year history, while the rest of America is struggling.”
“Those excess profits are going back to their shareholders and their executives instead of going to lower prices at the pump and giving relief to the American people, who deserve it and need it,” he added.
“I’m going to keep harping on it,” Biden vowed. “They talk about me picking on them – they ain’t seen nothing yet. I mean it. It outrages me. Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, called energy profits “obscene,” and introduced legislation to prohibit fuel exports, a move he said would lower prices at the pump. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called the earnings “unconscionable.”
Russia’s post-invasion halt to natural gas shipments to much of Europe and sanctions on the country’s oil exports triggered a global scramble for energy supplies, bidding up prices in the process.
With gasoline prices and household utility bills squeezing consumers and pushing up inflation, politicians are demanding major oil companies reinvest more profits in drilling and refining to ease the strain.
For their part, oil executives, under pressure on emissions and years of poor returns, are in no mood to back down.
“There are hard times, as we saw just two years ago where we had enormous losses,” Chevron chief executive officer Mike Wirth said on Bloomberg TV. “You move into another part of the cycle and you have strong earnings. Good times don’t last just like the difficult times don’t last. We have to invest through those cycles.”
Wirth rejected the idea that current profits are a windfall and warned politicians against enacting any “short-sighted” policies that would restrain investment.
Earlier this year, the UK passed a windfall-profits tax on domestic oil and gas producers including BP Plc and Shell to claw back some of their extraordinary earnings, and there may be more measures on the way. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says all options are on the table as he attempts to fill a £35bn ($40.7mn) budget shortfall.
The European Union also gave a green light earlier this year for countries to implement windfall levies. An analysis from Boston Consulting Group found that the measure could raise as much as 150bn euros ($149mn) in the next year. “There’s just a big gap in country finances and this is a way to fill that,” said Anders Porsborg-Smith, a managing director at BCG. “And it’s rarely unpopular to tax supernormal profits.”
California Governor Gavin Newsom, also a Democrat, said it’s time to “crack down on oil’s price gouging tactics and put their profits back into our pockets,” adding “gas prices shouldn’t be this high.” But analysts say California’s strict clean-fuel standards are a major reason why the state pays more for gasoline than any other in the US.
Windfall taxes may be popular but whether they’re effective is another matter. Shell hasn’t had to pay any windfall tax in the UK so far, despite making record-setting profits this year, due to increased investment in the North Sea. More importantly, the industry says such taxes risks chilling investment by the oil majors at a time when they’re most needed.
Exxon and Chevron are increasing oil and gas output fast in the Permian Basin, and both reported strong refining throughput in the third quarter, but there’s a limit to how much they can do to ease prices in the short-term. Major projects take years of planning and development. Bad policy is a factor behind today’s energy crisis, according to Exxon CEO Darren Woods.
“Unfortunately, the markets that we’re in today are a function of many of the policies, and some of the narrative that’s floated around in the past,” he said. “Our focus is really making sure people understand what the potential consequences of some of these policies are.”

Politically, the G7 and likeminded countries around the world have adopted a war footing to stop Russian aggression. Russian President Vladimir Putin violated the most fundamental principle of international law by launching an unprovoked attack on another member of the United Nations – an institution created explicitly to prevent such aggression. The dangers of appeasement should be obvious. Even a little empathy should make us shudder in horror at the prospect of having to live under Putin’s rule.
It is a peculiar war. While Putin has described his project as a confrontation with the entire West, Ukrainians alone are doing all the fighting and bearing the full brunt of Russian attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure. Meanwhile, Europe and America have provided economic and military assistance, and the rest of the world has been dealing with the war’s fallout, including higher energy and food prices.
But it is a mistake to think that the war can be won with a peacetime economy. No country has ever prevailed in a serious war by leaving markets alone. Markets simply move too slowly for the kind of major structural changes that are required. That’s why the United States has the Defence Production Act, which was enacted in 1950 and invoked recently in the “war” against Covid-19, and again to address a critical shortage of baby formula.
Wars inevitably cause shortages and generate windfall gains for some at the expense of others. Historically, war profiteers have typically been executed. But today, they include many energy producers and traders who, rather than being marched to the gallows, should be subjected to a windfall profits tax. The European Union has proposed such a measure, but it would come too late, and it is too weak and too narrow for the challenge at hand. Similarly, while several members of Congress have put forward bills to tax Big Oil’s superprofits, the Biden administration has so far failed to move on the issue.
That is understandable, given that US President Joe Biden has been busy enlisting support for signal achievements like the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act. Moreover, in seeking the private sector’s cooperation in limiting price increases, he has been at pains not to appear “anti-business.” But taxing windfall profits and using the proceeds to finance the necessary war spending and support for those hurt by high prices is not anti-business; it is responsible wartime governance, which is necessary to maintain popular support for the war effort. Such temporary taxes hurt neither investment nor employment, and there is nothing unjust about taxing exceptional gains that companies did nothing to deserve. (Besides, more generally, taxes on corporate profits are not distortionary, because costs, including capital, are deductible.)
Even more comprehensive measures are needed in Europe, where today’s electricity market was not designed to deal with wartime conditions. Instead, it follows the principle of marginal-cost pricing. That means the electricity price reflects the highest-cost source of production needed to meet current demand. As gas prices have soared, marginal costs have risen far above average costs. The cost of renewable energy has, for instance, changed little.
As such, many sellers of low-cost electricity are making a killing, as are the traders who bought energy at the lower pre-war prices. While these market players reap billions of euros in profits, consumers’ electricity bills are soaring. Electricity prices in energy-rich Norway, with its enormous gas and oil reserves and hydro capacity, have increased nearly tenfold.
Meanwhile, households and small businesses are being pushed to the brink, and even some big companies have already gone bankrupt. Last month, Uniper, a large company supplying one-third of Germany’s gas, was “nationalised,” effectively socialising its massive losses. The European principle of “no state aid” has been thrown aside, mainly because European leaders moved too slowly in changing a market structure that was not designed for war.
Economists love marginal-cost pricing because it provides appropriate incentives, and because its distributive consequences tend to be small and easily manageable in normal times. But now, the system’s incentive effects are small and its distributive effects are enormous. In the short run, consumers and small businesses will have to turn down their thermostat in the winter and turn it up in the summer, but comprehensive energy-saving investments take time to plan and implement.
Fortunately, there is a simpler system (already under discussion in some countries, and already being partly implemented in others) that would retain most of marginal-cost pricing’s incentive effects without the distributive effects. Under a non-linear pricing framework, households and firms could be allowed to purchase 90% of their previous year’s supply at the previous year’s price, and 91-110% of supply at, say, 150% of the previous year’s price, before the marginal-cost price kicks in.
While non-linear pricing can’t be used in many markets – owing to the possibility of “arbitrage” (buying a good at a low price and immediately reselling it at a much higher price) – electricity is not one of them. That is why some economists (like me) have long advocated its use in cases where large market failures are having important distributive effects. It is a powerful tool that governments can and should use, especially when confronting wartime conditions.
Something also must be done about soaring food prices. After a half-century of paying US farmers not to farm (an old method of agricultural price support), we now should pay them to produce more.
Such changes have become imperative. As the Vietnamese understood, wars are won as much on the political front as on the battlefield. The purpose of the 1968 Tet Offensive was not to gain territory but to change the political calculus of the war, and it worked. Defeating Russia obviously will require more help for Ukraine. But it also will require a better economic response on the part of the West more broadly. That starts with sharing more of the burden through windfall profit taxes, controlling key prices – such as those for electricity and food – and encouraging government interventions where necessary to alleviate critical shortages.
Neoliberalism, based on simplistic ideas about how markets should operate that fail to comprehend how they actually operate, didn’t work even in peacetime. It must not be allowed to stop us from winning this war. – Project Syndicate

* Joseph E Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, is University Professor at Columbia University and a member of the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation.

أكد الوسيط الأميركي لترسيم الحدود البحرية بين لبنان وإسرائيل آموس هوكشتاين، أن “الاتفاق البحري بين الجانبين مفيد لأمن إسرائيل”.

وأضاف في تصريحات لقناة 13 الإسرائيلية، نقلتها “روسيا اليوم”، “لم تحصل إسرائيل على كل ما تريده، ولم يحصل لبنان على كل ما يريده. هكذا تجري المفاوضات عادة”، متابعاً “كانت مفاوضات استمرت لما يقرب من 11 عاماً، وقررت تغيير المعادلة. غيرنا المحادثة حتى يخرج الجميع منتصرين”.

وأشار إلى أن “إسرائيل تريد حصتها الاقتصادية بالطبع، لكنها تريد حقا استقرارا في البحر الأبيض المتوسط، وهيمنة إسرائيل على البحر الأبيض المتوسط ​​هي نتيجة لنجاحها الهائل في تطوير مثل هذه الكمية الكبيرة من الغاز الطبيعي”.

وتابع “خط الحماية لم يكن الحدود الرسمية بين إسرائيل ولبنان، والآن وافق لبنان على الاعتراف به كوضع قائم بينه وبين إسرائيل، وهذا يتيح لإسرائيل القيام بدوريات على طول هذا الخط وإمكانية الإشراف عليه. هذا أمر عظيم بالنسبة لإسرائيل”.

وعن تأثير تهديدات حزب الله على المفاوضات البحرية، قال هوكشتاين، “أوضحت لي إسرائيل أنه لن تكون هناك مفاوضات تحت التهديد”.

وفي إشارته إلى انتقاد إسرائيل لتوقيت الاتفاق قبل الانتخابات مباشرة، علق هوكشتاين قائلاً، “كانت لدينا فترة زمنية حرجة، لو انتظرنا لما تم الاتفاق”.​