The government of South Africa has approved the merger of three oil and gas subsidiaries of the state-owned Central Energy Fund (CEF) into a National Oil Company.

“[Fossil] energy loans at the country’s six largest lenders jumped 23% to C$71.6 billion in their fiscal second quarter from the prior period,” Bloomberg reports, citing the banks’ financial disclosures. “Toronto-Dominion Bank had the largest increase at 29%, while Bank of Nova Scotia remained the biggest lender, with $21.6 billion in loans.”

U.S. Rig Count is down 5 rigs from last week to 279, Canada Rig Count is unchanged from last week at 21

monthly Brent prices will average $37/b during the second half of 2020 and rise to an average of $48/b in 2021.

Gazprom and RusGazDobycha are implementing the project for a natural gas processing and liquefaction complex near the settlement of Ust-Luga,

The floating LNG storage and transshipment units will serve Novatek’s projects under development in Murmansk and Kamchatka

BP will begin a process of cutting 10,000 jobs following the end of a three-month redundancy freeze that started in March.

Global LNG trade in 2019 amounted to 354.73 million mt, which was an increase of 13% from 2018 and the sixth year of consecutive growth,

The spread of the Covid-19 pandemic has upended these expectations, and 2020 is now set to see the largest decline in energy investment on record, a reduction of one-fifth – or almost USD 400 billion – in capital spending compared with 2019.

In the first quarter of 2020, LUKOIL booked a loss attributable to shareholders in the amount of RUB 46.0 bln.

The worldwide rig count for May 2020 was 1,176, down 338 from the 1,514 counted in April 2020

U.S. Rig Count is down 17 rigs from last week to 284, Canada Rig Count is up 1 rig from last week to 21

Oil companies, including Norway’s state-controlled Equinor, have said they intend to reduce both operating and capital spending in order to preserve cash during the downturn.

Companies operating in Brazil pumped 3.738 million b/d of oil equivalent in April

There is a lot of opportunity for natural gas and LNG to make more of an impact on the global energy mix.