March 2018

API - Led by gasoline and seasonal demand for heating fuels, U.S. petroleum demand hit 20.3 million barrels per day (MBD) in February. Demand was up by more than a million barrels per day from February of last year, nearing record highs not seen for more than a decade.

BLOOMBERG - While Europe as a whole gets more than a third of its gas from Russia, that share is lower in the U.K., which receives the bulk of its fuel from North Sea fields and Norway. Still, Moscow-based Gazprom PJSC was the second-biggest supplier to major industrial consumers in the U.K. last year, according to Britain’s energy regulator Ofgem.

FT - of the six LNG tankers that have made deliveries into the UK so far in 2018 three have carried cargoes originally from Russia, leading to questions about whether Moscow was gaining a foothold in the UK gas market after starting up the Yamal LNG facility in Siberia late last year.

REUTERS - So far this year, two Yamal cargoes unloaded at British terminals for domestic consumption, accounting for about a third of Britain’s 2018 LNG imports after typical supplier Qatar pre-sold the bulk of its winter output to Asia last year.

REUTERS - U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures CLc1 were at $60.77 a barrel at 0753 GMT, up 6 cents, or 0.1 percent, from their previous settlement. Brent crude futures LCOc1 were at $64.62 per barrel, down just 2 cents from their last close.

PLATTS - But the dispute erupted again last week after the court ruled in Naftogaz’s favor on the transit element of the case, awarding Naftogaz $4.6 billion in compensation for Gazprom’s underuse of its transit network. The net award to Naftogaz was $2.6 billion across the entire case after the court previously awarded Gazprom a little over $2 billion in the supply ruling.

OGJ - Sandra Oudkirk, deputy assistant secretary for energy diplomacy at the US Department of State’s Bureau of Energy Resources, said Nord Stream 2 matters to the US because it would cement a transportation system in place that could perpetuate dependence on Russian gas for some key US allies. “It would not increase the amount of gas coming into Europe, only replace volumes that now are being transported through Ukraine,” she said.

PLATTS - The Russia-UK poisoning row threatens to put renewed strain on the two countries' deep-seated energy ties, illustrated by some of the first ever LNG shipments from Russia's vast new Yamal LNG facility now arriving in the UK.

WNN - Russia has opened its uranium mining industry to foreign investment with an agreement signed yesterday between the Russia-China Investment Fund for Regional Development (RCIF), ARMZ Uranium Holding, and Priargunsky Industrial Industrial Mining and Chemical Union (PIMCU). ARMZ and PIMCU are subsidiaries of Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom.

REUTERS - The country churned out 30.37 million tonnes of crude in the first two months of the year, according to data from he National Bureau of Statistics, equivalent to 3.76 million barrels per day (bpd) and on a par with the weakest level in data stretching back to June, 2011.