2019

As the BRENT surges past 73$/barrel, it's expected that Brent trades at a premium with regards to the Brent-Dubai Spread Chart.

Oil futures settled at fresh six-month highs Monday as the market looked at an increasingly tight global supply picture in light of the White House decision. ICE June Brent settled up $2.07/b at $74.04/b, and NYMEX May WTI settled $1.70/b higher at $65.70/b. Monday marked the highest front-month settle for both contracts since late October, just before the US sanctions snapped back.

Gazprom is looking to bypass Ukraine completely with the construction of the 55 Bcm/year Nord Stream 2 pipeline and the 31.5 Bcm/year TurkStream link, though some delays mean some kind of deal with Kiev will be necessary.

The Arab Petroleum Investments Corporation (APICORP), a multilateral development financial institution, forecast in its MENA Annual Energy Investment Outlook 2019 that current and planned energy investments in the region add up to $1trn for the next five years.

ExxonMobil said that it signed a sales and purchase agreement with Zhejiang Provincial Energy Group for liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply. Under the agreement, Zhejiang Energy is expected to receive 1 million metric tons per annum of LNG over 20 years.

France's ambitious energy plan will require substantial investment efforts over the next few years. Against this backdrop, the French government has expressed a willingness to propose a new remuneration framework for the existing nuclear fleet - though the timing and details of such a regulatory change remain uncertain and remote. What's more, the French state has opened the option of increasing its stake in EDF (currently 83.7%) by as early as 2019. If, or indeed when, these developments are implemented it could be credit positive.

The race for investor commitments of cash and eventual market share among developers of small modular reactors (SMRs) globally is on. Developers in the U.S., Canada, U.K., South Korea, Russia, and China, and in other nations are pursuing their technology visions for a variety of designs concepts including light water (LWR), molten salt, HTGR, and other GEN IV types.

Green hydrogen can in principle be shipped around the world to places that are less well endowed with cheap renewable energy sources.

Oil prices rallied by about 3 percent on Monday to their highest since late 2018 as the United States was set to announce that all imports of Iranian oil must end or be subject to sanctions.

"Cooperation will continue between Russia and Saudi Arabia," Ibrahim al-Muhanna said at the International Oil Summit in Paris, stressing that "it is the core of OPEC+ cooperation."