Santos pauses Barossa drilling ahead of Tiwi Island court decision: After a week of hearings in the Australian Federal Court, and ahead of an expected verdict from Justice Mordecai Bromberg on September 16, energy giant Santos said it was ceasing drilling on its A$4.7 billion (US$3.2 billion) Barossa offshore project that is being challenged by affected traditional owners. Senior Tiwi traditional owner Dennis Tipakalippa, who brought the case, commented, “I'm relieved that Santos will drop drilling before it gets to the gas and will not start any new well.” Just three days later, Santos announced that it had taken a final investment decision on the Darwin pipeline duplication project, involving an additional US$311 million investment, which it said would allow the Barossa project to be “carbon capture and storage ready.” (ABC News, LNG Prime)

TotalEnergies agrees sale of controversial Russian gas field stake: Despite continuing to deny allegations linking its Siberian gas field operations to Russia’s military offensive in Ukraine, TotalEnergies has moved quickly to agree to the sale of its 49% stake in the Terneftegaz joint venture to its partner Novatek, with the deal expected to be finalized this month. As reported by Le Monde last week, an investigation by Global Witness provided evidence that Terneftegaz gas was likely to have ultimately supplied Russian bombers in the past six months of the Ukraine conflict. (BBC, Upstream)

EU to hold another emergency Energy Council meeting: The Czech presidency of the EU has announced the latest extraordinary meeting of European energy ministers for September 9 to fix the chaos in the bloc’s energy market. A Europe-wide cap on the price of gas used for electricity production will be top of the agenda, alongside proposed measures to decouple electricity price setting from the gas price in order to stop hampering other cheaper energy sources such as renewables. Brussels officials have become more strident about the need to reform the EU’s electricity market amid the market carnage. “The skyrocketing electricity prices are now exposing the limitations of our current electricity market design,” said European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen. “It was developed for different circumstances.” (Euractiv)

Government support for fossil fuels almost doubled in 2021, set to rise further – new OECD and IEA analysis: Public money support for the production and consumption of coal, oil, and gas in 51 major economies around the world almost doubled to US$697.2 billion in 2021 from US$362.4 billion in 2020. Announcing their complementary annual analysis, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the International Energy Agency predicted that subsidies for fossil fuel consumption will rise further in 2022 due to higher fuel prices and energy use. (World Oil)

Ten-year vessel lease signed for short-term floating LNG fix in the Baltics: Joint efforts by Estonian and Finnish gas companies to ensure supplies of non-Russian gas imports will be reliant on a floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) called Exemplar, which has been leased from U.S.-based company Excelerate Energy on a ten-year contract. The rush across Europe in the last six months to secure and deploy up to 20 FSRUs has been thought of as a stop-gap measure. Project duration for FSRUs of between five and six years has been the expected rule of thumb for the high cost charter vessels, while European environmental groups and think tanks have provided analyses since the beginning of the war in Ukraine showing that such big investments should instead be going to energy consumption reduction efforts. (Offshore Energy, Associated Press)

Latest Russian gas flaring find an “environmental disaster”: Rystad Energy has identified “quite extreme” methane burn off taking place since July this year at Gazprom’s under-construction Portovaya LNG terminal near Russia’s border with Finland. The energy consultancy firm calculates that the highly visible flaring has resulted in approximately 9,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per day. Analysts have been split on the reasons for the flaring, speculating that it could be Russian signaling to embattled European gas markets or – instead – an indication of technical difficulties being experienced by Gazprom. (CNN)

Guinea: A U.S.-based investor group has concluded an equity financing deal (sum undisclosed) to support a proposed LNG import terminal at the Port of Kamsar. 

India: State-run gas distributor GAIL has said it is in talks with Gazprom to restart contracted LNG supplies that have been interrupted since May. 

Indonesia: Following construction delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, BP is aiming to complete the third liquefaction train at the Tangguh export terminal by the end of next year.

Latvia: The government intends to advance the Skulte LNG import terminal, which project developers say can be completed by late 2023.

Poland: The 5 billion cubic meters per year Poland-Slovakia gas interconnector started operations on August 26.  

Slovakia: A pilot project in a Slovak village has been successfully blending hydrogen into local gas infrastructure since June, according to gas distributor SPP-D. 

Spain: The Spanish and German governments are stepping up efforts to persuade the French government to get behind plans to revive the MidCat pipeline, with an undersea connection between Spain and Italy being cited as an alternative.

Ukraine: President Volodymyr Zelensky has appealed for upstream investments in the country’s oil and gas sector. 

UK: Investment bank Goldman Sachs has warned that UK inflation could exceed 22% early next year if global gas prices continue to rise.  

U.S.: The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has approved the Mountain Valley Pipeline’s request for another four years to complete construction. 

Rystad forecasts global LNG investments to peak in 2024: New research from Rystad Energy shows that, as the global energy crisis deepens, investments in new LNG developments are set to surge to US$42 billion in 2024 compared to the US$2 billion that went to LNG infrastructure in 2020. Beyond 2024, investments will “fall off a cliff as governments transition away from fossil fuels.” The energy company is also forecasting peak LNG production of 705 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) in 2034, compared with 380 mtpa in 2021. (Rystad Energy)

Pressure on Europe grows as Russia halts Nord Stream: A total closure by Gazprom of its 1,200km gas pipeline for a scheduled three days of maintenance work came into effect on August 31. Since July, Nord Stream has operated at 20% of its full, 170 million cubic meters of gas per day. In a related announcement, Gazprom said it was cutting off gas supplies from September 1 to Engie over what it said was the French company’s failure to pay for gas deliveries. Separately, Engie confirmed that it was seeking to increase gas imports from Algeria’s Sonatrach. As Nord Stream was closed down, Hungary announced it had signed a deal with Gazprom for additional gas supplies of 5.8 million cubic meters of gas per day. (BBC, Reuters, Politico)

Major gas fraud uncovered at Croatia’s national energy company: A reselling scam that has raked in €171 million (US$171 million) over the past two years has led to the arrest in Zagreb of five individuals, including a manager at the national oil and gas company INA. The alleged scheme has involved the siphoning off of quantities of INA’s gas at a vastly discounted fixed price to a small local company, which then sold on the gas to foreign buyers at regular market prices. (Euractiv, OilPrice)

Wave of oil and gas lawsuits may ramp up insurance costs: Major global insurers are closely monitoring the increasing range of climate-related litigation being brought against fossil fuel companies. The cost of so-called directors and officers (D&O) liability insurance taken out by companies could jump, say industry observers following Bank of England warnings earlier this year, if activist lawyers successfully sue over allegations of corporate greenwashing, breaches of fiduciary duties, and the financing of polluting industries. (The Financial Times)

Uniper seeks additional bailout from German government: Reportedly leaking more than €100 million per day due to ongoing efforts to diversify from Russian gas, the country’s biggest gas supplier has asked for a €4 billion (US$4 billion) extension of its already exhausted €9 billion credit line with German’s state-owned lender KfW. The request comes ahead of the introduction, scheduled for October 1, of a controversial gas levy, which the German government insists is necessary to prevent the collapse of Uniper and other gas firms. Noting the level of state leverage over the Düsseldorf-based company, German environment group urgewald commented that “Without a clear change of course away from fossil gas and towards renewable energies, Uniper will remain a bottomless pit both economically and in terms of climate policy.” (Bloomberg, Reuters, urgewald press release (German))

Two Japanese buyers reconfirm for Russian LNG: JERA and Tokyo Gas, two of Japan’s biggest gas players, have confirmed supply deals with the new state-backed operator of the Sakhalin-2 energy project. A string of other Japanese buyers continues to consider prolonging their relationships with Sakhalin-2. Japanese buyers paid US$13.27 per million British thermal units for Russian LNG in June, while the average spot cargo price for delivery to Japan was US$23.30. (Reuters, Reuters)

Global trade of hydrogen: What is the best way to transfer hydrogen over long distances? The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, August 30, 2022. (PDF)

This 27-page paper sets out the challenges involved in efficiently transporting hydrogen overseas and compares the techno-economic  arguments for liquefied hydrogen with those for potential hydrogen carriers such as liquid ammonia.

What are the EU’s options to curb electricity prices? The Financial Times, September 1, 2022.

This short guide outlines how the EU’s energy market works and looks at the potential short and longer term measures which could be deployed by the European Commission to curb soaring electricity prices.