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By David Gaffen, Editor, Energy Markets

Hello Power Up readers! Looking across the energy world reveals a lot of stalled out efforts right now, be it to resolve what could be a long strike among energy workers in Australia, efforts to jump-start wind projects in the U.S., or bills to phase out oil and gas heating in Germany. Let’s get a look at the landscape. 

Today’s top headlines:

• Oil prices ease from 10-month highs but hold above $90 a barrel
• Europe set for light autumn refinery maintenance as fuel markets tighten
• G20 to pursue tripling renewables capacity but stops short of major goals

Australia is one of the largest producers of liquefied natural gas (LNG), and impending strikes could take out about 5% of world supply.

The ongoing labor dispute in Australia between Chevron and workers at liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants is getting more heated. Unions are set to strike at two facilities that account for roughly 5% of the world’s supply of the super-cooled fuel – and Chevron no longer expects a deal with unions, as Lewis Jackson and Roushni Nair report. 

Instead, they are pursuing an untested legal strategy to stop the action at its Gorgon and Wheatstone facilities – by applying to Australia’s industrial umpire, the Fair Work Commission, for what is known as an “intractable bargaining” declaration. That would end the strikes and allow an arbiter to impose an agreement after five days of last-minute negotiations went nowhere. The strikes are meantime expected to begin Thursday without some kind of agreement, with unions saying that they were “bunkering down for a long dispute.” 

Saudi Arabia’s economy is still heavily dependent on oil and will be for the foreseeable future.

Saudi Arabia last week decided to continue a voluntary oil output cut of 1 million barrels per day through the end of the year – surprising the oil markets, where the price of crude surpassed $90 a barrel for the first time this year. But keeping production this low for the remainder of the year means output will be 9% lower than 2023, and oil is the driver of that nation’s economy. And some economists expect a contraction this year now as a result, as Yousef Saba and Rachna Uppal report here.   

The fall in oil production and revenue this year means Saudi Arabia’s economy could shrink for the first time since 2020. Monica Malik, chief economist at Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, sees Saudi gross domestic product (GDP) contracting 0.5% this year. The kingdom has long had a plan to diversify its economy – but the non-oil sector’s contribution to GDP was 44% in 2022, up less than 1% from 2016.  

That’s Gregory Anderson, Chairman of the Moapa Band of Paiute Indians, at the first annual Tribal Energy Equity Summit in Minnesota in May. Native US tribes are trying to take advantage of big incentives for clean energy but have run into roadblocks. REUTERS/Valerie Volcovici

There are about a dozen large-scale clean energy projects proposed by tribes looking to take advantage of federal green energy subsidies – but many of them are stuck. The reason? There is a long line to get through the process of connecting to the regional electrical grid, a process that can take years, as Valerie Volcovici reports here.  

The Standing Rock Sioux reservation near the border of North and South Dakota has one of those projects, situated in an area with some of America’s most powerful winds. The tribe launched a plan in 2020 to build a would be the country’s first tribal-owned utility-scale wind farm, and there are about $14 billion in subsidies and incentives passed during the Biden administration. But connection with the grid requires technical knowledge that the tribes lack – that may hamper the projects. 

“All of that money isn’t going to do its job unless we remove these roadblocks,” said Cheri Smith, president of the Alliance for Tribal Clean Energy, a nonprofit that is helping tribes develop clean energy. 

You can’t sow the wind unless you bid on the wind. 

Offshore wind developers were unenthusiastic in their bids in Britain’s latest renewable energy auction on Friday, as Nora Bull reports here, as the industry struggles with higher costs worldwide. Overall, the auction awarded bids for 3.7 gigawatts (GW) of capacity versus 11 GW in last year’s auction, roughly divided between solar and wind projects.  

The result is unwelcome for Britain’s 2050 net zero emissions target, which calls for 50 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2030 versus around 14 GW now. Last year’s auction drew funding for 7 GW worth of wind projects. Overall, the wind sector has seen huge cost increases, causing developers worldwide to pull out of projects or try to renegotiate them. 

“It has been 700 days of human rights abuse and the Norwegian state has not done anything to stop it. So I have chosen to come here and set up camp until the human rights abuse stops.”  

Mihkkal Haetta, an Indigenous Sami activist protesting wind turbines, in Oslo  

Germany’s lower house of parliament passed a bill Friday that would phase out oil and gas heating systems after months of wrangling, as Riham Alkousaa and Christian Kraemer report here, but the bill has critics from both sides, from conservatives who say it will be too costly and environmentalists who say it doesn’t do enough.  

The bill’s aim is to cut greenhouse emissions in Germany’s building sector, which was responsible for 15% of the country’s total emissions last year. The bill was diluted from an earlier proposal, giving buildings more time to switch their boilers to new ones.

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