Thursday, 3 September 2026

China's oil consumption fell 9 percent from April through June, with transportation fuel use down 16 percent, according to an analysis by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air cited by Inside Climate News.

The Finland-based research organization tied the drop in part to electrification of road freight and passenger vehicles. Electric truck sales rose 77 percent in the second quarter against the same period a year earlier, according to the report. The total number of electric vehicles on the road was 33 percent higher than a year earlier.

Measured across the first half of the year, the decline in Chinese oil use exceeded the entire volume of oil consumed in the United Kingdom over the same period, the report said.

Coal worked against the trend. Burning of coal for power rose 2.4 percent, and the report said the emissions decline would have been larger without that increase.

The reversal cuts against a decade-long pattern. Chinese oil consumption has expanded by more than 500,000 barrels per day annually on average over the last ten years, a run of growth that shaped global crude demand.

Shell Offshore, a subsidiary of Shell plc, will acquire a 30% stake in the BP-operated Conifer exploration prospect in the Gulf of Mexico, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported.

The transaction extends beyond U.S. waters. In a separate statement cited by Offshore Engineer OEDigital, BP plc said Shell would also take a 50% stake in the Tupinamba exploration block in Brazil's Santos Basin.

BP keeps the balance of both interests and stays operator, according to the same report: 70% at Conifer and 50% at Tupinamba.

The Gulf of Mexico, referred to as the Gulf of America under an executive order, accounts for about 15% of U.S. crude oil production, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported.

Petrobras and Pemex announced a two-year memorandum of understanding on June 23 setting out how the two state oil companies will work together, according to Mongabay. The press release describes cooperating to "increase production in deepwater" and in "mature fields... in the Gulf of Mexico".

The deepwater ambition sits against a documented risk gradient. Mongabay cites researchers' analysis of past drilling in the Gulf of Mexico showing that safety and environmental incidents rise by an average of 8.5% for every 30.48 meters of well depth.

Recent operating history in the same basin supplies the immediate concern. An oil spill near the Gulf of Mexico in March contaminated 933 kilometers of shoreline, and Pemex later attributed the pollution to a leak in one of its pipelines, Mongabay reported.

That was not the only incident. An exploratory natural gas well near Las Choapas, Veracruz, exploded in February and kept releasing smoke and gas for nearly five months.

The expansion also runs alongside conservation commitments. Mexico created the Southern Gulf of Mexico Reefs National Park in 2024, the largest marine protected area in the Gulf of Mexico, according to Mongabay.

Host cities across Texas did not get the economic gains and employment the petrochemical industry promised during its expansion of the last 15 years, according to IEEFA.

IEEFA names three key host regions for the buildout: the Coastal Bend, the Houston Ship Channel, and the Golden Triangle.

The multiplier argument used to sell those projects came from the industry itself. Executives have claimed that every one job at a petrochemical plant results in another seven jobs in the surrounding community, IEEFA said. Set against that claim, the promised boost to local economic conditions failed to appear in the cities that took the plants.

What did arrive was a cost. IEEFA attributes additional health costs to elevated levels of toxic pollutants, with the burden falling on the communities sitting closest to the petrochemical plants.

Operatorship of the Mopane oil discovery in Namibia's Orange basin has passed to TotalEnergies, which closed the purchase of a 40% operated stake in the PEL83 licence from Galp, World Oil reported.

Ownership of PEL83 now sits at 40% for TotalEnergies and 40% for Galp, with Namcor and Custos each on 10%. The two companies first struck the deal in December 2025, according to World Oil.

Drilling comes next. TotalEnergies intends to appraise Mopane with three wells starting in the second half of 2026, a programme aimed at supporting a possible final investment decision in 2028, World Oil said.

Galp picks up acreage elsewhere offshore Namibia under the same agreement: 10% of PEL56, the licence holding the Venus discovery, and 9.39% of PEL91.

TotalEnergies operates both. Its stake stands at 35.25% in PEL56 and 33.09% in PEL91, per World Oil.

Chairman and CEO Patrick Pouyanné described the operatorship as "a key milestone" in the company's plan to build production in Namibia.

The Railroad Commission of Texas will gain access to satellite-based ground-motion data covering the Permian basin to support its Underground Injection Control (UIC) program, under a partnership between B3 Insight and SatSense, World Oil reported.

The arrangement pairs interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) measurements from SatSense with subsurface injection data carried on B3 Insight's OilfieldH2O platform, according to World Oil. That combination puts surface movement readings and well-level injection records in the same view.

Regulators will be able to compare surface deformation against injection activity and geologic conditions across the basin, World Oil reported. Ground motion measured from orbit becomes a screening layer over the disposal wells the commission licenses through the UIC program.

The two companies had already merged their subsurface and satellite datasets, World Oil reported, after working together as technology partners with the Center for Injection and Seismicity Research (CISR). The Texas agreement extends that earlier integration to a state regulator.

Jefferies Financial Group puts Venezuelan crude output at 2 million bpd within five years on two conditions: that the U.S.-Venezuela agreement stays intact and that Trump's call for $100 billion of oil investment materializes, World Oil reported.

Chevron has committed spending of more than $7 billion across the next five years, routed through its Venezuelan joint ventures. The company wants output above double its 2026 level, at roughly 600,000 bpd.

Eni is preparing a production increase in Venezuela as well, World Oil reported, describing the planned rise as significant.

Control of more than 65 billion barrels of proven reserves passes to the U.S. under the Trump administration's plan. Defaulted government and state oil company bonds have rallied on that structure, trading near a four-month high.

Bloomberg data cited by World Oil put sovereign notes maturing in 2027 at 54 cents on the dollar.

The liabilities dwarf the barrels. According to David Austerweil of VanEck, the restructuring could become the largest sovereign debt rework on record, with obligations of as much as $229 billion once commercial debt from state oil company PDVSA and local-currency claims are counted.

Guyana now pumps more than 900,000 bpd of crude, Natural Resources Minister Vickram Bharrat said, and the government aims for roughly 1.7 MMbpd by the end of the decade as offshore drilling and exploration widen, World Oil reported.

A separate domestic power project, sized at approximately 300 MW, will draw gas from the offshore Stabroek Block to generate electricity while stripping out natural gas liquids.

Luis Pirela, Guyana country manager and board member at Lindsayca, said the Gas-to-Energy plant is targeting power generation before the end of 2026.