The COVID pandemic has wreaked considerable damage on the economies of South America’s smaller fiscally fragile countries, with the former Dutch colony of Suriname hit especially hard.

China made headlines last week with the news that it was going to release some crude oil from its strategic petroleum reserve and sell it in a move that Bloomberg called "an unprecedented intervention."
Indeed, this was the first time China announced the sale of oil from its strategic reserve. The size of this reserve is unknown as the government never releases that data, but analysts have been using satellite imaging to estimate just how much oil China has in storage.

Politicians, environmentalists, economists, and energy executives are all puzzled over a compounding conundrum: what’s to be done about Bitcoin? Just this week, El Salvador became the first country in the world to validate Bitcoin as a legal tender, to initially disastrous results. The once-fringe cryptocurrency and its acolytes have the potential to massively disrupt commerce as we know it -- and they could very well disrupt the global campaign against catastrophic climate change while they’re at it.

OPEC could revise down its forecasts for global oil demand in 2022, in view of the increased uncertainty with the Delta variant, two OPEC+ sources told Reuters on Friday.

In a little over a decade Latin America’s largest economy Brazil has become a leading global oil producer. At the end of 2020, Brazil was not only pumping the most oil in Latin America, an average of 3.03 million barrels daily, but finished ranked as the world’s seventh largest producer behind OPEC member Iraq and ahead of the United Arab Emirates. According to Brazil’s Mines and Energy Minister Bento Albuquerque, Latin America’s top oil producer will become the world’s fifth-largest petroleum exporter by the end of this decade. Brazil’s government is forecasting that the country will be pumping 5.3 million barrels of oil per day by 2030 facilitating its ability to substantially boost exports. That is compared to an average of 3.05 million barrels of crude oil and condensate production per day for July 2021 and an average of 2.94 million for the first seven months of 2021. This indicates that there is still considerable work to be completed if Brazil is to achieve such an ambitious target.

India's crude oil demand has been on the mend since mid-summer. It is likely to continue along this same vein for quite a while, with at least one refiner planning to boost refining capacity considerably.

A consortium of Indian energy companies—including state major ONGC—is in early talks with Rosneft for the acquisition of a stake in the Russian state company’s massive Vostok oil project, the Economic Times reported, citing unnamed sources.

3 Distinct Futures For The Oil Industry:Clean energy transition;Independent E&P Investments.

Despite the COVID resurgence, the oil market will become increasingly tight this year, OPEC+ estimates show, but as the group continues to ease the production cuts into next year, the balance will tip into surplus again in 2022.

After several months of slowdowns in spot market oil cargo buys, Chinese importers are once again boosting their purchases, Reuters reports, citing traders and analysts.

China’s state-owned oil and gas major Sinopec has struck oil and gas at a field in the northwestern province of Xinjiang, Reuters reports, adding that the reserves at the field are estimated at some 100 million tons.

Brazil and its tiny neighbors Guyana and Suriname have recently risen to prominence with major oil discoveries despite what most would see as an unfavorable environment—the energy transition seems to be moving ahead at full speed and oil’s days should be numbered. Only they aren’t. And the future of oil appears to be offshore.